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Room for Improvement in China’s Ammonia-Monitoring PracticesAmmonia is a colorless gas with a wide variety of industrial applications, including use as a raw material in the synthesis of common industrial products, such as plastics and fertilizers. However, it has an irritating odor and can be corrosive to the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract. Breathing ammonia-contaminated air can cause respiratory damage over the short term and lung disease over time.Because of these risks, regulatory agencies worldwide need to place limits on the permitted levels of airborne ammonia in the workplace, and protocols for how to properly measure airborne ammonia levels. In the People’s Republic of China, regulators expose sulfuric acid solutions to the air in a workplace and then use a method called Nessler reagent spectrophotometry to measure the amount of ammonia absorbed into the sulfuric acid solution. However, this method has some major limitations, such as the need to measure absorbed ammonia levels on the day of sampling and the fact that the Nessler reagent itself is highly poisonous.