Water Quality Testing has become a necessary component of building maintenance and property management. Contaminants such as pesticides, herbicides, chlorine, lead, cysts, bacteria, and other naturally occurring elements contaminate our water supplies. Contaminated water may result in serious health risks. The threat can not be underestimated. In Washington DC, there have been many cases of contaminated drinking water. These instances were caused by industrial waste or human error.
Based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality standards, the quality of a water body determines the level of protection required. Testing can be performed either in the lab using sophisticated portable testing instruments or onsite with onsite mobile labs. Samples can be collected on-site from the waterbody and then analyzed at the laboratory. A management plan can then be developed. In the Washington DC metropolitan area, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) monitors the quality of the water through two different means. The primary method involves sending survey teams out to the waterbody on a regular basis and collecting samples to analyze based on the guidelines provided by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Subsequently, analysis of the samples is sent back to the Washington DC laboratory for evaluation and report development. Both types of sampling sites are used to determine if human health is negatively affected by the contaminant in question. If samples from one sampling site indicate a problem, samples from a second site should also be sent for an independent analysis. Once the results are in, the operator of the water quality testing facility will determine what actions need to be taken, if any.
In addition to the onsite laboratory testing mentioned above, there are also offsite kits that can be purchased from the Washington DC Wastewater Treatment Center. These are specially designed, non-invasive testing devices that can detect all possible contaminants in a water body. These water quality testing kits are available from a few different vendors, including EIA, PHE, and Everglobes. In addition to providing portable sampling kits, they also provide water chemistry indicators, pH testers, and corrosion indicators. A majority of these kits are designed to be used in mobile laboratories.
One of the main purposes of water quality testing is to determine if contaminants in a specific water source are increasing due to biological activity, organic contamination, or surface water contamination. When this happens, the user must take action in order to remove the unwanted element before it has the opportunity to do harm to a person or animal. In cases where a certain contaminant is not removed, it will continue to increase in concentration until a suitable alternative is found. Mobile laboratories can detect these unwanted elements and alert the user to their presence so that steps can be taken to eliminate or mitigate their effect.
Another use of mobile laboratories is to determine if a specific contaminant is removing the desired amount of a particular nutrient from surface water. Some people make the decision to install water quality testing equipment in order to provide the most appropriate information for users. For example, some companies may choose to perform both qualitative observations and test kits in order to determine the amount of potassium, sodium, and magnesium present in a specific water resource. This is helpful in cases where one contaminant is thought to be the sole cause of a deficiency while another is thought to be the cause of a surplus.
In many cases, qualitative observations provide conclusive evidence of a drinking water quality problem without the need for expensive laboratory tests. This is especially true in situations where the contaminants in question have been found in surface and groundwater samples. However, in other cases, more detailed testing may be necessary to pinpoint exactly where the contamination is originating from and to determine what actions need to be taken to remove it. This is where some people turn to the use of testing instruments that can detect contaminants in a specific drinking water resource at a very high level.
As cast 2021 enters the field of literature and popular consciousness, more emphasis is being placed on the value of laboratory testing for public health and safety. Without a doubt, the role of these specialized laboratories in society cannot be dismissed completely. The increasing use of laboratory quality testing supplies in drinking water quality control efforts can only strengthen this important practice.