NANOWATCHER SIGNED

Project "NANOWATCHER" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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 Project objective

NanoWatcher is a low-cost and highly accurate innovative instrument, IPR protected, to detect and quantify nanomaterials in air to be used by non-specialised staff. Exposure to nanomaterials (NMs) (particles below 100 nm) leads to up to 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide because they are more toxic than the same material conventionally sized, able to penetrate the lungs and increase the risk of explosion in industrial settings. Moreover, 6 million workers will potentially be exposed to nanoparticles (NPs) by 2020. Current instruments to detect and quantify NPs have significant limitations in detecting polydisperse airborne NPs at industrial facilities, measure unspecific size fractions for human health (<450 nm), are costly (>€12,000), bench-top (>10kg), non-remote operated and use solvent-based working fluids. In addition, they require highly skilled professionals for data interpretation. Nanowatcher is the very first particle counter designed specifically for NM exposure assessment with selective cut-off diameters of 300 and 450 nm, 1-second resolution, and operated with smart data acquisition software for data interpretation by non-expert users. The main benefits of our solution include: portable (<2kg), remote sensing, real-time exposure analysis, stand-alone continuous operation (120h) for long-term exposure studies, water as its working fluid, low maintenance (>18 months), and low price (€6,000). Our targets are occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals working in: (i) Companies manufacturing NMs or nano-enabled products (7,706 in the EU); (ii) Companies exposed to hazardous fine dust particles (>60,000 in the EU); and (iii) External OHS services (~8,500 in the EU). We estimate that the successful implementation of the NanoWatcher project will allow us to steadily reach, after 5 years of commercialisation, €26.7 M in turnover, 29 new direct jobs, and a Return on Investment (ROI) of €4.16 per euro invested.