Lead is a known toxic substance and if ingested in excess, it will cause adverse effects to human health, such as child developmental delay, permanent intellectual disability and kidney damage. In recent years, the reported cases of an excessive level of lead in tap water at housing estates or schools and excess lead in children's bloodstream have increased substantially. Therefore, an effective method for measuring lead level attracts great interest.
The research teams led by Dr Ren Kangning and Dr Edmond Ma from the Department of Chemistry developed a portable DNA-based device for on-site lead testing of drinking water. It is a portable lead ion meter and users just simply add the sample of a water droplet to a test strip and insert the strip to the device for the result. Compare with conventional methods of lead detection which is labour intensive, time-consuming and complicated, the newly invented device provides a 10-min on-site lead detection method which is very simple and effective. The test result can be notified by using the mobile app on a smartphone. Therefore, the device can be used to monitor the safety of drinking water by consumers themselves without special technical training. It can also be used for routine monitoring in the industry after wastewater treatment, groundwater and soil test in the agricultural field.
The invention was awarded a gold medal and an Award of Excellence from Romania at the 46th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva.
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HKBU scholars Invent Award-winning Portable Device for Lead Contamination in Water
HKBU scholars Invent Award-winning Portable Device for Lead Contamination in Water
