Evidence has shown that the recent increases in chronic diseases, such as asthma, certain type of cancers, diabetes and autism, are linked to the exposure of individuals to various environmental pollutants. In order to fully establish the correlation between a disease and a specific pollutant, new tools to measure personal environmental exposures are required. As a response to this need, an interdisciplinary team has been assembled to develop, build and test a wearable wireless sensor system for real time detection of toxic volatile organic compounds in air,-and the effort has been supported by the NIH/NIEHS Gene-Environment Initiative (GEI) program. Over the past two years, substantial advances have been made towards the final goal. Important achievements include successfully development of a wearable device that can detect ppbV level environmental pollutants in real time;seamless communication of the wearable device with a cell phone that can receive, process, display and store the sensor data;and demonstration of the wearable wireless sensor system for real world applications at indoors, gas stations and airport. Building upon the success, this revision project will expand the scope of the parent grant by exploring two particularly exciting new opportunities: 1 )development of a new hybrid detection method for Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylenes (BTEX) that can provide unparalleled performance for determining personal exposure levels;and 2) working with epidemiologists to apply the new sensing tools to subsets of existing population studies of traffic-related air pollution, a primary cause of common diseases such as asthma. The hybrid detection unit will be built and integrated into the existing wearable device to work synergistically, providing new important functions to epidemiologists. It should be noted that the current commercial devices not only are bulky and expensive but also lack the selectivity to detect and analyze low ppb-levels of BTEX, which are thus not suitable for the epidemiology studies. The collaboration with epidemiologists will accelerate the transition from research and development to field test and validation. This revision effort will also lead to job creation and technology transfer from universities to industry.
A novel approach will be developed to detect, quantify and identify BTEX associated with road traffic activities. The approach is designed to provide otherwise unavailable high quality chemical exposure information and serve as a tool to dramatically advance epidemiological and occupational studies.
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