Indoor Air & Safety

Real-time, comprehensive evaluation of indoor air quality.

Many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) pose risks to human health and the general well-being of modern society.

Some have severe acute toxicity, such as fumigation chemicals and chemical warfare agents. Others have chronic health effects and are carcinogenic, such as benzene and formaldehyde. SIFT-MS provides a one-stop, easy-to-use solution for indoor air, workplace and security applications. Sample delivery options can be customized to meet diverse analytical needs.

Container safety

Personnel inspecting or devanning shipping containers are at risk of being exposed to a cocktail of chemical compounds present in the air inside the container.

Hazardous vapor compounds such as fumigants are regularly introduced to ensure the container contents meet international phytosanitary requirements. A container fumigation study conducted in Germany on over 500 containers indicated that up to 35% of the shipping containers contained fumigant concentrations that exceeded TRGS 512 safety levels.

Evidence shows that exposure to fumigants, such as methyl bromide, can cause psychological and neurological problems, as well as DNA damage.

Figure 4 right FumigantScanDangerous

Easily interpreted results from SIFT-MS analysis of gas samples taken from two shipping containers: one container is safe to enter, while the other is unsafe.

Learn more about SIFT-MS capabilities in Indoor Air & Safety

Application Note

Chloramine Analysis, Using SIFT-MS

Exposure to chloramines is a recognized health hazard in the home, recreation centers, and the workplace.

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Brochure

SIFT-MS Solutions That Protect People

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Whitepaper

Rapid Identification and Quantification of Common Fumigants and Toxic Chemicals in the Shipping Industry

Frontline workers in the shipping and border security industries face constant danger from exposure to undocumented or incorrectly packaged or applied toxic compounds, such as fumigants and toxic industrial chemicals (TICs).
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Whitepaper

SIFT-MS: A New Perspective on Monitoring of Occupational Chemical Exposure

Monitoring of worker exposure to toxic chemicals is receiving increasing attention from Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) regulators. Various methods – such as photoionization detectors (PIDs), chemical indicator tubes and gas chromatography (GC) – have traditionally been used to OSH monitoring and compliance. The results have been mixed.

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Application Note

Simple Determination of Formaldehyde Adsorption by Merino Wool, Using SIFT-MS

Formaldehyde is ubiquitous in the modern built environment, but it is also carcinogenic and so it is desirable to reduce chronic exposure in homes and workplaces. This study demonstrates the ease with which construction materials can be evaluated for their formaldehyde adsorption efficacy, by utilizing direct analysis with selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS). With this
approach, merino wool is shown to be extremely effective in adsorbing formaldehyde from air.

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Application Note

Real-Time Speciation of Ethylbenzene from the Xylenes Using SIFT-MS

Direct mass spectrometry (DMS) techniques invariably struggle to speciate ethylbenzene from the xylene isomers, yet increasingly regulators are imposing different emission and exposure limits for these compounds. This application note describes a significant breakthrough for DMS, because selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS) can readily achieve direct, realtime speciation of the xylenes from ethylbenzene.

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Application Note

Syft Tracer: The Next Generation of Volatile Impurities Analysis for Enhanced Workflows

This app note introduces the next generation of SIFT-MS, Syft TracerTM, which launched at Pittcon 2023.  It revolutionizes volatile impurities analysis workflows through unparalleled speed, performance stability, and reproducibility.  Learn about how this innovation to real-time trace gas detection outpaces chromatography-based methods in the analysis of challenging analytes such as formaldehyde in a PEG excipient.

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Document

Recent developments and applications of selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT‐MS)

SIFT‐MS is now recognized as the most versatile analytical technique for the identification and quantification of trace gases down to the parts‐per‐trillion by volume, pptv, range. This statement is supported by the wide reach of its applications, from real‐time analysis, obviating sample collection of very humid exhaled breath, to its adoption in industrial scenarios for air quality monitoring. This review touches on the recent extensions to the underpinning ion chemistry kinetics library and the alternative challenge of using nitrogen carrier gas instead of helium. 

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Document

SIFT-MS: Quantifying the Volatiles You Smell . . . and the Toxics You Don’t

SIFT-MS has been widely applied to quantitative analysis of a broad range of VOCs in applications from food products to workplace safety to environmental monitoring, and most recently to pharmaceutical testing. This review surveys the applications of SIFT-MS in odor analysis and in workplace, environmental and consumer protection, with a particular focus on the complementarity of this real-time mass spectrometry analyzer to sensor technology and conventional laboratory techniques—in particular, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS).

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Webinar

The Latest Innovation of Real-Time, High-Throughput Volatile Impurities Analysis by SIFT-MS

Join us for this webinar to learn about Syft Tracer, the latest advancement of real-time, trace gas analysis by SIFT-MS which launched at Pittcon 2023. Hear how the recent product innovations unlock analytical bottlenecks and enable faster decisions to be made in critical process steps.

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