Cases of food poisoning and contamination in recent years have highlighted the threat that pesticides and chemicals pose to public health and the environment. Researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) have devised a rapid and cost-efficient chemosensing analysis method to test medicines and detect pesticides in foods, pollutants in water, and toxins in fish. Chemosensing is a chemical-detection method in which targeted analytes are detected by molecular-level sensors known as chemosensors. Application of the technique has been limited by high costs, but CityU researchers overcame technical barriers with molecular imprinting technology. The technology, known as template-directed polymerization, costs one-tenth that of current testing techniques and provides results within one minute. The technology is easy to manage, and the materials are small and portable.
Molecularly imprinted polymer materials can be used in commercial applications to detect numerous chemicals, including harmful pesticides in agricultural products, such as DDT; contaminants in drinking water, such as HCH; toxins in seafood, such as histamine; leaked poisonous gas; and Tributyltin (TBT), a harmful substance in marine coatings that can damage the auditory systems of dolphins. CityU’s Knowledge Transfer Office is applying for a patent on the technology.
Source: Nano Patents and Innovations