Charcoal cartridges are commonly employed to provide protection against a wide range of organic vapors at workplace owing to their excellent adsorption. In practical situations, not only organic vapors but also aerosol particles may exist in the workplace atmosphere. Focusing on aerosol particles, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of aerosol loading on both sorption capacity and breakthrough time of activated charcoal. Polydisperse corn oil aerosols with a mode of 0.2 mu m and monodisperse acrylic powder of 0.15 and 10 mu m were generated to load the test activated charcoal separately for conducting vapor sorption experiments. For liquid aerosol loading tests, the sorption capacities reduced by 14%, 38% and 46% and the 10% breakthrough times were shorten by 14%, 28% and 75% after loading 0.06, 0.14 and 0.25 g of corn oil aerosols per gram charcoal, respectively. For charcoal loaded with solid aerosols, the sorption capacity remained unchanged whereas the 10% breakthrough times were reduced by 26%, 27% and 35% after loading 0.019, 0.027 and 0.029 g of 0.15-mu m acrylic powder per gram charcoal, and by 5%, 43% and 44% after loading 0.074, 0.13 and 0.18 g of 10-mu m acrylic aerosols per gram charcoal, respectively. It was concluded that the breakthrough characteristics were affected by aerosol loading and the sorption capacity of activated charcoal can only be reduced by the loading of liquid aerosols. For the use of gas respirators with activated charcoal cartridges, it should be noted that the service life of the charcoal cartridges could be shortened due to aerosol loading in a work environment, from the perspective of respiratory protection. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.