The monitoring and control of atmospheric pollutants is a subject of prime importance worldwide. Recent evidence from the World Health Organization indicates that about one out of eight deaths occurred in the world are actually due to air pollution: “In new estimates released, WHO reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives.” In order to tackle this problem, governments worldwide are undertaking to measure the concentration in air of a series of pre-defined pollutants and to compare them to their maximum tolerable levels. There is also a growing research community worldwide aiming at a better understanding of air pollution processes.
During the last decades, concern is growing on a range of specific pollutants that are present at extremely low concentrations in environmental air (at sub-trace, i.e. ≤1 ng/m3 levels) but that nonetheless present long residence times in the eco-system and are highly harmful for humans. Among them, the “toxic organic micro-pollutants” (TOMPs), produced by incomplete combustion of carbon-containing fuels, is the main example, causing cancer, producing reproductive disorders and serious damage over the immune, nervous and endocrine systems.
For example, according to the European Environmental Agency, from 2008, more than 85% of the European Union urban population (380 million people) is exposed to levels of one sub-trace air pollutant (B(a)P) over the indicative values of the World Health Organization.
Nevertheless, state-of-the-art monitoring of the sub-trace atmospheric pollutants presents serious technical deficiencies, which, in our understanding, are hindering the solution to the problem. Main deficiencies are high analysis costs, long sampling times, and technical staff requirements.
The HAZEL equipment will tackle these disadvantages and deliver remarkable costs reductions (even by a factor of 10), drastically reduced analysis times (minutes vs. days), and automated operation by non-specialized personnel.
Indeed, HAZEL aims for the commercialization, for the first time, of an equipment based in the combination of ion mobility and mass spectroscopy (IMS/MS) for environmental air monitoring. It is planned that its unique advantages will attract new user customers to the business and mobilize old ones to switch to HAZEL technology. An important market is thus available, with a huge income potential.
