NNOccSafe

N-nitrosamines, along with other pollutants, have become a cross-sectoral, persistent, and important health issue in various areas of occupational, environmental and product protection in recent years. They are among the organic nitrogen compounds with high carcinogenic potential. They occur frequently and in many ways in many industries and therefore represent a serious potential hazard to the safety of employees in their working environment. The formation mechanisms of nitrosamines being so diverse that they often arise unavoidably in industrial processes as undesirable contaminants in the trace to ultra-trace range are therefore present in technical working environments and the environment. Consequently, this is where the high-risk potential exists for employees in a wide range of industries to be exposed to nitrosamines during product manufacturing, filling and inspection.
The aim of the project is to provide a new method to measure, firstly, nitrosamines in air and, secondly, in other matrices more sensitively than before, while at the same time ensuring robustness and result validity. To this end, the development of a new, preferably highly automated laboratory measurement system based on the coupling of gas chromatography with various ion mobility spectrometric detectors (IMS), a multifunctional injector side and a modern, highly effective enrichment technology is planned. In the longer term, the focus will also be on the development of a new sampling and enrichment technology that can be integrated into the measuring system (on/inline), with the aim of going beyond a laboratory system to enable an analysis system that can be used on site for analysis during production directly at the workplace.
The project is further designed for the potential to apply the developed methodology not only to nitrosamines, but also to other trace substances that are hazardous to health.