Abstract
The objective of this study was to quantify the amount of endotoxin present in respirable dusts collected in cottonseed oil mills. The level of endotoxin in workplace air exceeded 0.5 µg/m3 in about 30% of the examined samples. The amount of endotoxin found in the dust varied over two orders of magnitude from 0.01 µg to 1.3 µg per mg of vertically elutriated particulate. The endotoxin contamination of cottonseed oil mill dust varied both between and within mills and was not consistently related to the amount of dust captured by the vertical elutriator cotton dust sampler.