Testing your water
Get to know and trust your water source: test it! There are many contaminants in the tap water harmful to your health that could come from your home’s plumbing, fixtures or appliances, and not just the municipal water source.
Testing water at home with the First Alert drinking water test kit is very easy. The kit, pictured immediate right, includes all the testing materials you need to test for common water contaminants, including bacteria, lead, pesticides, nitrates and nitrities, chlorine, and hardness. This kit also tests water pH, which is important because if the water’s pH is out of whack it can corrode plumbing and contaminants like lead or copper leach lead into your water.
Reasons to Test your Water Be water safe and test your water for lead, nitrates, arsenic, and the like. Be sure to check for a wide range of bacteria, viruses, and parasites, as even microorganisms that may contaminate the tap water. Whatever you do, be sure to test your water
Acidity.
Why test your water for acidity? For starters, it’s bad to drink acidic water because it can cause you to absorb too much mercury. Also, water that’s acidic causes corrosion of pipes and this in turn can cause copper, lead or zinc, to leach into your drinking water. You want to a pH balance for optimum health.
Acidic water (bad). Drinking acidic water can cause you to absorb too much copper, lead, mercury and zinc. Acidic water can have a negative effect on your health. In testing for acidity in water, you may find excessive hydrogen and this in turn causes the body to be acidic too. Copper, lead, mercury, zinc ~ it’s all stuff you want to avoid in excess, but you won’t know about it until you test for it.
Test kits for water analysis
In this course we step outside the laboratory to look at some examples of analytical procedures being carried out in the field using commercial test kits. Having quick tests that provide results on-site has extended the options available to the analyst. The methods used are chemical or microbiological in nature, and, thanks to advances in microelectronics, portable versions of standard laboratory instrumentation are commercially available.
But this doesn’t mean this subject is new; the natural philosopher and military leader Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) described how the Romans used papyrus soaked in an extract from galls (small lumps produced when insects bore into wood) to detect iron in vinegar (Jungreis, 1997).
This was an early version of the spot test, which, in its simplest form, involves mixing a drop of an unknown substance with a drop of reagent, on some form of supporting medium (e.g. paper) and making an observation such as a colour change, effervescence or precipitation (or even noting a characteristic smell). Tests like this are, for many of us, reminiscent of our earliest introduction to chemistry.
The portable kits we’re looking at in this course are in many ways natural extensions of these tests. Thanks to the technical ingenuity of a number of specialist manufacturers, kits are available for such diverse applications as water testing, food and beverage analysis, clinical measurements, air quality monitoring and forensics
Study note
In this course we will be looking at techniques that include wet chemical methods, molecular spectroscopy and electrochemistry
Water Quality Testing
Lake Management recommends regularly scheduled water quality testing services to ensure lakes and ponds are in peak condition year-round, especially if they are used for swimming, fishing, drinking water or irrigation.
certified professionals are prepared to assess your lake or pond water for: pH, dissolved oxygen, phosphates, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, hardness, alkalinity, salinity, temperature, clarity, turbidity, conductivity, ORP, fecal coliform, E. coli and much more.
Send your water sample to us for a complete water test & report!
Our standard test will check your sample for nitrites, phosphates, pH and ammonia. We can also test your sample for dissolved oxygen, hardness, alkalinity, salinity and more.
Science Teacher’s Toolbox: Testing Water Quality
Water is one of our most precious resources. The Earth is about 71% water, but not all of it is readily available and safe for us to drink. There are many ways to teach your students and your own children about water conservation. From the water cycle, to strategies to conserve water and water quality testing, there are tons of learning opportunities here.
Testing water quality is a great way to engage students in collecting data and contributing to science at a local and global level. This type of project is certainly not just for school, it could be done at home, in an environmental club, summer camp, etc.
WATER QUALITY
It is easy to get involved in a global water quality testing project through the EarthEcho Water Challenge (formerly the World Water Monitoring Challenge). This is an international citizen science project where groups and individuals complete basic water quality tests on local bodies of water and contribute their findings online. Test kits are reasonably priced and can be ordered through Lamotte here.
If you do not have experience testing pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity or temperature of water I would highly recommend these easy to use kits and resources! As this program has grown they have included many educational resources. You can find lesson plans that were developed especially for this project
I have used these kits as an introduction to water quality with my students in our classroom aquarium and then outside in a local stream and some human-made ponds. The kids enjoy doing the tests and really take ownership over their data collection as they know they are reporting it to the EarthEcho Water Challenge.
Water Quality Testing Instruments Information
Water quality testing instruments are used to test water for chemical and biological agents, and to measure variables such as clarity and rate of movement. These instruments provide a standard tool that can be used to collect information from various water sources. Water quality testing instruments can monitor water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, nitrogen/phosphorus concentration, turbidity, macroinvertebrates, and levels of pesticides and toxic chemicals.
Types
Water quality testing instruments can be used to test a variety of conditions in a water sample. These measurements include:
Interface level analyzers are designed to detect the level of an oil and water interface.
Oil in water monitors are designed to measure the amount of oil in water.
Potential of hydrogen (pH) instruments measure pH levels. pH is critical to the vegetation and plant life in a body of water. pH can vary daily and between seasons due to the photosynthesis of plants. Contaminates from other sources, such as mine drainage, acid rain, or chemical spills can also cause drastic changes in the pH level. Water quality testing instruments use an electrode with a small electrical current to through the water sample. When immersed in water, the electrode develops an electrical potential that is related to the pH of the solution. A clogged or dirty junction is a common source of measurement error.
Voltammetry water quality testing instruments vary electric potential while measuring the resultant current, which can be used to determine the chemistry of the conducting medium. Devices use either anodic stripping voltammetry or cathodic stripping voltammetry.
Conductivity/dissolved solids – Conductivity is a measure of water’s ability to conduct an electrical current. Conductivity is determined by the water temperature and concentration of dissolved salts or other substances that can carry an electrical charge. While there is no water quality standard for conductivity, it can be a useful diagnostic tool for interpreting other water quality information. It is measured with a meter and reported using units called micromhos/centimeter (mhos/cm). Conductivity meters are factory calibrated, but should be periodically tested for accuracy in a standard salt solution.
Turbidity/suspended solids – Turbidity is defined as the optical property of a sample that causes light to be scattered and absorbed. This quality varies with the number and size of particles present in the water column. Turbidity is relatively easy and inexpensive to measure and is often the basis for water quality standards. It can be correlated with suspended sediment on a site-specific basis. Turbidity can help monitor baseline trends as well as the effect of a specific project on water quality. The instrument which measures turbidity measures the scatter of light and performs better for high and low turbidity.