Every morning, people fasten their watch, slip on a bracelet and head out the door without thinking much about what they might encounter along the way. The air they breathe, the dust on their hands and the surfaces they touch all feel ordinary. Yet many chemical exposures happen quietly, without smell, taste or warning.
What if something as simple as a silicone band around your wrist could help track those invisible exposures?
Environmental monitoring has traditionally relied on snapshots of exposure from a water sample collected on a single day, a blood sample drawn at one point in time, or soil tested from a specific location. But exposure unfolds gradually as people move through different environments and come into contact with air, dust and surfaces throughout the day.
New noninvasive monitoring tools aim to capture that longer-term picture.
As synthetic chemicals such as “forever chemicals,” known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), become more widespread in everyday environments, scientists are increasingly focused on understanding how exposure to these substances occurs in daily life.
PFAS are called forever chemicals because they take a very long time to degrade in the environment.
Traditional monitoring misses everyday reality
Traditional monitoring methods are essential for identifying contamination, but they capture exposure as a moment rather than something that unfolds over time.
In studies involving people, measuring exposure often requires invasive procedures such as blood draws, which can be expensive, logistically challenging and, for some participants, uncomfortable enough to discourage involvement.
Early in my environmental chemistry research, I noticed something that didn’t quite add up. People living in the same agricultural community, or animals sharing the same landscape, often showed very different chemical profiles even when environmental measurements looked similar. The surroundings hadn’t changed much; daily behavior had.
Movement through different spaces, time spent indoors or outdoors, contact with treated surfaces and interactions with consumer products all shape exposure in ways a single sample can’t fully capture. That realization raised a larger question: If exposure unfolds gradually, how can scientists measure it using tools designed for specific moments? Answering that question requires a shift away from isolated measurements and toward approaches that reflect lived experience.
What noninvasive tools change
That question led me to work with passive, noninvasive monitoring tools, including silicone wristbands. Rather than actively collecting samples, these tools absorb chemicals from the surrounding environment over time, similar to how skin or fur interacts with air, dust and surfaces.
Silicone wristbands work because they are made of a silicone polymer called polydimethylsiloxane, or…
