Sensor sniffs out toxic gases

A postage-stamp-sized sensor that can detect poisonous gases and toxins by changing colour is being developed by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

The wearable sensor is part of a Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (GEI) and once launched is expected to be used in applications that pose a chemical health risk in the workplace or through accidental exposure.

NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum, said: ‘The project fits into the overall goal of a component of the GEI Exposure Biology Program that the NIEHS has the lead on, which is to develop technologies to monitor and better understand how environmental exposures affect disease risk.’

The NIEHS’s work has been published in a paper by senior author Kenneth Suslick, and MT Schmidt Professor of Chemistry at Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign. In the paper they describe the device as an ‘optoelectronic nose’ for the detection of toxic industrial chemicals (TICs).