Outline for Lab 2 – Water Quality and Contamination

Freshwater quality is a major concern globally as freshwater adds up to only 1% of the total water in the world (eScience Lab Manual, 2012, pg. 24). Freshwater is not always available depending on the geography, and there are significant concerns with some countries such as Bangladesh that have major groundwater contamination issues such as arsenic contamination (Smith et al., 2000). Access to freshwater is a significant problem that several developing countries face, but even first world countries like the United States have experienced more issues related to water pollution, most recently with the methane pollution that is thought to contribute to drinking water contamination in Pennsylvania and other states (Jackson et al., 2013). Water pollution and quality is a major public health concern and is sometimes overlooked in its importance and effect on the public, for instance, raw sewage contamination is thought to contribute to 3.5 million illnesses each year, many of which go unreported because of the difficulty in diagnosing water contamination as the cause of illness (Dorfman and Haran, 2010).

Lab 2 is being performed to test the effect of regular environmental pollutants on water. Everyday products can affect water quality, and the products that are used in households regularly can end up being dispersed into groundwater supplies and lead to drinking water pollution. Lab 2 explores the effects of different regular contaminants on water and tests the ability for soil to remove contaminants from water, the ability for a filtering method based on a standard water treatment facility to purify water, and the quality of bottled water compared to tap water. We predict that for Experiment 1 that when soil is used as a water filter by itself, it cannot remove 100% of the pollutants tested. For Experiment 2, when a more sophisticated filtering method is used, the resulting treated water will be purer than if the soil is used by itself. For Experiment 3, when bottled water is produced, some of the same contaminants that are found in tap water can be still be found in bottled water.

Materials and Methods

We used beakers, stir sticks, cheesecloth, scissors, graduated cylinders, and a funnel for Experiment 1in order to test the effects of soil contamination. The beakers were used to hold the contaminants in a water mixture, the funnel was used to hold the soil. Cheesecloth was used as a lining so that the funnel could be reused and to filter the soil from the water. In Experiment 2 a more sophisticated filter was created using a cheesecloth-lined funnel, a layer of sand, activated charcoal, and gravel, and was used to filter water contaminated with soil. In Experiment 3 bottled water was tested using chloride, phosphate, iron, ammonia and 4 in 1 test strips, and beakers were used to hold the bottled water being tested, and a stopwatch was used to measure the intervals of time required for each test. Results

Discussion

The results of each Lab 2 experiment confirmed each hypothesis. Experiment 1 confirmed that soil by itself is not an effective filter for regular pollutants. As a result, there needs to be more careful consideration about how household products are discarded, as groundwater contamination comes from landfills, leaking storage tanks, and other preventable sources (eScience Lab Manual, 2012, pg. 25). Experiment 2 confirmed that a simple filter based on what water treatment facilities can be effective at removing contaminants, and Experiment 3 showed that bottled water has a significant number of contaminants. The bottled water industry may need to be more tightly regulated because major bottled water brands do have contaminants, and there have been improved standards required by the FDA after a study found that a third of bottled water brands have significant levels of contamination (Olson, 2013).

The main factor that may have affected Experiments 1 and 2 results was the quality of the cheesecloth filter. If the filter was not properly folded in experiment 1, it would allow more contaminants through, and the same issue would occur in Experiment 2. To improve this, a filter that does not require folding could be used for future experiments such as a very fine mesh filter. For Experiment 3, the procedure was accurate, but it could be improved by adding additional types of water tests and by testing more brands as well to gather more data. Other factors that could influence results include contamination from not thoroughly cleaning the beakers or funnels before reusing them.

Conclusions

The main points of these experiments were to show that groundwater can easily be contaminated with just regular household products, that treatment plants offer an effective service for providing clean water, and that bottled water brands have contaminants that need to be controlled better. More attention needs to be focused on freshwater pollution and how to control it globally to protect scarce freshwater supplies, and bottled water companies may need more regulation to control the purity of their products.

References

Dorfman, M., & Haren, A. (2010). Testing the Waters: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches. Testing the Waters, 23. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/2013/ttw2013_Executive_Overview.pdf

Jackson, R. B., Vengosh, A., Darrah, T. H., Warner, N. R., Down, A., Poreda, R. J., et al. (2013). Increased stray gas abundance in a subset of drinking water wells near Marcellus shale gas extraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(28), 11250-11255.

Olson, E. D. (2013) Bottled Water - Pure Drink or Pure Hype?. NRDC. Retrieved April 12, 2014, from http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp

Smith, A. H., Lingas, E. O., & Rahman, M. (2000). Contamination of drinking-water by arsenic in Bangladesh: a public health emergency. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 78(9), 1093-1103.

eScience Labs Manual (pp. 23-35). (2012). Lab 2 Water Quality and Contamination. Sheridan, CO: eScience Labs, LLC.