Air Quality Monitoring with LIMS

Why is it important?

Air quality can affect every individual and could manifest in either short term or/and long term illnesses. This topic garners more significance in and around industrial neighbourhoods to monitor particulate matter that is part of air.

Because of the health concerns there are effective compliance regulations defined by local environmental government bodies for maintaining air quality.  It is very important to understand air quality standards and objectives to manage key air pollutants and how they could affect health of humans and as well as the environment. The compliance requirements should be followed by industrial establishment to make sure the pollutants are actively monitored and are within limits.

How should it be implemented?

Monitoring of air within industrial premises becomes important based on the processes and the manufactured goods. The air sampling needs to be monitored across the organisation - inside and outside to make sure there are enough samples collected to make it effective. As we all know air quality is not same everywhere ... it gets bad within enclosed spaces based on the manufacturing processes and the emissions. It is very important to monitor 24x7 to be able to understand and mitigate the effects if certain hours of the day the quality goes down.

Monitoring and Sample Collection

There are multiple ways of collecting air samples:

• Automated Systems
• Passive Diffusion systems

We will focus on passive diffusive systems because of couple of reasons - they are inexpensive and can be placed across wide area. They are placed in areas where there is good sample of air passes through the material. Typical sample collection happens with high volume samplers and respirable dust samplers. The filter paper that is used as part of sampling can be used to determine metals, sulphate and nitrate levels.

Specifications

This is very important aspect of implementing effective air quality monitoring within industrial premises. The QA teams actively interact with governmental agencies to specify the limits and the processes that need to be followed while performing analysis. These specifications can be reviewed yearly or other timelines based on internal policies or governmental regulations.

LIMS helps in maintaining the specifications and Standard Operating Procedures on a central server and facilitates the access during analysis and is available for review across organisation.  These specifications also would contain details on Out Of Specification (OOS) and Out Of Trend (OOT).

Typical pollutants to look for:

• Sulfur Dioxide
• Carbon Monoxide
• Nitrogen Dioxide
• Metal traces
• Others

Analysis

The collected samples are then passed to Quality Control labs either On-Premise or 3rd party for determine the particulates of air to pro-actively come up with plans to combat the particulate matter that could be hazardous.

Sample Analysis WorkFlow:

1. Filter cassette samples are retrieved
2. Filter paper is removed from Filter Cassette
3. Filter paper is digested with acid to prepare liquid samples
4. Sample Request is raised on LIMS for analysis
5. QC team transfers the samples to AAS for getting the particulate matter quantities
6. Data from AAS is retrieved into LIMS
7. LIMS automates calculations and provides final results of the analysis to the teams

LIMS forms an integral part of analysis in alerting analysts of the samples that are waiting to be analysed and the required tests that need to be performed based on the defined specifications. Provides the list of consumables/reagents with the quantities needed while performing analysis. There could be a need to use AAS (Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer) to collect details of particulate matter that are part of air sample. LIMS will make sure the instrument has proper calibration records and automate the data transfer from AAS to minimize data entry errors.

There are few calculations that need to be performed as part of final reporting for internal and external agencies. From sample receipt to report generation can be automated with LIMS deployment.

Usually the government agencies would require analysis reports that explain trends of air sample particulates. These reports need to be constantly monitored by organizations to implement proper mechanisms to improve air quality within and outside organization premises.

What can be done to improve Air Quality?

Actively monitoring air quality with proper analysis and making pro-active efforts is need of the hour. Within industrial establishments:

• by continually bringing down affecting effluents or any other pollutants that could decrease air quality
• By increasing green cover by planting trees which would be very useful in curbing harmful effects of offending pollutants
• Investing in newer technologies as part of production processes and cutting down on fossil fuel consumption