In the Future, Your Clothes Will Warn You of Dangerous Gases
In the Future, Your Clothes Will Warn You of Dangerous Gases
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
More than ever, we want to know what we’re breathing. It’s the age of the air purifier, checking weather apps to see air quality, and shamelessly wearing masks to protect yourself from pollution and particles.
But what if your clothes changed colors to notify you of dangerous breathing conditions?
Nanotechnology scientists at Tufts University in Massachusetts have developed a simple technique that might do just that.
“You can have certified inspectors telling you that your water or environment or food isn't good but it would be nice if people can make those judgements themselves,” Sameer Sonkusale, a mechanical and computer engineer who leads the university’s Nano Lab, told The Daily Beast. “I always feel that knowledge is power. I feel that the technology has advanced so much there is a lot of innovation that can be had with simple basic things.”
Sonkusale’s lab has been working on a variety of low cost, portable sensing platforms that can give the average person access to data about the world around them they otherwise haven’t had access to.
The color-changing technology relies on different dyes that naturally change color when they’re exposed to specific gases. For example, bromothymol blue dye responds to ammonia and methyl red dye reacts to hydrogen chloride—both gases commonly found in cleaning supplies and fertilizer. “With this one we realized we could provide a way that people can see the pollution in their environment,” he says.
The biggest challenge in developing the gas-sensing textiles wasn’t actually in getting the dye onto the fabric; it was in figuring out how to keep the dyes in place and make them sturdy enough to withstand regular wear and washing. Initially, the team attempted to chemically treat the dyes to lock them in place, but they found that technique made them less sensitive.
So instead they created a two-step process to keep the dyes sensitive and trap them in the fabric threads, making the fabric dyes durable. The chemical treatment opens up the fabric’s fibers—separating the microstructures in the threads—and allows the dyes to get into every nano-nook and cranny. Then they add a thin polymer membrane that is porous (and allows gases to enter) but holds everything in place.
The trick, Sonkusale added, is that the polymer membrane can’t be so thick or stiff that the threads no longer act like fabric. Once that was worked out, he said, in the end the technology is easy and inexpensive to implement.
“It’s amazing how this approach is fairly straightforward. It’s something that should have been done some time ago,” Sonkusale said.
In practice, small gas-detecting colored patches could be sewn into a variety of different types of clothing and used as a sort of “canary in a coal mine” to alert people to gasses in their vicinity. People could use them in their homes or their cars—and they’d also be useful as early warning systems for jobs that have potentially dangerous chemicals involved like chemistry laboratories or construction sites.
And because the polymer coating is so effective, the dyes are even able to detect gasses underwater. Sonkusale and his team have even developed a phone app that allows users to compare images of their fabrics over time in order to detect even small color changes.
So far there has been a lot of interest in further developing the technology (especially as a handheld sensor) by putting the dyes onto portable cards.
“You don’t always have to put it on a fabric,” Sonkusale said—detectors can be washable and reusable over many cycles or simply quick one-time throw-aways.
However they’re ultimately used, he says, they have the potential to give people much more control over their health and their environment. “The more we know the more we’re empowered,” he said.
AOC Rival’s Family Caught in Drug and Gun Bust
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty/Legistorm
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s long-shot Republican opponent has labeled the left-wing lawmaker a “crime surge creator”—but in fact, the GOP candidate’s own family have been part of the uptick in illegal activity she has lamented.
A Snopes investigation earlier this year revealed that Tina Forte has a long history of flirting with the political right’s violent fringes: posting photos on social media of herself with the leader of the Proud Boys gang, sharing QAnon-flavored slogans, and even participating in events around Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally that culminated in the bloody rampage through the U.S. Capitol. But as a candidate for Congress, Forte has cast herself as a more conventional Republican, playing up her small business-owning background and appealing to fears of increasing crime rates, which she has blamed on bail laws that New York State liberalized after the progressive wave four years ago.
“AOC and her socialist allies have pushed for defunding our police and the disastrous ‘bail reform’ policies which have caused crime to skyrocket in New York,” Forte’s website asserts. “Tina and her husband started with a soda delivery route and went on to build their own beverage distribution company. Now, they’re not only creating jobs but empowering others to create their own businesses.”
Forte revisited these themes in appearances in conservative media shortly after she captured the Republican nomination for the overwhelmingly Democratic seat, which covers sections of Queens and the Bronx.
“I grew up here, I own a business here, I raised my family here. I see the difference,” she said in a Fox News interview in August. “We have the criminals that are being released immediately due to the AOC-supported bail reform.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
She hit nearly identical notes on Newsmax.
“I’ve spoken to plenty of people in the district. I was born there, raised there, my family’s there, I have my businesses here: I know this district. And I know that the crime is out of control,” Forte said, slamming what she described as a pattern of absence and neglect on the part of the incumbent.
But what Forte has failed to mention is that her family’s beverage distribution warehouse was at the center of a federal drug and gun bust in 2019—which culminated in guilty pleas by her husband and son, both of whom are serial offenders.
In a 2020 Facebook post, Forte placed her business at an address on the Bronx’s Stillwell Avenue, and in her financial disclosures to the House Clerk’s office she stated her husband’s income derived from a company incorporated in this same building.
It was this exact location that a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent identified as the site of the crimes of Joseph “Joey Snapple” Galdieri—to whom Forte is married, according to records in suburban Rockland County, where the pair own a home well outside the congressional district’s borders—and their son Joseph Galdieri Jr.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Forte planted the blame squarely on her son, and maintained her husband's involvement was incidental and inadvertent. She professed ignorance of his criminal activities at the time, and said he lived apart from her and her family.
“One of my three children, Joseph, made some very poor decisions. In 2019 at 25, he committed a nonviolent marijuana offense and possessed a firearm. Joseph paid the price, in fines, attorney fees, and time behind bars,” Forte wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. “As for my husband, he was unaware of our son’s crimes. He was only roped into the charges because of my son utilizing our business location for a single delivery of marijuana.”
However, this characterization is at odds with the FBI agent’s account of the father and son’s activities, as they recounted the content of wiretapped calls and security footage from inside the beverage hub. In the criminal complaint, the agent described the son arranging the drop-off of $150,000 worth of marijuana over the phone at the same time cameras caught his father pacing directly behind him in the warehouse’s office.
The agent further cited tapes that captured Galdieri Sr. meeting with the co-conspirator who brought a truckload of weed to the distribution center, and handing him a black plastic bag full of cash.
In searching the location, federal agents discovered a semiautomatic pistol with its serial number illegally abraded away, in a drawer that Galdieri Sr. opened and rifled through several times in the security roll.
Because both Galdieris are convicted felons—the younger having faced substance charges across multiple states, and the father having been found guilty of second degree assault—neither could possess a firearm under state or federal law.
Pleading to a single count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana, the elder Galdieri received a sentence last fall of time served, plus two years’ probation and a $20,000 forfeiture of his proceeds from the scheme.
Junior, meanwhile, copped to a gun charge and received 18 months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Efforts to get him sprung early this June failed, with the judge noting he “persisted in criminal conduct even while on pretrial release,” by continuing to deal marijuana.
However, Forte told The Daily Beast her son is now free, thanks to his good behavior and volunteer work with elderly inmates.
“As a result of my son’s conduct our lives were turned upside down. My son knows he has no more chances with me,” Forte wrote. “His mistakes better have ended or he will have more to worry about than the police.”
Notably, one point on which Ms. Forte’s webpage relaxes its law-and-order stance is in calling for “expunging the records of non-violent charges for marijuana possession,” given that New York State legalized recreational cannabis use in 2021. However, the state still does not allow unlicensed sale of the drug, and Ms. Forte’s website does not speak to federal gun charges nor to violent offenses like her husband’s 2013 assault rap. Filings by her son’s lawyer state his prior felony conviction in New York involved controlled substances other than marijuana.
“This experience has given me insights to the reforms we desperately need, including decriminalization of marijuana, expungement of marijuana violations, and restoring rights for nonviolent offenders,” Forte wrote in her statement to The Daily Beast.
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