 Yes, my name is Athena Proiu. I am the coordinator of the Nano Explorer EU project, which deals with the assessment and the determination of the health effects due to exposure to nano materials, specifically to engineered nano materials. So, who is part of the Nano Explorer? Is it a company or an organization? Yeah, actually Nano Explorer is a project with eight participants from seven EU countries along with Switzerland. We are a partnership of people coming from SMEs, universities as well as from research institutes and governmental authorities. So, we have in the partnership, in the consortium, we have the University of Torino, the University of Lausanne, the Research Institute of Itene in Spain, SMEs like the Jordan's Group in Germany and in the UK, Alcom, consulting engineers who are the coordinators, and I am the coordinator of Nano Explorer in Greece, Athens, and also NECA, which is a governmental organization in Greece, under the auspices of the Greek Ministry for the Environment, responsible for environment, air quality and climate change. So, how do you explore the Nano? How do you make these nano, how does it happen? Yeah, so our idea here is that you see around, you have very important applications with nano materials, new devices or products and methodologies, so you can see that in the last decades we have had a tremendous increase in the use and production of nano materials. We wonder thus which might be the impact of all these materials on the environment as well as on human health. So, our approach is a holistic approach, which includes at the same time a new device, a novel device for monitoring engineered nano materials in urban areas as well as in working places, and on the other side to monitor the health impact through bio monitoring studies, novel bio monitoring studies. The idea is to produce a new protocol in order to conduct this kind of studies and to find out which are the potential health impacts on people working in facilities and dealing with ENMs or people living and working in urban areas with hot traffic spots for example. This is the main idea. So, you are showing a machine here for example, what are you talking about here at the Nano Technology Conference? So, what we do here is that we essentially complement what all the other people are doing, I mean they deal with nano materials and we deal with nano materials but from the environmental point of view and from the bio, the health impact, the medical point of view let's say, for people who have been exposed to nano materials. Because of course, these nano materials are very important for economy, for health because they are used also in health, medical devices and treatments also. However, we have to study also the potential impact when we deal with this kind of nano materials, when we are exposed to nano materials. It's supposedly maybe also in some vaccines that happened recently. Yeah, but what we look here in nano exploration is how the nano materials which are inhaled and they are going into our respiratory system, how they can alter let's say our health level or they can cause some health issues, for example cardiovascular, oxidative stress and so on. So, there are issues you... It seems that in some cases when we have people who are highly exposed to nano materials, they can have this kind of acute effects on cardiovascular system and even in terms of oxidative stress, yes. These results are going to be presented in this conference on Friday. And what do we see here? Yes, Pavle, you might want to present this device. Introduce yourself. I'm Pavle Dohañosheva. I come from Ramem, a Spanish company which has developed this monitor of air quality. So, we have integrated here several sensors. One is for measurement of ultra fine particles up to 300 nanometers and the other is from 300 nanometers to 10 micrometers. And we also can collect particles on filters or TEM grades for posterior analysis to get chemical composition or for microscopic analysis of the particles. This instrument has special software with some features which enable to assess the exposure. So, here are traffic light indicator which indicates the exposure level of the concentration of nanoparticles and also of other parameters. This instrument can be used for exposure measurement so you can distinguish between the type of measurement you are doing. There are some disturbing events so you can mark this data and exclude you from the measurement. This instrument is portable in the form of a suitcase and the objective of this design is to carry this device to the company and measure the exposure of employees working with nanomaterial. This instrument can be placed in outer enclosure and also to be used for environmental measurement. This enclosure is climatized, pulverized with solar panels so you can also do the same instrument ambient measurements. The software was done to be user-friendly so we have a pop-up menu and we can configure it for the use. Also it permits automatic measurement when you can schedule the measurement and when you are not able to be with the instrument. For this case we also developed the remote control of this instrument. I passed the word to my colleague. Do you want to introduce yourself? Hello, my name is Katerini Maria Zaragiani. I am a member of a non-explorer project, one of the partners representing NECA, Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency. Here you can find the panel we can use when we have remote control of the device. We have the home screen. We can see the PM categories and if the set of thresholds that you also see on the device, so it's the same panel. For example we can be in Spain and you can check and control the device remotely from Greece, for example. Here is the menu and you can find your data. You can have some information on the device operation. If there is something wrong you can see if there is an fault. In the advanced panel you can set your thresholds and you can name the file and also set some information on the place you are measuring. Beside this device and the remote control we can also make another renovation. This is the form of data and we have already a web-based platform in the framework of a non-explorer project. With the use of this platform you can see your data. You can input your data inside and not only data from this device but with other measurement devices. So you can have graphs. You can see for example here a map around the world. For example here there are some measurements that we have uploaded in the platform. You can have the number of the last measurement, the mean and max and other descriptive statistics. And you can also, for example, give me a second, have data analysis measurements. You can have immediately the graph of your measurement that you can choose with the date, the name of the date, with the time period. You can have the moving average that according to the load there are some specific limits. So you can set it and you have immediately have all the descriptive statistics. And you can also collaborate with other scientists and if you wish you can show your measurements and send them to them. So there are many, a lot of features you can use. The PM numbers are what people talk about when there is pollution and forest fires and all kinds of stuff like that. So that's what you measure. This machine can measure? Yes. Particles that are even coarse or fine or ultra fine. You can have these particle matters. Actually most of the time the damage that you probably have in your health are the ultra fine particles responsible. However, we are studying here what the health effects and we are trying to set some values and that's why we set the harmonized protocol for that with the bi-monitoring studies. All right. When you have a machine like this, where are the sensors on the box? The sensors are inside. They are like here. So here on this side we can see the inlet of the sensor. So they have a pump inside. Everything is inside. They are sensor with their pumps and they are sucking the air and it passes through the system of the sensor and they are detecting the particles. Is it a special way to detect with this machine or there's many other machines to detect at PM levels and everything? This sensor for PM is an optical particle sensor which is for instrumentally one of the common ways to measure PM. So over 300nm to 10 microns but normally traditionally it's measured on the filters so you pass air with particles through filters and then you wait them. And this in last years so it's instrumentalization of this measurement to do it optically. And the novelty in this measurement is the ultrafine particle sensor which exists on the market. There exist several types of nanoparticle sensors but small and without working liquid and for easy use. This is one of few and this system is unique that integrates these three types of measurements. So you have just one file with all your data and not several devices and when you just take your suitcase and go to the field wherever you need it. So we call it all in one device. Do you have many customers for this? We are starting and so we want first to go to the organization which control the safety and health. We are doing the control in the companies dealing with dangerous materials but there is problem with nanomaterials because they are no normative. And so the companies are not forced to measure it but their employees can be seriously affected by these particles. So we want to promote it and to get the people to understand that it's important to measure it. So you have conversations here with like policy makers, politicians or universities or companies. We are going to discuss our project but it's the first day of an unexplored conference. But our aim is to make it clear what's the operation of the device and how it will help and improve our knowledge and fill the gaps that we still have on that field. I guess it's a big priority for many politicians to improve the air and all of the world. Not just in Spain, not just in Greece, not just in China, they are very interested in this, right? Do you have customers there? With China it's difficult, I think it's the most difficult because there is definitely a necessity to improve this. But the industry doesn't want it because about changing normative and the rules in nanomaterials, we have heard 15 years ago or many years ago but nothing has changed. So our belief that there is some industrial lobby who doesn't want these changes because it signifies a lot of costs, additional costs and maybe some reduction of production efficiency. So if we don't know about it, it doesn't exist. But there's a lot of talk about it everywhere. Yes, but nothing changed. We almost say that they want better air, they want more safety and they want control of what's happening. Yes, yes, but we haven't seen the changes in this normative. But we hope it will change soon. And then there will be a lot of suitcases. And a lot of people will use your web platform. We hope so. We hope so. In order to take some decision you need to have some measurement. So we first we can measure, you can make it known, our project and our device and platform in order to convince that the necessity of taking some measurement. When I drive my car with the petrol inside, right? Yes. There's nano stuff that comes out of it? Of course. It's all nano. There are all types of particles and hazardous compounds, volatile compounds and nano particles. There are a lot of dangerous stuff in the petrol emissions. So we need to see where it goes. We need to measure it. We need to measure it because it depends on this chemical composition of the size of particles and also the atmosphere if there is a lot of wind or if it rains. So it's a really complex problem, the control of emission from cars from everything. There's also all the factories, the industry that do another kind of nano and deer. All combustion processes produce nano particles and not only nano processes. And it could actually be a worse problem than global warming. Some people say it could be related but... This is related, it actually is related. The atmosphere is not the glass, it's not the box, it's a system. So when you do something, when you burn, when you drive your car, all these combustion pollutants, combustion pollutants emit in the air. So with air circulation system and the water cycle also. It's combined and it's one system with... But when they talk about CO2, there's just one of the things. There's so many other things that comes out of it, right? Yeah, but there are a lot of reactions in the atmosphere for the chemical reaction. So the light of the sun also plays a significant role. Secondary organic air also plays a significant role. And all this probably has effects on our health. So that's why we are interested in that part. On human health and the environment also. And maybe these combustion processes and these few drive the car, the effect is maybe more immediate or maybe stronger than the effect on the environmental system. Because if you breathe a lot of nanoparticles, it's like smokers. If you smoke, so you have the probability to get lung cancer is much higher. And the same if you live in the highly polluted city, the same. So the effect is much more rapid, quick and maybe stronger personally. But the environmental is for the system. Maybe it can take years or decades, but the smoking... It could be like one way to speed things up if you can show the politicians. But it's been talked about for many years, right? But maybe there's new science on this. If you can show that how much it damages people in the city, then they will make it even faster priority and that will help everything else at the same time. We can just switch to electric cars, but then they maybe also mean something weird. I don't know. Yeah, and also you have to produce the electricity. And the sources are limited. And if you use combustion for electricity production, so it's the same problem. So it's a really complex problem and this is our grain of the sand. All right, cool. All right, thanks a lot. Some people can contact you if they... Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. You can find here on our site, www.life.nonexplore.eu all the information for the non-explore project. All right. Okay. Cool, thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.