New Device Can Detect Peanut Allergens on a Plate in 30 Seconds
People with life-threatening allergies live in constant fear of coming into contact with deadly allergens. Researchers estimate that about 32 million Americans have food allergies, with the most severe being milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish.
"It is important to understand that just several years ago, this would not have been possible."
Every three minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room, and 200,000 people in the U.S. require emergency medical care each year for allergic reactions, according to Food Allergy Research and Education.
But what if there was a way you could easily detect if something you were about to eat contains any harmful allergens? Thanks to Israeli scientists, this will soon be the case — at least for peanuts. The team has been working to develop a handheld device called Allerguard, which analyzes the vapors in your meal and can detect allergens in 30 seconds.
Leapsmag spoke with the founder and CTO of Allerguard, Guy Ayal, about the groundbreaking technology, how it works, and when it will be available to purchase.
What prompted you to create this device? Do you have a personal connection with severe food allergies?
Guy Ayal: My eldest daughter's best friend suffers from a severe food allergy, and I experienced first-hand the effect it has on the person and their immediate surroundings. Most notable for me was the effect on the quality of life – the experience of living in constant fear. Everything we do at Allerguard is basically to alleviate some of that fear.
How exactly does the device work?
The device is built on two main pillars. The first is the nano-chemical stage, in which we developed specially attuned nanoparticles that selectively adhere only to the specific molecules that we are looking for. Those molecules, once bound to the nanoparticles, induce a change in their electrical behavior, which is measured and analyzed by the second main pillar -- highly advanced machine learning algorithms, which can surmise which molecules were collected, and thus whether or not peanuts (or in the future, other allergens) were detected.
It is important to understand that just several years ago, this would not have been possible, because both the nano-chemistry, and especially the entire world of machine learning, big data, and what is commonly known as AI only started to exist in the '90s, and reached applicability for handheld devices only in the past few years.
Where are you at in the development process and when will the device be available to consumers?
We have concluded the proof of concept and proof of capability phase, when we demonstrated successful detection of the minimal known clinical amount that may cause the slightest effect in the most severely allergic person – less than 1 mg of peanut (actually it is 0.7 mg). Over the next 18 months will be productization, qualification, and validation of our device, which should be ready to market in the latter half of 2021. The sensor will be available in the U.S., and after a year in Europe and Canada.
The Allerguard was made possible through recent advances in machine learning, big data, and AI.
(Courtesy)
How much will it cost?
Our target price is about $200 for the device, with a disposable SenseCard that will run for at least a full day and cost about $1. That card is for a specific allergen and will work for multiple scans in a day, not just one time.
[At a later stage, the company will have sensors for other allergens like tree nuts, eggs, and milk, and they'll develop a multi-SenseCard that works for a few allergens at once.]
Are there any other devices on the market that do something similar to Allerguard?
No other devices are even close to supplying the level of service that we promise. All known methods for allergen detection rely on sampling of the food, which is a viable solution for homogenous foodstuffs, such as a factory testing their raw ingredients, but not for something as heterogenous as an actual dish – especially not for solid allergens such as peanuts, treenuts, or sesame.
If there is a single peanut in your plate, and you sample from anywhere on that plate which is not where that peanut is located, you will find that your sample is perfectly clean – because it is. But the dish is not. That dish is a death trap for an allergic person. Allerguard is the only suggested solution that could indeed detect that peanut, no matter where in that plate it is hiding.
Anything else readers should know?
Our first-generation product will be for peanuts only. You have to understand, we are still a start-up company, and if we don't concentrate our limited resources to one specific goal, we will not be able to achieve anything at all. Once we are ready to market our first device, the peanut detector, we will be able to start the R&D for the 2nd product, which will be for another allergen – most likely tree nuts and/or sesame, but that will probably be in debate until we actually start it.
[Ed. Note: This is the fourth episode in our Moonshot series, which explores four cutting-edge scientific developments that stand to fundamentally transform our world.]
Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.
The rise of remote work is a win-win for people with disabilities and employers
Disability advocates see remote work as a silver lining of the pandemic, a win-win for adults with disabilities and the business world alike.
Any corporate leader would jump at the opportunity to increase their talent pool of potential employees by 15 percent, with all these new hires belonging to an underrepresented minority. That’s especially true given tight labor markets and CEO desires to increase headcount. Yet, too few leaders realize that people with disabilities are the largest minority group in this country, numbering 50 million.
Some executives may dread the extra investments in accommodating people’s disabilities. Yet, providing full-time remote work could suffice, according to a new study by the Economic Innovation Group think tank. The authors found that the employment rate for people with disabilities did not simply reach the pre-pandemic level by mid-2022, but far surpassed it, to the highest rate in over a decade. “Remote work and a strong labor market are helping [individuals with disabilities] find work,” said Adam Ozimek, who led the research and is chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group.
Disability advocates see this development as a silver lining of the pandemic, a win-win for adults with disabilities and the business world alike. For decades before the pandemic, employers had refused requests from workers with disabilities to work remotely, according to Thomas Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute. During the pandemic, "we all realized that...many of us could work remotely,” Foley says. “[T]hat was disproportionately positive for people with disabilities."
Charles-Edouard Catherine, director of corporate and government relations for the National Organization on Disability, said that remote-work options had been advocated for many years to accommodate disabilities. “It’s a little frustrating that for decades corporate America was saying it’s too complicated, we’ll lose productivity, and now suddenly it’s like, sure, let’s do it.”
The pandemic opened doors for people with disabilities
Early in the pandemic, employment rates dropped for everyone, including people with disabilities, according to Ozimek’s research. However, these rates recovered quickly. In the second quarter of 2022, people with disabilities aged 25 to 54, the prime working age, are 3.5 percent more likely to be employed, compared to before the pandemic.
What about people without disabilites? They are still 1.1 percent less likely to be employed.
These numbers suggest that remote work has enabled a substantial number of people with disabilities to find and retain employment.
“We have a last-in, first-out labor market, and [people with disabilities] are often among the last in and the first out,” Ozimek says. However, this dynamic has changed, with adults with disabilities seeing employment rates recover much faster. Now, the question is whether the new trend will endure, Ozimek adds. “And my conclusion is that not only is it a permanent thing, but it’s going to improve.”
Gene Boes, president and chief executive of the Northwest Center, a Seattle organization that helps people with disabilities become more independent, confirms this finding. “The new world we live in has opened the door a little bit more…because there’s just more demand for labor.”
Long COVID disabilities put a premium on remote work
Remote work can help mitigate the impact of long COVID. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 19 percent of those who had COVID developed long COVID. Recent Census Bureau data indicates that 16 million working age Americans suffer from it, with economic costs estimated at $3.7 trillion.
Certainly, many of these so-called long-haulers experience relatively mild symptoms - such as loss of smell - which, while troublesome, are not disabling. But other symptoms are serious enough to be disabilities.
According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, about a quarter of those with long COVID changed their employment status or working hours. That means long COVID was serious enough to interfere with work for 4 million people. For many, the issue was serious enough to qualify them as disabled.
Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found in a just-released study that the number of individuals with disabilities in the U.S. grew by 1.7 million. That growth stemmed mainly from long COVID conditions such as fatigue and brain fog, meaning difficulties with concentration or memory, with 1.3 million people reporting an increase in brain fog since mid-2020.
Many had to drop out of the labor force due to long COVID. Yet, about 900,000 people who are newly disabled have managed to continue working. Without remote work, they might have lost these jobs.
For example, a software engineer at one of my client companies has struggled with brain fog related to long COVID. With remote work, this employee can work during the hours when she feels most mentally alert and focused, even if that means short bursts of productivity throughout the day. With flexible scheduling, she can take rests, meditate, or engage in activities that help her regain focus and energy. Without the need to commute to the office, she can save energy and time and reduce stress, which is crucial when dealing with brain fog.
In fact, the author of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York study notes that long COVID can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disability Act, depending on the specifics of the condition. That means the law can require private employers with fifteen or more staff, as well as government agencies, to make reasonable accommodations for those with long COVID. Richard Deitz, the author of this study, writes in the paper that “telework and flexible scheduling are two accommodations that can be particularly beneficial for workers dealing with fatigue and brain fog.”
The current drive to return to the office, led by many C-suite executives, may need to be reconsidered in light of legal and HR considerations. Arlene S. Kanter, director of the disability law and policy program at the Syracuse University College of Law, said that the question should depend on whether people with disabilities can perform their work well at home, as they did during Covid outbreaks. “[T]hen people with disabilities, as a matter of accommodation, shouldn’t be denied that right,” Kanter said.
Diversity benefits
But companies shouldn’t need to worry about legal regulations. It simply makes dollars and sense to expand their talent pool by 15% of an underrepresented minority. After all, extensive research shows that improving diversity boosts both decision-making and financial performance.
Companies that are offering more flexible work options have already gained significant benefits in terms of diverse hires. In its efforts to adapt to the post-pandemic environment, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, decided to offer permanent fully remote work options to its entire workforce. And according to Meta chief diversity officer Maxine Williams, the candidates who accepted job offers for remote positions were “substantially more likely” to come from diverse communities: people with disabilities, Black, Hispanic, Alaskan Native, Native American, veterans, and women. The numbers bear out these claims: people with disabilities increased from 4.7 to 6.2 percent of Meta’s employees.
Having consulted for 21 companies to help them transition to hybrid work arrangements, I can confirm that Meta’s numbers aren’t a fluke. The more my clients proved willing to offer remote work, the more staff with disabilities they recruited - and retained. That includes employees with mobility challenges. But it also includes employees with less visible disabilities, such as people with long COVID and immunocompromised people who feel reluctant to put themselves at risk of getting COVID by coming into the office.
Unfortunately, many leaders fail to see the benefits of remote work for underrepresented groups, such as those with disabilities. Some even say the opposite is true, with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon claiming that returning to the office will aid diversity.
What explains this poor executive decision making? Part of the answer comes from a mental blindspot called the in-group bias. Our minds tend to favor and pay attention to the concerns of those in the group of people who seem to look and think like us. Dimon and other executives without disabilities don’t perceive people with disabilities to be part of their in-group. They thus are blind to the concerns of those with disabilities, which leads to misperceptions such as Dimon’s that returning to the office will aid diversity.
In-group bias is one of many dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases. They impact decision making in all life areas, ranging from the future of work to relationships.
Another relevant cognitive bias is the empathy gap. This term refers to our difficulty empathizing with those outside of our in-group. The lack of empathy combines with the blindness from the in-group bias, causing executives to ignore the feelings of employees with disabilities and prospective hires.
Omission bias also plays a role. This dangerous judgment error causes us to perceive failure to act as less problematic than acting. Consequently, executives perceive a failure to support the needs of those with disabilities as a minor matter.
Conclusion
The failure to empower people with disabilities through remote work options will prove costly to the bottom lines of companies. Not only are limiting their talent pool by 15 percent, they’re harming their ability to recruit and retain diverse candidates. And as their lawyers and HR departments will tell them, by violating the ADA, they are putting themselves in legal jeopardy.
By contrast, companies like Meta - and my clients - that offer remote work opportunities are seizing a competitive advantage by recruiting these underrepresented candidates. They’re lowering costs of labor while increasing diversity. The future belongs to the savvy companies that offer the flexibility that people with disabilities need.