Researches Develop New Test for Contaminated Water and Air

Toxic heavy metals are not anything you want to find in your air or your water, but it does happen not only from nature, but also from industry.

Researchers from the Cooperative Research Center for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment are the first in the world to come up with technology that will warn if water or air in a given location is contaminated with substances like arsenic, cadmium and lead.

The lead researcher is Andrew McKay, PhD student of CRC CARE and the University of Queensland, Australia. He is in the process of studying the changes that take place when they expose a particular water microbe to arsenic, cadmium and lead. These contaminates are produced both naturally and by industries around the world.

Right now there is no simple test to detect the contaminates. It must be done in a laboratory, is very expensive and can take months to complete.

The goal of the researchers is to develop a simple test that can be performed in the field that will warn if any of the contaminates reaches a dangerous level.

So far, the research has shown good progress in using water organisms as a tool to warn for contamination, most especially when there is more than one contaminate involved. They have found changes that are easy to see that take place in the organisms when they are exposed to higher levels of the contaminates. What happens is their growth and reproduction rates will go down and there is one effect that is very easy to spot. Their shape changes and they become either star of V shaped. When the levels of toxins are very high, the organism will die.

By observing these changes, scientists will be able to use the creatures as a kind of living sensor.

The hardest part of the project will be to develop a test that is sensitive enough to determine of the contamination level is high enough to pose a risk to humans.

Humans do not accumulate toxins at the same rate that the pond creatures do. Humans accumulate them over a period of years and the accumulation of these toxins can lead to cancers, immune system breakdown, nerve or brain damage and poisoning