On Saturday, Beijing’s municipal government began publishing hourly measures of what are known as PM2.5 pollutants, or pollutants that measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. But already the data (in Chinese) are showing discrepancies with another measure released hourly by the U.S. embassy in Beijing, long the favored source for air-pollution data for those able to circumvent the Chinese’s government’s Internet censorship efforts.

On Monday morning around 10 a.m., Beijing said PM2.5. levels were measured at about 30 micrograms per cubic meter, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a “moderate” level of pollution. At roughly the same time Monday morning, the U.S. embassy measured PM2.5 levels of 66 micrograms per cubic meter, which is considered “unhealthy” by U.S. measurements.

Several reasons could help explain the discrepancy. U.S. and Chinese pollution monitoring locations are located across the city from one another. The U.S. measures PM2.5 levels from equipment at the embassy in eastern Beijing, near the heavily trafficked Third Ring Road. Meanwhile, Beijing’s government releases measurements from a monitoring site in the western Xicheng district, according to state media.

At least one environmental analyst has already begun raising questions about the data, in particular readings from Saturday that measured PM2.5 levels at an extremely low level of three micrograms per cubic meter.

“In all of 2010 and 2011, the U.S. embassy reported values at or below that level only 18 times out of over 15,000 hourly values,” said Steven Andrews, an environmental consultant who studies Beijing’s pollution data, according to the Associated Press. “PM2.5 concentrations vary by area so a direct comparison between sites isn’t possible, but the numbers being reported during some hours seem surprisingly low.”

Beijing has long worried about discrepancies between its data and U.S. pollution data raising suspicion among the Chinese public, and cables released by WikiLeaks have revealed at least one testy conversations between the embassy and Chinese officials, who lamented the U.S. data could confuse Chinese citizens.

State-run media have celebrated Beijing’s new data release as a sign of government openness and responsiveness to citizen demands. Nonetheless, the reliability of the Chinese data remains a question. Local and national officials have historically been accused of manipulating data on everything from food stockpiles to the country’s economic health.

The Chinese government had previously published PM10 pollution levels — that is, pollutants measuring between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameters. However, they didn’t previously release data for smaller PM2.5 pollutants, which are smaller and seen by some experts as more harmful to human health.

China hasn’t yet released targets for average annual PM2.5 levels, though the state-run Xinhua news agency in an article on Saturday said the the national standard could be set at 35 micrograms per cubic meter on average per year, citing hearings at the environment ministry from earlier this month.

Strong winds during the weekend blew off much of last week’s especially thick smog in Beijing, leaving behind a relatively rare stretch of consecutive blue sky days to welcome the new PM2.5 readings. It remains to be seen how the Chinese and U.S. data will compare when pollution levels pick up again — something that seems likely to happen before too long.

Both the U.S. Embassy and the Beijing monitoring station showed a massive spike in PM2.5 levels around midnight on Sunday. While it’s not entirely clear what caused the spike, Chinese Internet users speculated it could have something to do with city-wide launching of fireworks to ring in the Lunar New Year.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/

Canadian scientists probing ancient chemical deposits on the shores of a High Arc-tic lake have shed new light on the greatest mass extinction in Earth history – the “Great Dying” that wiped out about 90 per cent of the planet’s species 250 million years ago.

Sampling layers of sediment on Nunavut’s Axel Heiberg Island that contain fallout from a series of colossal volcanic eruptions in Siberia during that time, researchers with the University of Calgary and Geological Survey of Canada found evidence of enough mercury pollution to have “over-whelmed” marine ecosystems and contributed to the massive global die-off at the end the Permian age.

“No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a time of the greatest volcanic activity in Earth’s history and we know today that the largest source of mercury comes from volcanic eruptions,” said federal geologist Steve Grasby, also a University of Calgary researcher and co-author of a paper on the Canadian discovery published in the latest issue of the journal Geology.

“We estimate that the mercury released then could have been up to 30 times greater than today’s volcanic activity,” Grasby added in a summary of the study, calling the event “truly catastrophic” on a planetary scale.

Fellow University of Calgary and GSC scientist Hamed Sanei, lead author of the Geology paper, told Postmedia News on Tuesday that the team’s findings at Axel Heiberg’s Buchanan Lake “complement” rather than contradict recent studies by Canadian and other research teams suggesting sudden and pro-found climate change caused the great Permian extinction event, which occurred about 20 million years before dinosaurs evolved.

“We don’t say mercury was the only culprit,” Sanei said. “It was a chain of events – various things happened.”

But the massive pulses of mercury and other chemical discharges from the Siberian volcanoes had a “massive effect” on organisms around the world, he said.

The continents formed a single mass, called Pangea, during the Permian era. At the time of the greatest volcanic activity, the area of ancient seabed that today forms the Buchanan Lake out-crop was “directly downwind” of the eruptions in present-day Siberia and “in the path of the destruction,” Sanei noted.

Mercury would have been deposited in the ocean via rain or snow, gradually accumulating in a marine environment that was also experiencing other severe chemical and climatic disturbances, he added.

The mercury would “get into the organic cycle, form toxic compounds, get into the food chain and actually kill living cells,” said Sanei.

Sanei, Grasby and study co-author Benoit Beauchamp collaborated on a paper last year that first identified coal ash deposits at Buchanan Lake as direct evidence of the volcanic catastrophe underlying the Great Dying.

And in November, a study in the journal Science showed how the mass extinction unfolded as part of a “runaway greenhouse event” marked by widespread wildfires, ocean acidification and soaring temperatures.

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com

“Too much pollution is concealed underground. In Israel, as in the rest of the world, there is widespread pollution resulting from the use of fuels and chemical pollutants. This is the same industry that for decades has been using natural resources that belong to the public as if they were its private property, without obeying regulations for the disposal of hazardous materials at licensed waste treatment sites.”

At the start of the conference, Israel Institute of Energy and Environment chairman Amir Makov said, “The cost of decontaminating soil will cost billions of shekels, which is an astronomic figure in terms of the Israeli economy. We need to decide whether the environmental benefits justify this financial burden. It is legitimate to ask whether it would be better to invest this money in the health system for those who need medications, instead of burying money underground.”

Erdan responded to these comments, saying, “I do not agree with the claim of the Institute and industrialists that the law is forcing them to take upon themselves an economic burden that doesn’t pay, and that the money should just be added to the medicine basket. I was taught that prevention is better than treatment after the fact. So instead of suggesting that the medicine basket be expanded, I suggest reducing the chance that we will need those drugs in the first place by decontaminating the soil. We prefer that fewer children be born with birth defects, and fewer people suffer from respiratory problems.”

Erdan continued, “Land is Israel’s most precious resource, and I am not referring to its economic value, because the economic price of land in Tel Aviv is completely different than prices in the periphery. The State of Israel, which covers 22,000 square kilometers, not including Judea and Samaria, is the smallest country in the western world. It is already the most densely populated western country in the OECD.

“We received a clear reminder of this in the summer, when the social protests began, and it is clear that when there is less land in supply, partly due to contamination, this affects how much land is available for sale. When supply increases, prices fall. The soil decontamination should be carried out for the sake of environmental justice as well as social justice. It shouldn’t be carried out only in Tel Aviv and central Israel, where real estate values make it more economically viable, but also in the periphery.”

While they flew in with highly ‘eco-unfriendly’ business class airplanes towards Durban’s King Shaka Airport, then taking a BMW to the conference, little actually happened over there.

The changes to the climate were discussed in great depth, however at the end of the day our distinguished politicians achieved in doing just about nothing. The decisions that were taken can be regarded as the best nothing that money can buy. There are other places however where nothing is also done to curb climate change, most notably in the South African parliament, the United Nations, the European Union and the US congress. Politicians and scientists elaborate the causes, the effects and the almost certain doom that mankind, but at the end of the day, a little bit more than nothing was done in the form of ‘regulations’ or ‘resolutions’.

So while it is common knowledge that human beings heat up this planet, how then can we change our actions to help it? Firstly lets look at how mankind contributes to global warming, yes climate change is a natural phenomenon – before anyone argues that. However we do contribute towards global warming at a tremendous rate.

First of all, there are a lot of human beings on this planet. While resources aren’t used up linearly, more human beings will ultimately use up more of the worlds resources. The second one is pollution, mainly from the hydration process of cement and those released by burning natural resources, they all release carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere that leads to the greenhouse effect. The last one of course are our politicians – who pretend to understand global warming better than our scientists. As a personal bias I do not have a lot of respect for politicians mainly because they only earn their living by taking from the population through taxation – a form of legalized plunder. However as it may be, against my own wishes, politicians have a big say in how to run our lives.

So how do we deal with this problem, lets look at the places on earth with the most pollution. Cities in places such as China, India, Russia and Peru tops the list and of course infamous Chernobyl comes to mind. Now why is this that these places are more polluted than others? The answer is simple, all these places are places where strict property rights are not enforced. In fact the pollution in Russia and Chernobyl is mainly because not so long ago, government controlled most of the industries over there – there were no property rights in the soviet union back then.

If you enforce strict property rights then corporations should be liable if their activity causes damage to your property, this will create a market incentive for them to produce cleaner and better products, also at cheaper prices. The initial stop would be to get government out of our industries – as they are the biggest polluters, privatize the industries. I bet Eskom would be much cheaper if it is privatized and most definitely more efficient.

It won’t help if we try and regulate these industries, because regulations do not work, they always have unintended consequences, either the same corporation that is suppose to regulate takes over these regulatory bodies (as is the case with ICASA and Telkom), or these regulations cause a big job loss and eventually leads to other forms of pollutions. Furthermore the money allocated from regulators never go towards helping the environment, this is evident after Europe passed laws to reduce its carbon output not so long ago, however they have not come up with good long term alternatives – the taxpayer however felt this burden heavily, no one really knows what happened to the tax money however.  Similar forms of miss-allocation of money occurred when Solyndra – an Obama ‘greener’ initiative went bankrupt earlier this year.

Lets look at some alternative resources, wind power simply doesn’t generate enough energy, wind turbines are very expensive and they also do use oil (anything that has a motor requires some sort of lubrication, therefore this will not stop pollution at all, it only shifts it from the coal station to the oil refinery.). There is also not enough sun to generate solar heating – those panels are very expensive.

How about nuclear power, it is cleaner than coal generated and what is best, South Africa is not a heavy earthquake prone country like Japan – so we can safely avoid having another Fukushima over here.  I’m afraid however that the same greenies who are against ‘coal’ stations, are against nuclear stations – talk about wanting your bread buttered on both ends. If we didn’t need electricity this would be a totally different argument, however humanity has to weigh up benefits and losses any every decision it takes. It is usually more efficient to go towards more technological alternatives. For example we went over from lead based fuel to unleaded fuel, we no longer have to burn wood every night since we have electricity. Technological improvements have moved us toward a cleaner environment – we just don’t realize it because there are more people on this planet today than 150 years ago. If we all still burned wood, then we wouldn’t have forests left by now.

The last solution is so simple, however I didn’t even see it being suggested once at the cop17 conference – plant more plants. Basic biology tells us that plants take in co2 and produce Oxygen. Wouldn’t it curb global warming a helluva lot if every city in the world looked like Johannesburg with almost 10 million trees? If there is anything we should do to fight global warming, just plant enough trees that were destroyed by deforestation. It is really simple instead of all the alternative nonsense that governments have tried – which obviously haven’t achieved anything more than ‘nothing’ by now.

According to Prof. Eyal Ben-Dor of TAU’s Department of Geography, his soil dipstick will help scientists, urban planners and farmers understand the changing health of the soil, as well as its agricultural potential and other associated concerns. “I was always attracted to drug development and diagnostics, which spurred the development of this OSD device,” he says. “It’s like a diagnostic device that measures soil health. Through a small hole in the surface of the earth, we can assess what lies beneath it.”

As climate change alters our planet radically, Prof. Ben-Dor explains, this dipstick could instantly tell geographers what parts of the U.S. are best – or worst – for farming. For authorities in California, it is already providing proof that organic farms are chemical-free, and it could be used as a whistle-blower to catch environmental industrial polluters.

The efficacy of the OSD was recently reported in the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

“Precision agriculture”

Today, there is no simple and inexpensive way to test for soil health in the field. Soil maps of individual states are only compiled every 10 or 20 years, and each one costs millions. One testing process even requires the use of a bulldozer, which dredges up large tracts of land to be sampled and analyzed in a laboratory.

Testing can be much simpler with Prof. Ben-Dor’s dipstick, which can be used by non-professionals. The thin catheter-like device is inserted into a small hole in the soil to give real-time, immediately accurate and reliable information on pollution and the all-round health of the soil. Analyzing chemical and physical properties, the dipstick outputs its data to a handheld device or computer. “To optimize production and save costs, farmers need to know if their crops are getting the right blend of minerals. This tool could permit them to pursue ‘precision agriculture,’” says Prof. Ben-Dor.

The OSD, which is expected to cost about $10,000 per unit per application, allows technicians to determine if the soil needs water or is contaminated. It also provides information about the condition of root zones where crops are growing. And the quality of information, the researchers explain, is identical to that provided by large government laboratories. Prof. Ben-Dor says that these dipsticks can also be remotely and wirelessly networked to airplanes and satellites, providing the most detailed, comprehensive and reliable soil map of the U.S.

Saving money and avoiding headaches

Soil maps are important tools of the trade for land developers, city planners, farmers and environmental prosecutors. Those employed today tend to be outdated, rendering them useless for many applications, and only about 30% of the planet has been mapped in this way. Soil maps for the Far East, the Arctic, and Africa, which can be more readily developed with Prof. Ben-Dor’s dipstick, will better tell scientists, researchers and government agencies how climate change and population growth are affecting our planet and its resources.

“Soil mapping is a national undertaking,” Prof. Ben-Dor observes. “It takes years and millions of dollars worth of manual labor and laboratory analysis, not to mention exhausting headaches with government authorities and ministries. For a fraction of that energy and money, and with a staff that has minimal training, the OSD could do the same job, and could continue doing it on a yearly, monthly, and possibly even a daily basis. The headaches would be gone, and we would finally get an accurate picture of the earth’s crust in these environmentally critical years.”

The OSD is currently in a prototype stage and is set for commercialization. If the right strategic partner is found, a new device could be on the shelves, and in the ground, within the year.

As you keep the lights ready this Diwali, perhaps it’s time to pause and reconsider your plans. For years, we’ve known that Diwali, as celebrated today, is not the easiest time for people with or without specific health challenges. However, we often overlook the suffering we inflict on other life forms.

Let there be less light

Govind Singh, director, Delhi Greens, an NGO, and PhD scholar, environmental department, University of Delhi, says, “Light pollution is an aspect of deepawali that often goes unnoticed.” For centuries, diyas (oil lamps) were the only lights set up on Diwali. These were also kinder to other living things.

Now, these range from candles to electric garlands of fairy lights (“tuni” lamps), strings of electric bulbs and even harsh spotlights. Many of these are strung on, or near, trees and plants.

Says Mumbai-based Deepa Katyal Engineer, veterinarian and trustee, People for Animals, an animal welfare non-profit, “Can you imagine how hot it must be getting for the tree and for the creatures living in it?” Harsh lights also disorient nocturnal creatures such as bats and owls. Daylight-loving birds, too, can’t sleep. The diurnal cycle of plants is disturbed too.

Don’t fan the flames

Both lighting and fireworks can damage plants. Ajay Mahajan, founder member of the Pune-based environmental organization Kalpavriksh, has seen many plants getting scorched during Diwali. “Plants register the presence or proximity to fire and they actually try to move away from the source of fire,” he says.

Since Diwali comes at the end of the peak growing season for most plants, leaf burn can set the plant back by months. Plus, if you peg fireworks to a tree, it injures the inner bark, a living part of the tree. “That’s where the nutrients and water move,” says Mahajan. “Stop treating trees like lamp posts or an inanimate trellis.” Fireworks performing aerial pyrotechnics can also singe insects, birds and arboreal animals such as squirrels.

Don’t raise a stink

Then there’s the more palpable air pollution. During Diwali, most of us are thankful for the plants, those great carbon sinks. They take in a lot of air pollution at a terrible price. Few new leaves sprout and existing leaves get caked with pollution. “I have noticed a black liquid drip from leaves around this time from pollution,” says Mahajan. “Unlike dust that just sits on the leaf, this sticks to it. It is also tougher to wash off.”

Fire crackers are made of potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal. When burnt, noxious fumes are released, including sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. These gases irritate the air passage of humans and animals. “If higher species like humans and dogs get respiratory allergies due to the pollution caused by crackers, do insects and birds stand a chance?” asks Dr Katyal Engineer.

In plants, these harmful chemicals are absorbed through the stomata (pores) and choke them. Vidya Subramanian, project manager, Delhi Greens, says, “Particulate matter like cement dust, magnesium dust and carbon soot on trees can inhibit the normal respiration and photosynthesis mechanisms within the leaf.” With the stomata choked, plants can’t breathe or feed. This can also lead to the death of the leaf tissue.

What doesn’t coat or choke the leaves falls on the soil or floats in the air. If there is rainfall soon after Diwali, this pollution may come down as acid rain, corroding plants, altering soil composition and upsetting water ecosystems. Says Mahajan, “We don’t much look at soil contamination, although it is much more difficult to rectify than air or water pollution.” If animals ingest the chemicals in fire crackers, these poison them.

Too big a bang

Animals, especially birds, are affected more than humans by the noise pollution. Says Dr Katyal Engineer: “The average animal has better hearing than humans. Dogs can hear seven times louder than humans. So if the fire cracker burst during Diwali deafens you, you can imagine its effect on them.” Often, they flee, which is why it’s common for pets to get lost during Diwali.

All in all, your Diwali celebration makes for a less than bright outlook for the neighbourhood’s flora and fauna.

This form of pollution dates back to antiquity, but widespread industrial pollution accelerated rapidly in the 1800s, with the start of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution mechanized means of production, allowing for a much greater volume of production, and generating a corresponding increase in pollution. The problem was compounded by the use of fuels like coal, which is notoriously unclean, and a poor understanding of the causes and consequences of pollution.

Causes of Industrial Pollution

The primary causes of industrial pollution are as follows
a) Prevalence of outdated- inefficient technologies that generate a large amount of waste
b) Large unplanned industrial conglomeration that have encroached upon and severely polluted their environs
c) The existence of large number of small scale industries that escape land use and some time even environmental regulations
d) Poor enforcement of Pollution control laws and
e) Lack of resources for implementing Pollution Control programmes

Effects of Industrial Pollution

Pollutants given off by various industries and factories are often considered to be one of the prime factors contributing to air, water and soil pollution. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it has been estimated that industrial pollution is responsible for almost 50 percent of the pollution present in the United States. There are various wide-ranging effects, as well as serious consequences, of industrial pollution on the ecological balance of the atmosphere.
a) Global Warming
b) Air Pollution
c) Water Pollution
d) Soil Pollution

Solutions of Industrial Pollution

Cleaner production is one of the most promising win-win solutions to deal with industrial pollution. It involves a wide range of market-based practices from pollution prevention, environmental management systems, and waste minimization, to clean technology.

Cleaner production aims to use natural resources more efficiently, minimize waste, and reduce pollution and risks to human health. In practice, cleaner production modifies manufacturing processes to reduce inefficiencies to cut back on waste and discharge, leading to better product quality and cheaper products.

In an executive order signed, Obama required all agencies to do what he wants companies operating power plants, running refineries and making automobiles to do: reduce heat-trapping gases.

Each federal agency will have to set the first targets for reducing climate-altering pollution from its buildings, fleets and workers’ commutes.

The agencies will have 90 days to tell the White House how they plan to measure and reduce greenhouse gases from buildings and vehicles by 2020. Targets for employees’ commutes and travel will be due June 2010.

“As the largest consumer of energy in the U.S. economy, the federal government can and should lead by example when it comes to creating innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Obama said in a statement.

The government mandate comes as the Obama administration takes steps to require automakers and large industrial facilities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It is also a way for the White House to show much-needed progress toward reducing greenhouse gases before more than 180 nations meet in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a new international treaty to slow global warming.

The president wants Congress to pass a bill setting mandatory limits, but its passage is unlikely in the Senate before the Copenhagen negotiations begin. The Senate bill would require refineries, factories and power plants to reduce greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020 and roughly 80 percent by mid-century.

It was unclear how deep the targets would be for the federal government, or how much of a dent it would make in total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The order also compels agencies to curb petroleum use, conserve water and curtail waste — extending and expanding on an executive order issued by former President George W. Bush in January 2007 that became law earlier this year.

Bush’s order, unlike Obama’s, did not require agencies to set emissions targets.

Now a study by the Punjab University says mobile phones can cause crop damage too.

A recent study conducted by researchers at the Department of Environment and Vocational Studies, Punjab University, kicked up a fair amount of dust when it found that mobile phone radiation inhibits mung bean root growth by inducing oxidative stress.

What prompted the research team to search off the beaten path? A new phenomenon in environmental pollution — unnatural amount of electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere.

According to the researchers, the tremendous increase in the use of cell phones has “significantly added to the rapidly increasing EMF smog, an unprecedented type of pollution consisting of radiation in the environment.” The effects of the smog on humans and the eco system are still being studied.

They investigated whether electromagnetic radiation from cell phones inhibit the growth of mung bean. “Our results showed that cell phone radiation significantly inhibited the germination and radical and plumule growths in mung bean in a time-dependant manner,’’ the researchers said.

Does this mean that by chattering away on your cell phone you are damaging some farmer’s crop or plants in your neighborhood? Hold your horses.

Experts recommend that before jumping into such a sweeping generalization about the real world scenario, much more research needs to be done.

“The seeds were kept between two cell phones at a distance of about 8 cm away. Clearly, any effect that is found cannot be generalised to large distances and longer exposure times,” an evolutionary ecologist and environment conservationist who did not wish to be named, as the domain is a different one.

Nitric oxide, a gas well known to scientists for its myriad functions, has proven challenging to measure accurately outside the laboratory. A team of Princeton and Rice University researchers has demonstrated a new method of identifying the gas using lasers and sensors that are inexpensive, compact and highly sensitive. Such a portable device, suitable for large-scale deployment, could be of great value to atmospheric science, pollution control, biology and medicine.

Nitric oxide is so potent that a few molecules of it per billion, or even trillion, molecules of air promote smog, acid rain and depletion of the ozone layer. Similarly tiny amounts in a patient’s breath could help diagnose asthma and other disorders.

The researchers believe their device could find uses ranging from the study and control of car and truck emissions to monitoring human exposure to pollutants in urban and industrial environments. For medical uses the device is particularly attractive because the results are not corrupted by water vapor, which is present in breath samples. Testing for nitric oxide in a patient’s breath, for example, could reveal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and inflammation.

“The sensor we’ve developed is much more accurate and sensitive than existing systems, yet is far more compact and portable,” said Gerard Wysocki, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Princeton.

Wysocki is a co-leader of a team that developed the system and conducted preliminary tests during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The team included Rice researchers Frank Tittel and 1996 Nobel laureate Robert Curl, both pioneers in the field of molecular detection using lasers, as well as Rafa? Lewicki and James Doty III, also of Rice. The team published its results in the Aug. 4 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With improvements made after the Beijing test, the system could be made into a portable, shoe-box-sized device ideally suited for mass deployment in large-scale unattended sensor networks for global, real-time, continuous monitoring of nitric oxide and other gases present in trace amounts.

Existing systems to detect nitric oxide and other trace gases have a variety of drawbacks. Some, such as carbon monoxide sensors for homes, are compact and inexpensive, but not very sensitive. These sensors can at best detect gases at parts-per-million concentrations — they can’t handle the parts-per-billion level, let alone the parts-per-trillion level that some applications require. High-end systems, such as mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs, are much more sensitive, but are slow, bulky, complicated and expensive — and impractical for use outside of a lab.

Of intermediate sensitivity are optical systems that pass a laser beam through a gas sample and detect whether some of the laser light is absorbed by the gas sample. A weakness of this method is that the amount of absorption is very small compared to the overall amount of laser light, so the signal is hard to detect. Further, conventional optical sensors tend to be bulky, use large amounts of the sample, and require frequent operator intervention.

The new system developed by Princeton and Rice researchers uses optical sensing as well, but produces a much stronger signal. In their setup, the researchers passed the laser light through polarizing filters that block all light unless nitric oxide is present. Roughly speaking, the more nitric oxide, the more light makes it through the filters, Wysocki said. “There’s no background signal to worry about.”

Nitric oxide detectors have used similar methods before, but until now have been hampered by their reliance on large laser sources designed for laboratory use, he said. The new system, in contrast, uses a quantum cascade laser, a state-of-the-art device ideally suited for this sensing technique. This makes it possible to reliably detect the gas at a concentration of a few parts-per-billion. The device is so precise it can distinguish between different isotopes of nitrogen and oxygen in the nitric oxide molecules.

“It’s remarkable we have that kind of sensitivity,” said Curl, who laid the groundwork for the detection technique in a paper he co-wrote with Tittel nearly 30 years ago.

“A portable sensor that can continuously measure nitric oxide with such high sensitivity is a real breakthrough,” said Tittel.

Unlike other systems that need several liters of the sample gas, the new sensor needs only a few milliliters of it, inside a container just about 16 inches long and a half inch in diameter. This frugality is particularly important in delicate biological applications such as cell-culture studies, said Wysocki. Also important, the new system can run much longer without intervention — several hours compared to just a few minutes for even the best existing ones — which will allow for long-term unattended operation.

Princeton researchers are working on various enhancements to the technology, further shrinking the size of the device and exploring an even more sensitive method of analysis called coherent detection. “This technique could help us achieve parts-per-trillion sensitivity,” Wysocki said.