4 ms·

I've looked into this myself. Unfortunately it's not practical. Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals

I've looked into this myself. Unfortunately it's not practical. Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals that are dangerous at 1ppb only gas-chemotography / mass-spectrometry can detect that, which would cost upward of $500 per test per chemical and be done at a university lab. Might be more practical to only drink filtered or distilled water. Normal water filters do a shockingly good job with most chemicals, not sure about PFAs.

tshannon 8y ago
Carbon filters clean up "some" of them, but not all. Reverse Osmosis is better if you can afford it. The filtering really should be done by the city / government on an industrial scale (like CG did in the article) where it's not only more cost efficient, but also their responsibility.
- smolder 8y ago
  Reverse osmosis also wastes a certain amount of water as it filters, doesn't it? I remember there being a drain line on kits I looked at.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    Yes, like 10x of water in those kits.
  - nwellinghoff 8y ago
    I run the drain line to my garden.
loceng 8y ago
Could this process not be scaled, automated somewhat, to bring the cost per test down?
nwellinghoff 8y ago
I run a RO/DI filter with a 11 gallon reservoir. Unless its smaller than a water molecule and the DI does not pick it up. Its not getting through. The annual cost is about 30 dollars to replace the various filters and media. Plus you have 99.9% pure water at your disposal at all times for making drinking water, carbonated water and base water for anything where you need to know the chemical composition. (saltwater fish tanks etc.). I highly recommend it!
sigstoat 8y ago
> Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals that are dangerous at 1ppb only gas-chemotography / mass-spectrometry can detect that, which would cost upward of $500 per test per chemical i don't think anyone uses GC/MS to find heavy metals. that would tend to be more of an ICP/MS sort of thing. $500/compound seems pretty steep for GC/MS work, when it can generally see multiple compounds in the same run (that's the whole point of doing the chromatographic separation). > be done at a university lab. plenty of non-universities run GC/MSes, and other fancier instrumentation. you probably need to look into this a little more, i think you probably stumbled across some places that didn't do the sort of work you want on a regular basis, so they were quoting you rather expensive prices to make you go away.

tshannon 8y ago

Carbon filters clean up "some" of them, but not all. Reverse Osmosis is better if you can afford it. The filtering really should be done by the city / government on an industrial scale (like CG did in the article) where it's not only more cost efficient, but also their responsibility.

smolder 8y ago
Reverse osmosis also wastes a certain amount of water as it filters, doesn't it? I remember there being a drain line on kits I looked at.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Yes, like 10x of water in those kits.
- nwellinghoff 8y ago
  I run the drain line to my garden.

loceng 8y ago

Could this process not be scaled, automated somewhat, to bring the cost per test down?

nwellinghoff 8y ago

I run a RO/DI filter with a 11 gallon reservoir. Unless its smaller than a water molecule and the DI does not pick it up. Its not getting through. The annual cost is about 30 dollars to replace the various filters and media. Plus you have 99.9% pure water at your disposal at all times for making drinking water, carbonated water and base water for anything where you need to know the chemical composition. (saltwater fish tanks etc.). I highly recommend it!

sigstoat 8y ago

> Firstly, there are a number of different chemicals you might test for. Secondly, for chemicals that are dangerous at 1ppb only gas-chemotography / mass-spectrometry can detect that, which would cost upward of $500 per test per chemical i don't think anyone uses GC/MS to find heavy metals. that would tend to be more of an ICP/MS sort of thing. $500/compound seems pretty steep for GC/MS work, when it can generally see multiple compounds in the same run (that's the whole point of doing the chromatographic separation). > be done at a university lab. plenty of non-universities run GC/MSes, and other fancier instrumentation. you probably need to look into this a little more, i think you probably stumbled across some places that didn't do the sort of work you want on a regular basis, so they were quoting you rather expensive prices to make you go away.