Oxidation also occurs rapidly during the process of combustion or thermal degradation in the presence of air.  The burning of biomass (wood, leaves, etc.) is an increasingly common process in the indoor and outdoor atmosphere, and can generate aerosols that are detrimental to human health. Similarly, the smoldering combustion of cigarettes or thermal degradation of glycerol/polyethylene glycol from e-cigarettes may produce aerosols and gases that have adverse health effects. We study biomass burning aerosols that are generated from a custom-built smoldering combustion chamber and smoke particles from cigarette/e-cigarette smoking machines.

We investigate the detailed composition of combustion aerosols using HRMS, GC-MS, HPLC-UV, and HPLC-MS. The composition analyses in our lab complement the results from the in-vivo animal inhalation studies and in-vitro cell culture assays from our collaborators (Pinkerton, Denison, Rice).