Enquirer

Dear Micky,

We have developed a new technique for rapid analysis and wish to contact anybody who might have suitable samples for us to test this technique on.

We are interested in locating polluted sites or companies or people with access to contaminated land samples. We would like to obtain samples of soil, plant and soil animals (eg worms) to test some new, rapid methods for extracting pollutants.

We are after Kilogramme quantities (in glass or teflon containers) and would be willing to come and take the samples ourselves.

At this stage we would like to work with a company or consultancy who have a fair idea of what the samples might already contain in terms of of pollutants. The reason for this being that the PhD student is still optimising the extraction process, and can thus plan his experiments systematically.

The eventual target would be consultancies and mobile laboratories. This technology might lend itself for on-site analysis once developed as our aim is to reduce the extraction times of pollutants (currently 4-24 hours) down to about 30 minutes.

Dr Irene Mueller-Harvey