Figure 8
Intracellular particle number and surface area upon exposure to the same particle surface area. Cells were exposed to the same total surface area concentration of particles (3.5 × 107 μm2 per well) and the number of intracellular particles was counted by LSM. From the number of intracellular particles, the total particle surface area taken up by the cells was calculated. At the same surface area concentration, the number of 0.05 μm particles exceeded the number of 1 μm particles taken up by the cells (A), however, the fine particles accounted for a greater intracellular particle surface area (B). Due to the small sample size (n = 3) and the use of the Mann Whitney u-test, these obvious differences failed to reach statistical significance (p = 0.1). Note the logarithmic scale on the y-axis in B.