Birmingham Post

The Wolfson Research Laboratories and Severn Trent Services have jointly won Queen's Awards for Enterprise, hailing their innovation in producing special water testing kit.

This is the second Queen's Award for the team behind the ECLOX test that detects chemical contamination.

The chemistry was developed by researchers at the Wolfson Research Laboratories at the University of Birmingham, and refined and manufactured by Severn Trent Services in an innovative partnership between Birmingham academia and industry. Scientists behind the success include Emeritus Professor Tom Whitehead, and bio-chemistry director Dr Gary Thorpe.

The life-saving test helps determine within minutes whether water is contaminated or safe to drink using similar reactions to those which make glow-worms glow.

A device reads the purity of a water source by measuring the light generated when a sample is added to a simple chemical reaction - uncontaminated water shines brightly. The portable battery operated system has been used by Oxfam, the UK Armed Forces, and several states in the US as an anti-terrorist measure. The instrument has the advantage that it can detect a very wide range of different contaminants.

The ECLOX system works using the "enhanced chemiluminescence" method of detecting pollutants in drinking water.

This means that purity is assessed by measuring the amount of light created when a sample is added to a chemical reaction. Contaminants including sewage, farm waste, cyanide and industrial pollutants can be detected.

Dr Thorpe is delighted to receive this award.

He said: "This innovation means that potentially life-saving tests for water purity can be moved from the laboratory to the river bank. We are glowing with success on the news of this Queen's Award, and thrilled to add the Queen to military and charity users who have been impressed with this technology in action."

This is the second Queen's Award for this team and the light emitting technique. In 1990 a Queen's Award for Technological Achievement was won using the same technology in a different way - it was then being used for analysing blood samples for presence of disease. It is also being used today to detect BSE in slaughtered cattle in the UK and Ireland.

Professor William Doe, Dean of the Medical School said: "Universities are increasingly engaging in an entrepreneurial culture. The success of this Medical School project is a great example of innovative technology that arises from partnership between researchers and industry to produce a product of wide benefit to the public."

Professor Whitehead, who at 80 years old is "officially" retired, is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, and formerly Dean of the Medical School (1984-1987) and the director of the Wolfson Research Laboratory.

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