 One of the biggest challenges that chemists face is knowing what impact their synthesis is going to have on the environment. Monitoring a process on a small scale to see what pollution is produced at a particular stage of reaction can reduce the pollution that's produced in the large-scale synthesis. Can you think how? Pause the video and continue when you're ready. An answer might be that looking at the pollution produced on a small scale and in real-time will enable chemists to know where they have to change in their large-scale synthesis to ensure their practices have a lower environmental impact.