The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency honored Darien researcher Dot Kelly and two of her colleagues a $100,000 award for developing an idea for clothing gauging exposure to pollution.
Kelly, Gabrielle Dockterman of Massachusetts and David Kuller of Italy won the EPA’s My Air, My Health Challenge to develop a small, low-cost sensor to understand the impact of air pollution on health. The National Institutes of Health co-sponsored the program.
The researchers proposed creating comfortable clothing that would calculate on a per-breath basis the amount of pollution inhaled. This would lead to the quantity of pollution inside the lungs.
To the researchers” knowledge, this is the first low-cost device that measures breath. It also has applications for people with asthma, sleep apnea, and sudden infant death syndrome.
The trio is working on a business plan and finding partners to bring the idea to the market.
