Inspired by two recent projects, Emissions Analytics is pleased to announce its support for the launch of a new service to empower citizens in testing their air and water: WHATSINMY?.
This will put the power of advanced laboratory techniques into the hands of any citizen interested in, or concerned about, their quality of their water or air.
The aquatic inspiration for this was a project led by Earthwatch Europe that sent people out around the south east of England to take samples of river water. Emissions Analytics’ contribution was in identifying the hallmark chemicals of tyre wear emissions. Chemicals from styrene to 1,4-Benzenediol, 2,6-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl) were identified in road run-off flowing into rivers, and we were able to identify that they are likely to have originated from tyres. This was made possible by Emissions Analytics’ database of 500 chemically reverse-engineered tyres currently on the market.
The work has already been expanded as part of Earthwatch’s Great UK WaterBlitz programme, and you can see the very latest results here. The rivers of the Evenlode catchment had 995 unique organic chemicals, 592 of which appear in Emissions Analytics’ tyre chemicals database. Of those, 41 are mentioned in academic literature as coming from tyres, but a further 11 were in all of the river samples and we are confident are in tyres, but have not yet been studied in the literature.
On the other side of the Atlantic, late 2024 also saw the launch of major new project testing air quality samples, this time in Southern California for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Emissions Analytics has been commissioned to run a multi-year project testing hundreds of air samples. Again, the main aim is to identify chemicals originating from tyres, again harnessing our tyre reference database.
Both these pieces of work involved the sophisticated laboratory equipment run by Emissions Analytics called two-dimensional gas chromatography and time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Sounds a bit baffling, but this is a specialist piece of kit that allows you to take a sample and separate out all the organic compounds in the mixture, identify them and quantify the amount one by one. Of the hundreds compounds we find in a sample, each can have radically different effects, from being harmless to highly toxic.
This all led to the inspiration for WHATSINMY?. Why not put this power into the hands of citizens, at a time when there is great concern about water and air quality? There is a loss of trust in governments and regulators to protect us. Dieselgate collapsed confident in vehicle and air pollution regulation. Rivers regulated tainted with effluent has led us to doubt the ability of regulators to contain the behaviour of industry.
So, Emissions Analytics is now committing to providing this sophisticated laboratory testing equipment to anyone who is interested. We will be supporting citizen science campaigns to collect water and air samples. To complement that, WHATSINMY? offers the ability to buy personal test kits directly on its website. This can be used in your home or office to diagnose private contaminations concerns, as well as to detect pollutants in public spaces: unleash the power of expert testing science in your world.
Emissions Analytics has always been committed to understanding and reducing real-world emissions, and is excited to support the democratisation of its work to solve the pressing pollutant issues of 2025 and beyond.