#CEO of Airthings

[truthshield]

IIT Bombay IIT Kanpur develop new Air Purification technology that deactivates COVID-19 virus in 1 minute

IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur develop new Air Purification technology Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay have jointly developed a new “Anti-Microbial Air Purification Technology”. This technology will be effective against COVID-19 virus along with the air pollutants. The technology has been tested at CSIR-IMTECH and has proven to be able to deactivate corona virus with an efficacy of 99.9% within just 1 minute. This new Air purification technology is developed by AiRTH, a startup incubated at the Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC), IIT Kanpur. As the new technology has received the CSIR-IMTECH validation, the technology can be termed pioneering in its efforts to combat COVID. As per the official statement by IIT Kanour, Ravi Kaushik, CEO and Founder of AiRTH realized the limitations in the existing purification technologies, while he was pursuing his Masters in Environmental Engineering at IIT Bombay. With guidance and support from Professor Amitabha Bandopadhyay, Professor-in-charge of the Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre, IIT Kanpur, AiRTH was incubated. The Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, played a crucial role in testing the prototypes, with validation from trusted and respected laboratories of India like CSIR-NPL, CSIR-CDRI, amongst others. AiRTH Anti Microbial Air Purifiers are already in use in hospitals, protecting immuno-compromised cancer patients at fatal risk even from a common cold. AiRTH’s technology has helped Corporates, both Private and Government by ensuring business continuity and encouraging their employees to return to clean air offices. The technology developed by AiRTH exemplifies the vision of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Made in India’ initiative. The relatively novel technology from AiRTH is different from the other similar air purifiers in the market. Earlier generation of air purifiers that floods the market, works on the mechanism of capturing particles; however continuous over-usage of the filter medium leads to the filter itself becoming a breeding ground for germs, like a petri dish. The new technology from AiRTH makes sure that the germs are deactivated due to its plant-based coating on the filters, UV irradiations and OH (Hydroxyl) radicals. https://ift.tt/45eH2Lk https://ift.tt/CMK3TA7

[newsmatters]

Interiors from a virus-free and pollution-free vantage

Interiors from a virus-free and pollution-free vantage

New Delhi: Among the numerous challenges that businesses and organisations are facing in the post-COVID-19 world, the challenge of protecting employees and customers is the supreme concern, says Ravi Kaushik, CEO at AiRTH which is currently focusing on removal of microbial contaminants from the air to safeguard people against airborne disease transmission. The IIT-Bombay alumnus further writes:…

[datawiresolutions]

Monitor the Air Quality in Your House Though Airthings Online Dashboard

When the air quality of your home is under par, allergies can flare up, wood flooring can warp, and your health and well-being can be compromised. There are a variety of sensors available that can measure the air for pollutants and extreme temperature and humidity levels, but few incorporate the ability to detect radon—except for the Wave from Airthings. The sensor also measures temperature and humidity levels, and notifies you of problems by sounding an alert. You can also view the conditions via a mobile app.

To make air quality even easier, Airthings recently launched Airthings Dashboard, an online platform that provides quick access to view, customize, and analyze sensor data. The Dashboard provides detailed sensor information so you can analyze historical data, monitor and compare multiple room and devices, and identify ways to optimize ventilation and healthy indoor air. You can create “tiles” that illustrate sensor data; Device Tiles summarize data from all sensors, while Sensors Tiles provide a graph of levels over time for each sensor.

As a perk, the Wave also features IFTTT to provide third-party product integrations. With an IFTTT connected to Wave, you can set the device to turn Philips Hue lights red when radon levels or high or to even turn on a fan.

Related: 10 Ways IFTTT Can Help Manage Your House

“Anything we can do to help people easily monitor and understand radon, we will do,” says Oyvind Birkenes, CEO of Airthings. “The more people that are monitoring the gas, the more lives we are saving since radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers in the Unites States.” You can access simple recipes for the Airthings Wave to follow. Both the IFTTT integration and Dashboard are free and will pair with all future Airthings products.

“Our IFTTT ecosystem integration enables devices from different vendors to talk to each other to make our homes smarter and healthier,” says Oyvind Birkenes, CEO of Airthings.

The Wave retails for $199.

  The post Monitor the Air Quality in Your House Though Airthings Online Dashboard appeared first on Electronic House.

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[ntrending]

Testing your tap water for contamination is way easier than you think

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/testing-your-tap-water-for-contamination-is-way-easier-than-you-think/

Testing your tap water for contamination is way easier than you think

Do you trust that your drinking water is safe? Recent surveys suggest that nearly half of Americans are unsure. In the wake of environmental tragedies like the Flint water crisis, it’s not shocking that many citizens feel this way. But while the technology exists to take testing into ones own hands, monitoring air and water quality is still generally considered the responsibility of a municipality, not an individual homeowner. That is, of course, as it should be. Still—if official promises of safety can’t always be trusted, can at-home products make up for government shortcomings?

Testing your home for contaminants can seem daunting. Traditional water testing can be expensive, and the reports hard to understand. The drinking kits that we can pick up at the store only test for a handful of things, and are often not that accurate. Earlier this summer, a company called Simplewater launched a Kickstarter for Tap Score straight into that void.

John Pujol didn’t set out to create a smart water test. He and his colleagues were originally working on a low-cost method for removing arsenic from small water systems in places like Bangladesh and India. But then his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Because the condition doesn’t run in her family, her doctor suggested looking at possible environmental risk factors, including a contaminated water supply. While Alzheimer’s doesn’t have a single known cause, contaminants like heavy metals and pesticides—which can turn up in water—are believed to play a role in those cases not attributable to genetic factors. Pujol’s projects had left him well-connected to folks with water testing labs, so he sampled his family’s well.

The results were troubling.

“We found all sorts of weird things in the water—water that she had been drinking for 20 or 30 years,” says Pujol.

After that, things just clicked. The tests that currently exist tend to be black and white, geared more towards chemistry experts than your average concerned homeowner. Pujol saw the need for something more user-friendly.

“There’s definitely a need for people to be testing that water, because it has long term implications,” says Pujol. “If people could understand the results, that would make this public health issue more personal for people.”

We tried Tap Score, along with a couple of other options, to see how easy it is to test for lead at home. You can see our results here.

DIY Safety?

Tap Score isn’t the only the only company helping customers bypass traditional gatekeepers, allowing them to better measure whether or not their immediate environment might be harming their health.

AirThings Wave is a radon gas detector designed for the home. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that comes from the breakdown of uranium. It’s found in a lot of rock formations around the country, over which we sometimes build our homes. When radon gas builds up in your house, it can cause lung cancer. There are ways of removing the gas and greatly lowering the risk of falling ill, but first a homeowner has to know that radon is there. Radon, after all, is a clear, odorless gas.

“If you look at the stats, more than six times as many people died from radon as from home fires or carbon monoxide poisoning combined,” says Øyvind Birkenes, the CEO of AirThings. While residential fires kill around 2,500 people per year, and carbon monoxide takes 430 lives, exposure to radon kills 21,000 with lung cancer, with roughly 2,900 of those cases occurring among people who have never smoked. The number is even more stark considering that, while basically everyone is susceptible to house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning, radon exposure in this country is limited to the radon belt.

“Everyone has home fire detectors and carbon monoxide detectors,” adds Birkenes. “But measuring radon is not something that’s very common.”

The traditional way of measuring radon is buying test kits that are essentially bags of charcoal. You open them up in the home you’re testing for anywhere from 24 hours to a couple of weeks, and then mail them to a lab. The problem with this approach, says Birkenes, “is that radon levels fluctuates significantly. When you do a short-term test, you don’t know if you’ve hit a low period or a high period. Since it’s the long-term exposure to radon that’s dangerous, what you really need to do is measure radon over the long term.”

Which is what AirThings does, using a digital instrument to measure radon levels 24/7 and notifying users via a smartphone app if levels are too high over a certain period. You can also move AirThings Wave around your home, which matters because radon generally concentrates on lower floors. So, your basement might have really high radon levels, but your attic might not. You won’t know for sure unless you test both spaces, which usually means multiple bags of charcoal sent in for separate tests.

The University of Michigan’s Mark Burns has also been working towards this sort of constant monitoring, but for lead. He’s developed an electronic sensor that fits onto drinking water taps, and can alert residents to the presence of lead within nine days.

“My vision is that you would have it at the tap in your kitchen, where you drank water, and maybe in the bathroom,” says Burns. “If the water in the kitchen was fine but that the bathroom wasn’t good, you’d know maybe that there was a lead line in there, or maybe somebody used lead solder when they should have used non-lead solder in one of the pipe connections or something like that.”

Burns believes that advances in electronics are to thank for this recent surge in at-home test options, along with the ability to share, store, and retrieve information brought to us by the internet. And they might be worth a look even if you don’t live in deep distrust of your municipal services.

“Many of these measurements would be almost impossible for a city or town to do, because they’d have to test people’s water almost daily. It’s just not practical to do that,” Burns says. “But the individual consumer now has the power to do that to do it for themselves.”

Written By Kendra Pierre-Louis

[datawiresolutions]

New Sensor Detects and Warns of Radon Gas in Your Home

Radon exposure claims the lives of approximately 21,000 Americans each year, which is more than six times the number of deaths attributed annually to house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning combined. The dangerous gas is present in every home nationwide to varying degrees based on climate, ventilation levels, time of year and a variety of other factors.

The most common type of radon test kit used today is a charcoal canister, which only provides a short-term measurement (days) and requires being sent to a lab for analysis.

A new sensor developed by Airthings lets you know the second radon gas in your home reaches unhealthy levels. The $199 Wave sends alerts to your smartphone or tablet automatically so you can react to and remedy the problem immediately.

The Airthings Wave employs digital sensors and smart home technology for a unique combination of real-time radon levels and long-term measurement. When Wave detects high radon levels for a period of time exceeding national guidelines (48 hours in the U.S.), it sends a notification and offers recommendations on how to reduce radon levels.

  “Every home should have a radon detector, and it’s our mission at Airthings to make that happen,” says Oyvind Birkenes, Airthings CEO. “We’re seeing increased attention to radon exposure thanks to initiatives from the EPA, WHO and legislation at the state level. These are encouraging developments that pave the way for Wave’s progressive technology to provide consumers with invaluable information and peace of mind that their homes are healthy for themselves and their families.”

Even if you don’t use the smartphone app, you can still gauge the quality of the indoor air by waving a hand in front of the sensor, which looks like a smoke detector. A wave of a hand activates a visual indicator light: green means good, yellow is a warning, and red means danger.

In addition to color-coded visual cues, Wave will emit an audio alert when the device detects high radon levels or low battery.

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