The Clean Air Labs’ research team has one goal mind and that is to provide superior products at affordable prices to our clients. Our clients include indoor air testing laboratories, industrial hygienists and field inspectors, and virtually anyone who has concerns about the quality of the indoor air they breathe.

Clean Air Labs has filed patents for a number of proprietary technologies, ranging from sample collection technology to mold detection technology. Please contact us for further information.

E.A. Sobek, Ph.D
Director of Research and Development

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» remediation technology

The Indoor Environmental Market Segment: Innovation and Sustained Growth

Many consider the microbiological aspect of indoor air quality (IAQ) to be a relatively new industry segment. Anyone who has worked in the industry longer than six years knows that is not the case. Concerns over microbes in air or bioaersols have always been a concern of industrial hygienist. What has changed? Prior to the year 2000 bioaersols were problems of manufacturing plants, assembly lines, processing plants etc. But at the turn of the new millennium, problems began to show up in homes and businesses. Sick Building Syndrome became a catch phrase, and one very small, ecologically important microorganism was named the culprit: MOLD. A once ignored, scientific curiosity became a monstrous killer according to the press.

Descriptors like black mold and toxic mold were seen in local and national headlines that linked mold to disease, hemorrhage, memory loss, and even death. Several large court settlements spurred the melodrama on; multimillion dollar verdicts were handed down to plaintiffs accusing builders of negligence in faulty building design that precipitated massive toxic mold contamination. And it was the mold, claimed the plaintiffs’ lawyers that directly lead to diminished health and even incapacitation of their clients. These were the beginnings of a new Indoor Environmental (IE) market segment for the IAQ industry; a market that is focused on residential and commercial properties that suffer from microbial contamination, primarily in the form of mold.

Unlike most emerging markets, which develop from innovation and scientific breakthroughs (i.e. nanotechnology), the IE market developed in response to a problem that was thrown upon society. Before mold, no industrial or academic scientist had even considered developing technology to address mold in buildings. Those in the IE market had to adapt and borrow existing technologies from related industries. While the industry is doing well and experiencing steady growth, the technological void continues to expand. In the field and in the lab, new problems arise daily, problems that the current state-of-the-art addresses poorly or not at all. Innovation is the key to ensure that the IE market continues to experience phenomenal growth, and avoid stagnation or decline.