This article was written by Karl Schneider and originally published on the Naples Daily News website. Myoseon Jang, Ph.D., an associate professor of environmental engineering sciences, and her team discovered that toxins in algal aerosol can be rapidly transformed in the air by using the Atmospheric Photochemical Outdoor Reactor (UF‐APHOR) developed at the University of Florida.
Two years after a devastating Florida red tide event, scientists are hard at work developing a device that will detect the algae’s toxins in the air.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission awarded a $200,000 grant to two University of Florida professors working on the portable technology.
Professors Myoseon Jang and Dail Laughinghouse with UF have combined efforts to research and develop the device. The goal is to be able to measure how much brevetoxin, the neurotoxic compound found in red tide, is in the air during a bloom and detect how long it survives.