Friday, September 25, 2009

Don't drink the water at school...

According to an investigation by the Associated Press, the drinking water at public and private schools in all 50 states in the U.S. has been found to contain various contaminants, including coliform bacteria, lead, copper, arsenic, nitrates, pesticides like 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP), and disinfectants. Contamination is worst at schools that use well water.

Amazingly, this problem has been mostly ignored by the federal government even as the number of violations against the Safe Drinking Water Act have increased significantly over the past 10 years. Apparently, drinking water monitoring is inefficiently spread out among too many local, state, and federal agencies, such that many risks are going unreported, and devising an effective national monitoring plan will be complicated and expensive. Right now, the EPA can only provide guidelines on environmental practices, since it doesn't have the authority to require testing for all schools.

The AP's analysis of a database of federal drinking water violations from 1998 to 2008 revealed that California (which has the most schools of any state) had the greatest number of violations (612), followed by Ohio (451), Maine (417), Connecticut (318), and Indiana (289). The most common contaminant was coliform bacteria, followed by lead, copper, arsenic, and nitrates.

I guess the good news is that the number of schools with unsafe water represents only a small percentage of the nation's 132,500 schools, but something needs to be done. Kids drink more water per pound than adults, so they are more susceptible to the effects of contaminants in water as well as food. It's probably best to give your kids (bottled, if you trust it, or filtered) water to bring to school so that they don't have to drink the school's water.

Sometimes I wonder what's in our tap water at home. We filter it, but even then, what gets through the filter? I honestly don't know, and I'm just assuming it's fine. Anyone have an atomic absorption spectrometer and GC-MS?

6 comments:

  1. Actually, yeah I do. Well the University of Cincinnati does and at this moment I am looking for ideas for my senior project. Anything in mind?

    Kim Peddenpohl
    peddenka@mail.uc.edu

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  2. Oh, I was just curious about what types and levels of heavy metals and organics are in our tap water at home. What kind of projects (scope) are you thinking of?

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  3. Well I'm really interested in monitoring the levels of melatonin produced in people with sleep deficiency issues. I've found out so far that a small amount is excreted in urine or can be found in saliva, so I was thinking about trying to find a correlation between that and how much is produced in various individuals.

    Or I was thinking about how much cafffeine is in the coffee bean, grounds, and what is brewed. How this varies in different brands and what not although I haven't researched this yet so it may have been done already.

    The only other thing I thought of was the difference between tobacco fresh from the fields and then that in cigarettes. I know there are so many harmful chemicals that are a factor in cigarettes but I was wondering how harmful the tobacco from fields are in relation. Plus it would give me more evidence to get my mother to quit.

    Any advice?

    Kim Peddenpohl
    peddenka@mail.uc.edu

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  4. Hmm. It seems like the melatonin idea may have already been done. For example: Melatonin excretion levels and polysomnographic sleep parameters in healthy subjects and patients with sleep-related disturbances. I also wouldn't be surprised if the coffee idea has already been done as well. For example: Caffeine content in coffee as influenced by grinding and brewing techniques, and Caffeine levels differ among coffee brands. There also seem to have been various studies on changes in composition in fresh tobacco leaves with curing. For example: Changes of Polyphenols in Tobacco Leaves During the Flue-Curing Process and Correlation Analysis on Some Chemical Components. Also, since cigarettes contain a bunch of other junk in them, you'd probably need to know what percentage of the cigarette is actually tobacco leaf in order to make an accurate comparison...

    Maybe you can set up a project to test the quality control of the preparation of different types of coffee drinks at chain stores, like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts (they're everywhere, so you can get a nice sample size!) Measure the amount of caffeine with respect to variables such as type of drink, store, time of day prepared, etc., and look for the variability in the preparations. The downside is you'll have to buy the drinks. <:)

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  5. So I think I've decided on one of two projects. The first being that of testing local waterways for an antidiabetic drug called Metformin. A professor of mine said that recently a German publication found Metformin in waterways. It would be interesting to see how this relates with America, considering the obesity rate we have here.

    The other project idea was that of relation between body scent and odor. Another professor said that there is a lot of research going on to determine illnesses by the scent that your body gives off. Plus apparently, the FBI is trying to determine if it could be used as another fingerprint.I've found some general info on this online, so now I just need to do a scientific publication search to hopefully narrow down some options.

    What do you think?

    Kim Peddenpohl
    peddenka@mail.uc.edu

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  6. Both of those projects sound interesting. I think the first one might be a bit easier to do than the second one. I'm curious as to how Metformin gets into waterways in the first place. Is it not metabolized by the body when consumed? Or are people flushing it down the toilet?

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