An integrated aerosol setup for therapeutics and toxicological testing: Generation techniques and measurement instrumentation

•Inhalation setup to study the effect of inhaled aerosol particles on laboratory animals.•Aerosol generation with high stability for a wide range of substances.•Aerosol dilution with high dilution rate and low distortion of particle size spectrum.•Real-time control of inhaled dose during the whole experiment. An inhalation setup for the studies of the effect of inhaled aerosol particles on laboratory mice was developed, built and applied in real experiments. Two types of aerosol generators, based on evaporation–condensation route and on ultrasonic dispersing, are used to obtain the particles for a wide range of substances. The average size of particles generated using these methods is within the range from several nanometers to ten micrometers. The inhalation chambers of whole-body and nose-only types included in the setup allow us to vary the time of experiments within rather broad range. Measuring equipment, namely a diffusion aerosol spectrometer and an optical aerosol spectrometer, provides monitoring of the concentration and size of aerosol particles from 10 to 5‧105 cm−3 (without preliminary dilution) and from 3 nm to 10 μm, respectively, throughout the experiment, and makes it possible to measure the inhalation dose in real time during the aerosol exposure. To adjust the aerosol concentration to the measurable range, an aerosol diluter is used. The design of aerosol diluter allows us to regulate a decrease in particle concentration down to 1000 times without any considerable change of the mean particle size.