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.
| Deng, Yue; Liu, Nai-Yuan; Tsow, Francis et al. (2017) Adsorption Thermodynamic Analysis of a Quartz Tuning Fork Based Sensor for Volatile Organic Compounds Detection. ACS Sens 2:1662-1668 |
| Deng, Yue; Chen, Cheng; Xian, Xiaojun et al. (2016) A Novel Wireless Wearable Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Monitoring Device with Disposable Sensors. Sensors (Basel) 16: |
| Chen, Cheng; Tsow, Francis; Xian, Xiaojun et al. (2015) A wearable sensing system for assessment of exposures to environmental volatile organic compounds. Methods Mol Biol 1256:201-11 |
| Chen, Cheng; Tsow, Francis; Campbell, Katherine Driggs et al. (2013) A wireless hybrid chemical sensor for detection of environmental volatile organic compounds. IEEE Sens J 13:1748-1755 |
| Chen, Cheng; Campbell, Katherine Driggs; Negi, Indira et al. (2012) A New Sensor for the Assessment of Personal Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds. Atmos Environ 54:679-687 |
| Negi, Indira; Tsow, Francis; Tanwar, Kshitiz et al. (2011) Novel monitor paradigm for real-time exposure assessment. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 21:419-26 |
| Zhang, Lihua; Tsow, Francis; Forzani, Erica et al. (2010) Reversible oxygen gas sensor based on electrochemiluminescence. Chem Commun (Camb) 46:3333-5 |
| Prabhakar, Amlendu; Iglesias, Rodrigo A; Wang, Rui et al. (2010) Ultrasensitive detection of nitrogen oxides over a nanoporous membrane. Anal Chem 82:9938-40 |
| Rai, Anant; Tsow, Francis; Nassirpour, Sanam et al. (2009) Selective Detection of Sulfur Derivatives Using Microfabricated Tuning Fork-Based Sensors. Sens Actuators B Chem 140:490-499 |
| Wang, Rui; Tsow, Francis; Zhang, Xuezhi et al. (2009) Real-time ozone detection based on a microfabricated quartz crystal tuning fork sensor. Sensors (Basel) 9:5655-63 |
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