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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