Putting IoT Into Action: Insights from IoT Leaders Around the Globe

War, plague, famine, and inflation. The four horsemen of the apocalypse continue to ride across the globe and the signs of a looming recession are growing as companies and governments decide how to weather the approaching storm.

Minor, trace and ultratrace elemental analyses in a variety of geological and petrochemical materials are characterized by difficulties, due to the complexity of their compositions, in obtaining a complete digestion. Traditionally, academic researchers have used a variety of analytical instruments and sample preparation techniques, including open vessel digestions, Parr Bombs, flux fusion, and combustion and closed-vessel microwave digestion to prepare samples for ICP or AA analysis. While these techniques have been somewhat effective, they do pose several limitations for multi-element analysis—temperature and pressure limitations, incomplete digestions, contamination, and time consumption.

Before marketing a new chemical, the manufacturer/importer, in order to meet the various national and international legal requirements, has to submit information in the form of a notification or registration (e.g. phys-chem, toxicological, ecotoxicological data) to support each Government’s risk assessment to determine whether the substance poses an unreasonable risk to the environment and/or human health. Some countries require pre-manufacture/import notification while for many jurisdictions, the chemical notification process is a tiered system requiring subsequent notifications as the annual amount of the imported or manufactured substance increases. Further, there are expanding global initiatives to assess chemicals already in the marketplace and subsequently take action on any chemicals found to be harmful to human health and/or the environment. Government risk management initiatives are investigating the incorporation of informed substitution and alternatives assessment to identify candidates to replace existing toxics.

Compared with sewage and waste gas, the regulation and control of hazardous waste started late in China. However, with gradual improvements made to the system of sewage and waste gas regulation, the central government has been devoting greater efforts to strengthen the supervision of hazardous waste, introducing and revising a series of relevant regulations and policies. Due to frequent regulatory updates, uncertainties of policy orientation, and regional differences in supervision and law enforcement, enterprises may be confused about specific management requirements, which adds to the difficulty of compliance.