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Scientists develop an affordable sensor for lead contamination
A new system could enable simple, low-cost detectors for monitoring water for lead contamination, and potentially other heavy metals as well.
The World Health Organization estimates that 240 million people worldwide are exposed to drinking water that contains unsafe amounts of toxic lead, which can affect brain development in children, cause birth defects, and produce a variety of neurological, cardiac, and other damaging effects. “It’s an unaddressed public health crisis that leads to over 1 million deaths annually,” says Jia Xu Brian Sia, an MIT postdoc and the senior author of the paper describing the new technology. The new system, which could be ready for commercial deployment within two or three years, could detect lead concentrations as low as 1 part per billion, with high accuracy, using a simple chip-based detector housed in a handheld device.
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