Background: There is currently a need to develop and test in vitro systems for predicting the toxicity of nanoparticles. One challenge is to determine the actual cellular dose of nanoparticles after exposure.

Methods: In this study, human epithelial lung cells (A549) were exposed to airborne Cu particles at the air–liquidinterface (ALI). The cellular dose was determined for two different particle sizes at different deposition conditions, including constant and pulsed Cu aerosol flow.

Results: Airborne polydisperse particles with a geometric mean diameter (GMD) of 180nm [geometric standarddeviation (GSD) 1.5, concentration 105 particles/mL] deposited at the ALI yielded a cellular dose of 0.4–2.6 lg/cm2 at pulsed flow and 1.6–7.6 lg/cm2 at constant flow. Smaller polydisperse particles in the nanoregime (GMD80 nm, GSD 1.5, concentration 107 particles/mL) resulted in a lower cellular dose of 0.01–0.05 lg/cm2 at pulsedflow, whereas no deposition was observed at constant flow. Exposure experiments with and without cells showed that the Cu particles were partly dissolved upon deposition on cells and in contact with medium.

Conclusions: Different cellular doses were obtained for the different Cu particle sizes (generated with different methods). Furthermore, the cellular doses were affected by the flow conditions in the cell exposure system and the solubility of Cu. The cellular doses of Cu presented here are the amount of Cu that remained on the cells after completion of an experiment. As Cu particles were partly dissolved, Cu (a non negligible contribution) was, in addition, present and analyzed in the nourishing medium present beneath the cells. This study presents cellular doses induced by Cu particles and demonstrates difficulties with deposition of nanoparticles at the ALI and of partially soluble particles.