doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.12.125engClemente, A.Lobera, M.P.Balas, F.Santamaria, J.A versatile generator of nanoparticle aerosols. A novel tool in environmental and occupational exposure assessmentART-2018-105215The increasing presence of nanotechnology on the market entails a growing probability of finding ENMs in the environment. Nanoparticles aerosols are a yet unknown risk for human and environmental exposure that may normally occur at any point during the nanomaterial lifecycle. There is a research gap in standardized methods to assess the exposure to airborne nanoparticles in different environments. The controllable generation of nano particle aerosols has long been a challenging objective for researchers and industries dealing with airborne nano particles. In this work, a versatile system to generate nanoparticulate aerosols has been designed. The system allows the production of both i) instantaneous nanoparticle clouds and ii) continuous nanoparticle streams with quasi-stable values of particle concentration and size distribution. This novel device uses a compressed air pressure pulse to disperse the target material into either the testing environment (instantaneous cloud formation) or a secondary chamber, from which a continuous aerosol stream can be drawn, with a tunable nanoparticle concentration. The system is robust, highly versatile and easy to operate, enabling reproducible generation of aerosols from a variety of sources. The system has been verified with four dry nanomaterials: TiO2, ZnO, CuO and CNT bundles.2018http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/13152910.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.12.125http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/131529oai:zaguan.unizar.es:131529info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/263147/EU/Development of reference methods for hazard identification, risk assessment and LCA of engineered nanomaterials/NANOVALIDinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/JCI-2012-13421info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/RYC-2011-07641SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 625 (2018), 978-986by-nc-ndhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess