Detecting Lead in places it shouldn't be.

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

I want to know what methods I can use to detect Lead poisoning or Lead in just about any place it shouldn't be.

Like in body or blood,
Lead in drinking water,
Lead in food,
Lead in paint.

I guess I can't use Magnetometers because lead doesn't seem to be magnetic.

Can I use

  1. Capacitance,
  2. Resistance,
  3. Photo reflective properties of skin or blood.
  4. Or just about anything else.
2

It is not easy to detect a specific metal. The best way is with a flourecessent spectrometer but it is not a simple Aarduino project. The sure fire way is with a mass spectrometer again not a portable instrument.

Why do you want to do this?

3

Think this is way beyond Arduino as GM says.

You might contact epa-team - http://www.epa.gov/epapages/epahome/sciencenb/action_teams/lead/index.html -

4

Grumpy_Mike:
It is not easy to detect a specific metal. The best way is with a flourecessent spectrometer but it is not a simple Aarduino project. The sure fire way is with a mass spectrometer again not a portable instrument.

Why do you want to do this?

What if you want to find if there is any abnormal metal which could be similar to lead. Especially "Lead". I think the conductivity of blood will increase if Lead levels are present. I atleast want to be able to detect highly abnormal levels of Lead or any other metal.

Also what about photo reflecticve like those they use in heart-beat sensors.

5

I think the exposure to all that SiFi has left people of an unrealistic expectations of detectors.

I think the conductivity of blood will increase if Lead levels are present.

Why? Blood is rich in iron and that will swamp out any conductivity effects.

Also what about photo reflecticve like those they use in heart-beat sensors

What about it? You can get some indication of blood oxygen levels but not metal. The amounts of metal involved in blood poising are very small.
See this, but it is not a very pain free way:-

6

if the salt level raises because of e.g chips I expect your blood conductivity increases far more.

Have you read this - http://www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/lead_blood.pdf -
It describes 5 methods for testing.

Hope this helpes

7

Grumpy_Mike:
I think the exposure to all that SciFi has left people of an unrealistic expectations of detectors.

So it seems.

Grumpy_Mike:
Why? Blood is rich in iron and that will swamp out any conductivity effects.

Iron - and for that matter lead - in blood is bound to protein. It's a bit like saying that rust is a good conductor because it contains iron.

Assays for specific elements or compounds make use of some unique characteristic of the material. Often nowadays in (bio)medical applications, antibodies created specifically to match the material are used, failing that chemical reagents and for elements - such as lead - mass spectrometry ()which can equally distinguish any element would be by far the most likely technique.

Most current research focuses on (electronic) detector arrays using (many different) antibodies bonded to the sensors. Not a simple matter by any means but of course researched in the expectation of great profits.

8

If you want to detect lead before it gets into your blood then this will do:-

However it is not cheap and nothing you could emulate with an Arduino.