An improved simple, robust, cheap and potential diagnostic device for Lead(II)

Environmental pollution and its consequences are of global concern. There is an urgent need of development of simple, low-cost detection or diagnostic point of care devices to detect, analyze and determine the pollutants in various environmental, food and biological samples. Such development will be critically important for improvisation of human health and quality of life. Toxic heavy metals potential contaminates and has lethal effects on deterioration of environment and thereby on human health. Paper based analytical sensors are an efficient diagnostic point-of-care devices being cheap, robust, user friendly and environmental-friendly. We have proposed a paper-based sensor for detection and quantitative determination of Lead by immobilization of potassium iodide and ninhydrin over paper platform. A bright yellow colour of varying intensity develops on coming in contact with samples contaminated with lead. The coloured area is then scanned and images are transferred to image processing tool of MATLAB software to read their RGB values. The effective intensities are then calculated mathematically. The developed sensor determines the contamination of lead up to 0.01 ppm. Thus, the proposed paper based analytical sensor is potential diagnostic point –of-care device.