Dear Readers,
Welcome to the annual Procurement Guide edition of AWE International magazine, bringing you all the monitoring, measuring and analysis technologies and instruments that you’ll want to get your hands on in 2018.
Opening this edition is an article from Intertek’s Steve Long looking at the emerging issue of vapour intrusion, which is becoming increasingly important when assessing the health risks and determining the clean-up strategies for volatile organic compound (VOC) spills.
Industrial water usage continues to be a hot topic, as people, countries and companies around the world seek to address the challenge facing global water security. With this in mind the next article, from Anglo American’s Dr Hubert Fleming, tackles water stress and invoking the power of collaboration to drive sustainable change in the mining industry.
Staying on the theme of water the spectroscopy feature in this edition, as written by Arslan Ahmed of KWR Water Cycle Research Institute of the Netherlands, looks at arsenic – the King of Poisons – including how arsenic contaminates water sources and the spectroscopic solutions to this problem.
The topic of asbestos is emotive, as exposure is directly linked as a causative agent to lung diseases and conditions such as mesothelioma and other specific lung cancers, asbestosis and non-malignant pleural disease. As the penultimate article in this edition, Dr Claire Stone and Will Fardon of i2 Analytical consider airborne asbestos – in particular the risks from soils.
To close this edition with a look at the weather, Isla Finney of Lake Street Consulting shares what forecasts are now available, and what their limitations are, as well as exploring how current and historical observations could be used to help ascertain what future decades may hold.
Thank you to all of our authors, subscribers and advertisers for helping to shape not only this edition, but also the very fabric of the magazine. By popular demand, we’re pleased to announce that 2018 will see AWE International increasing its publication frequency from quarterly to five editions per annum.
Best regards,
Kimberley de Selincourt
Editor