FLITAXE| A One Health Approach
Awards & Nominations
FLITAXE has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
A One Health Approach
Sustainable breeze
Summary
Air pollution has been recognized as the largest global environmental health risk, causing an estimated seven million deaths across the globe annually according to the World Health Organization. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also the polluting agent of air. Our idea is to remove polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons through the air capture process.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Introduction:
At present environmental pollution is the main concern of scientists. Air pollution is the main one. Air pollution is the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. Scientists selected some gases which are main reason for air pollution. They are CO2, CO, SO2 , NOx , CFC, PAH etc. and dust which are main reason for air pollution. Now PAH becoming a headache for mankind. So, we have made our project on PAH.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH):
It is a hydrocarbon. It is a chemical compound containing only carbon and hydrogen that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The group is a major subset of the aromatic hydrocarbons. The simplest of such chemicals are naphthalene, having two aromatic rings, and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. The terms polyaromatic hydrocarbon or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbonare also used for this concept. PAHs are uncharged, non-polar molecules, with distinctive properties due in part to the delocalized electrons in their the aromatic ring.
PAHs are produced as byproducts during fuel burning or carbon-containing organic substances and found in oil, coal and tar deposit .Natural emissions including volcano eruptions and forest fires can also emit these compounds
Risks of PAHs in human health:
PAHs compounds mainly enter the body through
1. Inhalation of polluted air, smoking or breathing cigarette, vehicle exhaust, fumes from asphalt, emissions from fossil fuels, fires and volcanos.
2. Ingestion, eating grilled charred, charcoal boiled or contaminated meats or foods.
3. Skin contact, touching food that contains PAHs.
PAHs compounds have been linked to eye and lung irritation, blood and liver issues and even cancer. They have also a bad effect on pregnant women.
The United States and China have linked in utero exposure to PAHs through air pollution or parental occupational exposure with poor fatal growth, reduced immune functions and poorer neurological development including lower IQ.
Some of experimental research done in New York by repeat air and urine sample. The report of work is Multiple NYC legislative regulations targeting traffic-related air pollution may have led to decreases in PAH nonvolatile and BC, especially in the non-heating season. Despite the overall decrease in pyrene over the 2001–2012 periods, a rise in pyrene levels in recent years, that was particularly evident for measures collected during the heating season, and 2-naphthol, indicates the contribution of heating oil combustion and other indoor sources to air borne pyrene and urinary 2-naphthol. Another research work also got a shocking news and that is Biomarkers of PAHs exposure were inversely associated with lung function and decrease of ph of EBC as a marker of airway inflammation in Mexican school children.
How We Developed This Project
Identification and determination of PAHs in environmental samples is an important topic because of their adverse effects on humans and on soil organisms and plants, even at low concentrations of these compounds. preliminary separation and pre-concentration of these compounds is usually required. Current methods for the sample preparation and pre-concentration, in terms of extracting phase can be subdivided into liquid phase based micro extraction and solid-phase based micro extraction. But those have some bottlenecks, one has sample loading problem and other has time consuming issue.
So Nanoscale carbon-based materials are used as solid sorbent materials due to their ultrahigh surface area and high chemical stability. We use their magnetic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4/Fe3O4) nanocomposite which have attracted much attention in pre concentration of target analytes from different real samples, due to their gentle separation and non-destructive effects on biological analytes. As a main advantage, target analytes captured to them can be easily and selectively removed from the sample with an external magnet.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are produced as byproducts during fuel burning or carbon-containing organic substances and found in oil, coal and tar deposit, combustion in coke ovens, diesel engines and wood-burning stoves, and are present in the atmosphere in particulate form. Natural emissions including volcano eruptions and forest fires can also emit these compounds. So for showing fire conditions in the USA and Asian we use the NASA earth observatory data image file.
To showing the U.S. people cancer risk because of toxic air substances we used U.S. centers for disease control detection data.
Project Demo
https://youtu.be/BHZ5jnk5Kzs
Solution for removing PAHs from the air:
We use their magnetic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4/Fe3O4) nanocomposite which have attracted much attention in pre concentration of target analytes from different real samples, due to their gentle separation and non-destructive effects on biological analytes. As a main advantage, target analytes captured to them can be easily and selectively removed from the sample with an external magnet. In our air capture machine sample, a suction fan will be used to input the air. A filter will be placed there to separate dust from macro particle. Then air will go for next step where magnetic graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4/Fe3O4) nanocomposite will be kept. It will capture PAH and an exhausting fan will exhaust fresh air.
Our future target:
In future, we will try to mitigate other harmful polluting particles from air through our idea and try to find the best way to solve this kind of problems. We will study how to use or recycle these pollutants in a proper way for our future with no emission.
Project Code
Data & Resources
Resources:
- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43419/fires-in-southeast-asia
- https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147293/a-meeting-of-smoke-and-storms
- https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/DataExplorer/#/
- https://www.who.int/
- https://www.cdc.gov/
- Air-assisted dispersive micro extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons using a magnetic graphitic carbon nitride nanocomposite https://www.springer.com/