What’s the deal with our rinse water?
This morning I said that I couldn’t mail the ultrapure or ‘mercury-free’ water from the lab up to Zen to sample, so instead I asked her to buy some bottles of Poland Spring (no endorsement of any type of water – I just figured it’s probably easily available). We also used Poland Spring water in the field today, to rinse our templates and knife between sub-plots. Why did we use that type of water instead of tap water or something else?
You might want to start on the Poland Spring website, and see if you can find any mention of mercury in any of their water quality reports. Why do bottled water companies and drinking water suppliers (like cities) test their water for chemicals?
7 Comments:
Poland Springs if I remember correctly comes straight from a aquifer. This aquifer is about to filter out all the toxic chemicals. We also know the mercury only affects the soil level and doesn't go below the b horizon(I am not positive that this is correct but I am going with it) SO the water that comes from poland springs should be clean of mercury. Tap water could be dirty from where it is taken and the pipes that the sink comes in contact with. Tap water has a higher risk of being dirty and therefore could be a risk factor that might ruin the research. Also poland spring doesn't mention it on their test of what minerals are in their water. It may be best to test the water to actually see if it doesn't. They test their water because we drink the water and could get those pollutants in us and they could cause lasting affects that could never be traced. It is to be safe that they check their waters.
By Ian Macomber, At January 10, 2007 7:18 PM
Good start, Ian. There's an interesting story about drinking water. In Maine, drinking water comes from two main 'providers' - (1) cities and towns, and (2) private wells (people who dig or drill a well in their own yard). Cities and towns may get their water from groundwater (aquifers), a municipal well - like a private well a person in a rural area might have in their back yard, or surface waters - like lakes and streams. Here's a hint: I know Bangor's "city water" comes from a lake. I don't know where Limestone's water comes from. So if we all want to use the same thing...
Also, this ties in to our discussion of error - a bias is OK but lots of random error is not. Anyone want to try to knit this story together?
And I would be remiss if I didn't let you know that water coming out of a tap - if it is from a public water supply like a town or city - is very carefully regulated and tested, so it's not likely to be 'dirty', despite the impression people sometimes have.
(FYI, Maine's Drinking Water Program has a web site at http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/eng/water/)
By Sarah Nelson, At January 10, 2007 9:25 PM
Tap water is most definitely not the way to go since it's usually contaminated with all kinds of stuff. I imagine using Poland Springs is to maintain consistency in the experiment since that's the water that Sarah used in her watersheds.
By Natalie Jimenez, At January 11, 2007 7:20 PM
I couldn't find much from the Poland Springs website. I find it kind of interesting though that they are now shipping out water to people's houses. Anyway, it is important to remain consistent when experimenting, which is one reason why we had to use Poland Springs. We could've used any type of water, but Poland Springs was used for one sample, so it had to be used for all the others in order to remain consistent. There is probably something special about Poland Springs but I haven't been able to find anything.
By Nick Jimenez, At January 11, 2007 7:27 PM
I would imagine that the poland spring swater is kind of like something I did with rocket fule a while back. Now some of you may be going WHAAAAAA how does rocket fuel even remotely tie into water? this is because if you think about it rocket fuel made at seperate times has a small amount of differences in it. it is inconsitent. SO to get consitant rocket fuel you have to make enough for BOTH Rocket boosters at the same time. otherwise one may ignite shortly before the other causing whatever it is boosting to careen uncontrollably in one direction.
This ties into the water because all the water is bottled at the same time so all the inconsitancies in it are the same from one bottle to the next. however with tap water there can always be the chunk of whatever in the pipe that decides to come loose at a particular moment causing a pocket of inconsitency and, shortly following, random error. If there is any error in the poland spring water it would be a constant error because all the water comes from a concentrated place and is bottled at the same place purified and shipped at the same place. all of these help reduce inconsitencies between individual bottles and even though they may be contaminated with trace amounts, the trace amounts remain faily constant.
By Jordan Dolan, At January 11, 2007 7:58 PM
You said Poland Springs would be a good choice because of its availability, so in order to remain consistant in the rest of the samples, the same type of water should be used. Poland Springs water comes from an aquifer, and deeper down there is less mercury retained in the soil that could possibly be leeched into the water.
By Courtney Keen, At January 11, 2007 8:19 PM
I couldn't find anything on the Poland Spring website about mercury levels, but I assume that Poland Spring water has low amount of mercury. I think that also it might have something to do with keeping factors constant, and Poland Spring water being easy to get.
By Kaitlin Stenberg, At January 12, 2007 4:10 PM
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