Sensitive Novel Fluorescent Tracers for Environmental Monitoring

This paper discusses the development and use of novel glass and polymer tracers, based on narrow band atomic fluorescence, which have been developed for deployment as environmental tracers. The use of discrete fluorescent species in an environmentally stable host has been developed to replace existing toxic, broad band molecular dye tracers. The narrow band emission signals offer the potential for the tracing of a large numbers of signals in the same environment. This will give significant competitive advantage and increased data accuracy and also allow multiple source environmental monitoring of environmental parameters. These novel environmental tracers exhibiting highly discrete fluorescent emissions can also be formed into many shapes, forms and densities to mimic naturally occurring media.