PSP Personal Screen

RNS Number:8938P
Personal Screening PLC
22 January 2007


For release 
22 January 2007


     Personal Screening Plc ("Personal Screening" or "the Company") (PSP.L)

           #25,000 Grant Awarded to Personal Screening Subsidiary to
                Develop Field Test for Arsenic in Drinking Water

Personal Screening plc's ("Personal Screening") wholly owned subsidiary, Mermaid
Diagnostics Limited ("Mermaid"), has won a grant of #25,000 to develop Mermaid's
patented technology SafeTube, which is already commercially available as
SmokeScreen, a test for nicotine metabolites in urine, as a test for arsenic
contamination of potable water supplies.

The grant was given from the Technology Transfer Fund (TTF), a #3.8m fund,
managed by Birmingham Research and Development Ltd (BRDL), the University of
Birmingham's technology transfer company.

Significant investment in the World's poorest communities, where the supply of
clean drinking water is a high priority, has provided new supplies, in the form
of tube wells, to areas such as the Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately, many of
these new wells are contaminated with the highly toxic substance, arsenic, as a
result of local geology, whose chronic ingestion in small quantities may results
in gangrene of the extremities and cancer, particularly of the skin, lung and
bladder.

Regular tests need to be carried out on these wells, usually located in rural
areas, but laboratory testing is both time consuming and expensive. It is hoped
that the SafeTube test will provide a rapid, sensitive and inexpensive
alternative with immediate results, by alerting the population immediately
whether the well has a dangerously high level of arsenic.

In a recent report on the problem the World Health Organization (WHO) said there
was an urgent need for "Simple, reliable, low-cost equipment for field
measurement". Dr Dipander Chakraborti of the School of Environmental Sciences,
Jadavpur University, Calcutta, believes as many as 330 million people across the
subcontinent (India and Pakistan) could be at risk.

Dr. Graham Cope, who developed the SafeTube technology, says: "Arsenic poisoning
is a major problem on the Indian subcontinent and we believe the SafeTube
technology can be successfully adapted to produce a robust, sensitive test which
will protect the inhabitants of rural India and Bangladesh from chronic
poisoning."

Dr. Andy Mountain, Medical Technologies Manager, TTF, based at BRDL says: "We
believe Mermaid Diagnostics has a good technology with a fine track record of
applications and we fully support them in their efforts to develop a new test to
help detect the contamination of water supplies, so important to the rural
communities of the Indian Subcontinent."

- ENDS -


Editor's Notes

   *The latest WHO survey suggests around 70 million people are at risk of
    arsenic poisoning from drinking non potable water.
   *The effects of chronic ingestion of this substance range from skin
    pigmentation to gangrene of the extremities and cancer of the skin, lung and
    bladder.
   *Arsenic in drinking water is thought to pose the highest cancer risk ever
    found. Recent estimates from the WHO suggest that arsenic in drinking water
    will cause 200,000 to 270,000 deaths in Bangladesh alone.
   *45.5% of hand tube wells have arsenic contamination above the recommended
    levels.


For further information, please contact:

Personal Screening plc
Michael Scorey, Chairman                 01384 352 717

Mermaid Diagnostics Limited
Dr Graham Cope                           01384 352 717

Adventis Financial PR
Chris Steele                             020 7034 4759






                      This information is provided by RNS
            The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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