Based on recent market occurrences, changes in regulation, carrier pronouncements and results from several national consumer-level surveys, trend is clear: privacy matters!

Unmistakable messages from marketplace:

In Zelos Group’s National Wireless Usage Study, only 2 percent of US consumers indicated that they would list their wireless telephone number without any type of privacy and/or call screening in place. In this same study, 51 percent of that same sample and 69 percent of 13 to 24 year olds within study are willing list their mobile number IF they had guaranteed privacy protection and/or defined call screening procedures 41% of US consumers subscriber to a caller ID service; 57% of 18-24 year-olds subscriber to a caller ID service. Over 20 percent of all fixed line phone numbers and 98% of wireless numbers are unlisted in US. This number exceeds 40 percent for Arizona and Alaska and approaches 50 percent in large cities. Over 51 Million numbers in US were registered on national Do-Not-Call registry. This is over 50 percent of residential phone numbers, all prior to lists’ October 2, 2003 implementation. The US market has never seen a more clear indication that consumers are feed up with unwelcome commercial contacts. 88 percent of wireless subscribers said that their number one reason for not lisingt their mobile number would be to avoid telemarketing calls.

The Current Model is Broken The current model for being “listed / not listed” is no longer viable for today’s consumers in today’s technologically dynamic environment. The number of ways we can be contacted is growing: (listing all your personal and professional phones, emails, IM addresses, SMS, Push to Talk (PTT) physical addresses, etc, this list exceeds 15 to 20 for most of us) our technological capabilities seems to have at least temporarily exceeded regulatory, not to mention social and ethical, development in area of communications. It is now possible for almost anyone to locate and communicate with most of us anytime, anywhere. In US market, combination of relentless tele-marketing campaigns and poor personal manners has nearly converted this communications convenience into a bane within modern society.

When higher levels of CO are present, proper safety procedure calls for halt of production and evacuation of all personnel from area until levels can be verified, reduced and source identified. These precautions taken against this potentially deadly gas show responsibility on part of employer and can save lives of many who work to make company profitable. The resulting down time can however have many detrimental effects including, employee stress, safety concerns from outside agencies, and reduced production, it is therefore vitally important that we ensure that CO alarms are set off only by actual increased levels of carbon monoxide. In an effort to reach this goal there are a number of considerations to be looked at, following information is provided for that purpose.

The most common types of detectors used for Carbon Monoxide measurements are,

1) NDIR or infra-red which although is very specific to gas being measured requires a warm-up time, is fairly large, can consume larger amounts of power making it unsuitable for small or portable instruments, and is more expensive. For ranges of CO measurement in industrial uses other than Low ppm this technology is by far number one choice.

2) Solid State, while this technology is small and cost effective it is not selective enough for CO only measurements and usually has higher temperature drift making zero unstable.

3) and Electrochemical which is primary choice for majority of Carbon Monoxide analyzers on market today due to it’s many benefits which include, size, weight, power, cost, and proven performance.

The remainder of this article will deal only with electrochemical sensor.