Grants and Fellowships | 2014

35 Small Research Grants Distributed Low Cost Mobile and Wireless Sensor Network for Air Quality Monitoring with Applications to Traffic Related Urban Air Pollution Development and application of sensor networks are currently an active research area due to their immense potential as personal monitoring devices. The project’s goals were to examine the use of sensor networks for monitoring traffic related urban air quality. To accomplish this, we deployed a small (5 nodes) sensor network and tested its performance and limitations at the individual node and the network levels. We found that the sensors are seriously constrained by their power supply and that unlike stationary measurement sensor node mobility increased the complexity of data collection and analysis (e.g. GPS location recording depleted the node batteries very fast). Sensor measurements were compared against standard air quality monitoring data as well as against data from neighboring nodes, to examine the measurements accuracy and repeatability. The temporal, spatial, inter-nodal and inter-pollutant behavior of the sensors was as expected according to theoretical considerations. Whereas sensor performance was promising, lack of sensitivity, drift and interference of varying environmental stressors need careful consideration. David Broday 1 1. Technion - Israel Institute of Technology 2010-2012 Phthalate Concentration in Child Use and Care Articles: Preliminary Screening of the Israeli Market Numerous toxicological studies have proven the harmful influence of phthalates and their role as endocrine disrupting compounds in humans and mammals. Having in mind the dangerous influence of phthalate consumption even at trace levels, European directive 2005/84/EC restricted the content of six phthalates in toys and childcare articles. The aim of this research was to develop the analytical tools for the detection of banned phthalates in plastics and to provide the results of a preliminary analytical screening of the Israeli market in terms of the possible health risk. The preliminary analytical screening of the Israeli market revealed that a high percentage of the toys did not comply with European Directive and contained very high concentrations of the banned plasticizers. After receiving the results of the preliminary Israeli market screening of phthalate concentrations in toys, the Commissioner of Standardization of Israel turned to the Standards Institution of Israel (SII) to request a change in the standard for toys and childcare articles that will require limited concentrations of phthalates in this group of products. Jenny Gun 1 | Ovadia Lev 1 1. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2010-2011