20 Years of Advancing Worker Safety: ChemDAQ’s Journey and the Evolution of Workplace Gas Monitoring

In 2026, ChemDAQ proudly celebrates 20 years of advancing safety in some of the world’s most critical working environments.

Since its incorporation on May 3, 2006, ChemDAQ has focused on solving a critical challenge faced across multiple industries: the reliable monitoring and control of hard-to-detect hazardous chemical vapors. These vapors play an essential role in sterilization, disinfection, and aseptic processing, but can pose serious risks to worker safety if exposure is not properly managed.

Over the past two decades, industries including hospital sterile processing, medical device manufacturing, and food & beverage processing have significantly advanced their approach to hazardous gas monitoring and chemical safety.  ChemDAQ is proud to have played a significant role in that evolution, helping organizations create safer, more controlled environments for their teams.

From day one, our mission has been to empower our customers to eliminate workplace exposure to toxic chemicals through innovative monitoring and control solutions, industry-leading partnerships, and superior safety expertise. Over time, we’ve seen the culture of safety increase, standards and regulations strengthen, and technology advance.

This milestone represents more than a company birthday. It reflects two decades of progress in protecting workers, improving awareness and compliance, and helping organizations build safer, smarter operations.

The Safety Landscape 20 Years Ago

Twenty years ago, many facilities relied on periodic testing, manual logs, and reactive safety practices to manage hazardous chemical vapor exposure - if it was prioritized at all. Monitoring was typically intermittent rather than continuous, detection methods were often slow, and data collection was limited. Response times depended heavily on manual intervention, creating gaps in protection.

Compounding these challenges, many sensor technologies were prone to false alarms due to cross-sensitivity with other chemicals, and monitoring systems were not integrated, providing only a fragmented view of conditions. As a result, consistent and reliable monitoring was difficult to achieve, and in many cases, it simply wasn’t implemented at all.

Facilities managing gases such as ethylene oxide (EtO), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and peracetic acid (PAA) often had limited visibility into daily exposure levels.

At the time ChemDAQ was founded, the need was clear: develop technology that could provide highly accurate, continuous visibility into environments where hard-to-detect hazardous gases are used for sterilization, disinfection, and aseptic processing.

Early Innovation and Industry Challenges

ChemDAQ’s early years focused on developing ethylene oxide monitoring technology designed specifically for sterile processing departments in hospitals. At the time, while there were some gas monitoring systems in place, they were not continuously and simultaneously monitoring, nor were they integrated into a single dashboard. ChemDAQ started with data acquisition (the “DAQ” in ChemDAQ) to solve this challenge.

Next, ChemDAQ developed fixed monitors and sensors designed specifically for EtO – a widely used sterilant at the time in hospital settings. EtO played a critical role in reprocessing heat and moisture-sensitive medical devices and instruments in sterile processing departments, making accurate and reliable monitoring essential for both safety and compliance.

The key to that technology was the creation of our patented EtO sensor filter, which prevents cross-interference from VOCs like carbon monoxide and alcohols, which are frequently found in healthcare environments. This drastically reduced false alarms and allowed hospitals to deploy reliable monitoring with confidence.

To this day, selectivity remains ChemDAQ’s core competency. We accomplish this through our patented filter technology, novel calibration process, and ChemDAQ’s proprietary calibration software. 

It didn’t take long for that same technology to expand into medical device sterilization facilities throughout the country. We soon complemented the EtO sensor with sensors for Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Oxygen in order to provide even broader protection for workers in the medical device sterilization industry.

Expanding Detection Technologies

As sterilization technology evolved, so did ChemDAQ’s monitoring solutions. This responsiveness to industry changes became a defining characteristic of the company.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, EtO’s health impacts as a human carcinogen became more widely understood. This growing awareness, along with evolving standards and regulations, drove critical innovation in medical device reprocessing, leading to the development of low-temperature sterilizers using vaporized H2O2. 

H2O2 is an odorless sterilant chemical that also poses exposure risks to sterile processing department (SPD) professionals if not properly monitored. In response, ChemDAQ created and deployed H2O2 sensors tailored specifically for the hospital market.

High-level disinfection followed a similar pattern with the transition from glutaraldehyde to peracetic acid. While often viewed as a safer alternative, PAA is a corrosive chemical that can irritate the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract. Prolonged exposure is also linked to occupational asthma. The rise in PAA use, particularly in hospital endoscope reprocessing departments, also coincided with a transition away from chlorinated chemicals in food processing and aseptic packaging toward PAA. Understanding the need to protect workers from over-exposure to PAA, ChemDAQ created the first commercially available PAA sensor in 2012. 

The challenge in developing the PAA sensor was primarily due to cross-interference from the acetic acid and H2O2 components that make up the liquid chemical. As such, previous detection and analysis efforts were labor-intensive and time-consuming. ChemDAQ solved this problem with patented sensor filter technology, which greatly improved sensor performance, accuracy, and reliability. Since then, our PAA sensors have been used in numerous independent studies to measure the impact of PAA over-exposure on workers. 

Portable Monitoring Capabilities

While the core focus for ChemDAQ has always been continuous monitoring, experience with our customers and partners uncovered the need for portable monitoring capabilities in certain situations, particularly in large-scale food and beverage processing facilities. To meet this demand, ChemDAQ developed the SafeCide portable monitor.

The SafeCide allowed customers to reliably monitor PAA and H2O2 in various locations throughout facilities to confirm workers were not exposed above established short-term exposure limits (STELs) and threshold limit values (TLVs). This innovation made it easier than ever to conduct exposure assessments, log data for specific areas and job functions, and inform workflows to ensure smooth and efficient business operations. In summary, this technology informed the transition from simple detection to integrated safety management.

Next Generation Monitoring Systems

As demand for real-time safety data increased, ChemDAQ continued expanding its monitoring platforms.

The introduction of Steri-Trac 2 and Steri-Trac 2+ represented the next generation of fixed, continuous monitoring systems, providing improved connectivity, expanded sensor support, and enhanced data management capabilities. One of the system's key features was its ability to display real-time readings alongside both STEL and PEL values on one screen, directly at the monitoring point. It also incorporated unique audible and visual alarms for each value.

These systems allowed facilities to better integrate gas monitoring into daily operations while maintaining detailed exposure documentation required for regulatory compliance. In part because of these technologies, standards and regulations have evolved to increase the expectation and culture of safety in the industries we serve.

Sensor Exchange Program (SXP)

Since the beginning, ChemDAQ has approached sensor calibration differently. We believe our customers should be focused on their work, which is critical to the healthcare supply chain and the global food supply, rather than slowed down by gas monitor maintenance and sensor calibration requirements. For the past 20 years, ChemDAQ has handled sensor calibration at our headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA. Using our novel process and proprietary software, we calibrate each sensor by hand to ensure maximum possible performance.

After calibration, we ship pre-calibrated sensors directly to our customers to replace their expired sensors. All customers need to do is ship their expired sensors back to ChemDAQ for reprocessing. This approach has kept business operations moving across industries for two decades. 

Global Expansion

Over the past two years, ChemDAQ has accelerated the deployment of our monitoring technologies worldwide. Key partnerships with organizations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have brought ChemDAQ’s monitoring systems to 5 continents, supporting the workers who sterilize, disinfect, and process the medical devices and food and beverages consumers use every day.

In 2025, ChemDAQ launched its first franchise calibration center in collaboration with Tomoe Asia, supporting customers in Southeast Asia and Japan with EtO sensor calibration and technical services. ChemDAQ plans to launch additional calibration centers in key markets in the coming years to provide regional service and logistics support, fueling greater capacity for sustainable growth.

Looking Ahead: The Next 20 Years

As ChemDAQ celebrates its 20th birthday, we remain committed to advancing monitoring technology for markets that are underserved by traditional gas detection companies. This 20-year milestone belongs not only to ChemDAQ, but to the customers, partners, engineers, and safety professionals who trust ChemDAQ’s monitoring technologies every day. The workers at these facilities dedicate their careers to ensuring that our medical instruments are sterile and that the food we consume is free of bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses. At ChemDAQ, we are bound by the duty to protect those individuals from overexposure to chemicals with known hazards to human health.

As we celebrate our 20th birthday, we pledge our commitment to this mission. We will continue to innovate and develop new solutions that help empower our customers to better protect their employees and business operations while leading the global conversation around worker safety from overexposure to toxic chemicals.

In closing, we are deeply grateful to the customers, partners, and employees who have made our 20 years possible. Your commitment, passion, and loyalty have shaped our culture of excellence and continue to inspire us as we carry our mission forward for the next 20 years and beyond.

Onward!