This would be very interesting for industrial applications that rely on clean rooms. What comes to mind is environmental monitoring for microbes, which is tedious but important and currently has significant lag time (≈2 weeks).

What I couldn’t determine is whether there is any information about concentration. I mean so what if something is present, you have a lot of ubiquitous organisms out there.

Nevertheless, if the technology matures, it could help identify a problem earlier before it becomes visually obvious. You would still need to determine the root cause. Or it could help with a better decision making before buying a house?

All in all a lot to think about.

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npsomaratna 2 days ago | parent [-]

Why is there a significant time lag? Is it because monitoring is done via cultures?

	▲	tippa123 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Correct, the workflow is something like this usually. You would take contact, settle and active air sample plates within the cleanroom, followed by approximately one day before culturing is initiated in QC. Incubation then typically takes around seven days to cover both bacteria and fungi. You then get the colony forming units value which is the key parameter. Some companies take this further and perform organism identification, which adds additional days to the timeline but great for reactive investigations. There is also a lag until the data becomes available in a digital format. This of course differs between companies. Some companies may opt for shorter or longer incubation times, but in general, the key takeaway is that the process takes time.