9 ms·

High schoolers create filter to remove lead in water

161 points by rmason 5y ago

dekhn 5y ago
Ah, the old "high school student does what industry cannot" and it's a picture of a 3d-printed device that wouldn't last 2 weeks.
- boplicity 5y ago
  Change it once a week -- $52 a year seems cheap compared to the alternative of children ingesting lead. Regularly replacing filters is how filters always work.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    you're working from the assumption that this could actually be deployed, and work as expected. It would not.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Is your reasoning just that most things don't work as expected, and this is a thing, so it probably won't work as expected? Or do you know something specific about the chemistry of this particular process?
      - dekhn 5y ago
        my reasoning is based on watching large numbers of medical devices and other consumer devices that have been deployed to billions of people. In that sense, yes, I am applying a prior. But also, kids just don't learn the steps required to make reliable field devices. They learn how to set up an experiment and run that with lots of hands-on adjustments. That doesn't work in the field. You have to assume your users are idiots with harsh environments who are actively undermining your device.
        kragen 5y ago
        All of that is true.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I think the GP is getting at the fact that, as a design, it is impressive enough to get media attention but not robust and comprehensive enough to be an actual real-world product. So much more industrial design would have to go into the concept in order for it to be available in the marketplace. It reminds me of those news stories that pop up from time to time about some high schooler inventing a robot to clean up plastic waste from the ocean. A neat concept, and laudable, but the design they've produced has a whole litany of flaws that they did not address because they don't have real world marine engineering experience - susceptibility to corrosion, bio-fouling, etc.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      Yes. I've built actual solutions for problems. There are things that kids can do in the research realm that's "interesting", but product development is not one of those things. The focus is on finding a thing that "works" (IE, shows at least one true positive), but not a thing "that could be deployed to a million homes for a decade and show a TP rate of 99.9% and a FN rate of 0.01%". Getting a product to the market involves mostly things that don't involve the working of the device, but rather preventing the device from failing in the field. The other problem is that there are 10 other kids who are doing things better (learning to contribute in the long term) who don't get glowing articles written about them.
  - Jxl180 5y ago
    It’s a $1 prototype. As soon as manufacturing, labor, and distribution is involved it’s now a $10 filter.
  - bastawhiz 5y ago
    That's $52/year per faucet. I've got four faucets in my home that a child could reasonably drink from. That's $200/year and 48 filter changes assuming you don't miss any changes. And that doesn't help with showers and baths, or even pools and hose water. Compare that to a whole-home filter: under $500 with a five year warranty. Filters are a couple hundred bucks every 100,000 gallons. The time savings alone is worth it, but the real value is knowing that you're not relying on $1 plastic filters. Nothing about these $1 filters is good for children. The idea that a household with kids has the time and energy to change filters on every faucet once a month (ignoring all the time your kids spend at school with lead water there!) is laughable.
    - thaway2839 5y ago
      Do you drink water out of every faucet? You just need it for the one faucet in the kitchen you'd be drinking water out of. Would that completely eliminate all your lead consumption? No, when you are brushing I'm sure you swallow some water, etc, but it would eliminate at least 90% of it.
      - bastawhiz 5y ago
        There are at least three faucets in my house that we get drinking water from: kitchen and the two upstairs bathrooms. I'm not walking downstairs to the kitchen to get water in the middle of the night. I'd expect the average single family home is similar. That's still $150/year and 36 filter changes. And have you ever met a child? They'll play with and drink almost any source of water. Telling them not to drink from certain faucets is Sisyphean.
    - etskinner 5y ago
      Using a whole-house filter misses the potential for lead to come from the pipes in the house. Using an after-the-tap filter eliminates that risk.
      - bastawhiz 5y ago
        A permanently installed filtration system isn't as cost effective as a whole home filter, but it's still more cost effective than what's been designed here, and requires an order of magnitude fewer filter replacements. In fact, you probably wouldn't even need a plumber to install the system for you.
- convexfunction 5y ago
  Would be cool if this is an exception, but yeah, there do seem to be far more "minor invents brilliant new X" news stories (surely thousands by now) than there are cases of these things actually seeing widespread adoption...
rmason 5y ago
Flint is an hour East of here. They are still having problems with lead in the water there. First they replaced all the water mains. While it reduced lead levels it didn't completely fix the problem. Then they replaced the pipes running from the mains to the house. That helped a lot (entire sections of the city are lead free) but those still having problems believe it's in the pipes in the house. There isn't a will among state government to tear up the houses to replace all the pipes. If this works it could help those still suffering.
- jansan 5y ago
  If the remaining lead is caused by the pipes inside the houses, how come this problem is isolated to Flint? Shouldn't there be the same level of lead all over the US? Maybe they are only measuring lead levels in Flint, because it was they were very high at the beginning.
  - sitharus 5y ago
    Flint switched their water source to one that was more corrosive, which resulted in much more lead entering the water. It was down to water chemistry. Water without the corrosive elements won’t pick up much lead.
  - AngryData 5y ago
    Most places are smart enough to not falsify water test reports so they can skimp on pH balancing treatment so the water isn't acidic to save literal pennies. The water coming in was acidic enough for the local hospitals to complain about their stainless steel sinks rusting from it. Even if there was no lead in any of the pipes they would have had to replace the entire water system because it ate right through their steel pipes which otherwise had been coated in mineral deposits to protect it.
- YATA0 5y ago
  >There isn't a will among state government to tear up the houses to replace all the pipes. Nor is there money to fund such a project.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Never heard of this being a problem in this part of the world, but great job figuring out a fix. I don't understand why it took high school students to do this. The science behind it seems simple enough this should have been a product already.
- riedel 5y ago
  We have a minor problem mostly with the last meters of pipes if water is not flowing. Here it is sufficient to let the (cold) water flow until it reaches a lower temperature to be sure it was not sitting in the overground pipes too long.
- MarcScott 5y ago
  The article should probably be titled: Talented Chemist teaches students to create a lead filter... The chemistry teacher will have already solved the problem, and then guided her students through to a solution, then just let her students take the credit.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I'm sure it is a fixed problem and you can get faucet lead filters already, they're just not affordable because capitalism. Also the $1 is linkbait; it may be $1 in materials, but especially if the housing was 3D printed, the actual cost would be higher. That said, no reason this product commercially available should be more than $10, and/or given away for free along with refills to the people most impacted while they work on a more permanent solution.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    May I ask how much the already available filters cost? I thought these things would be cheap
Terry_Roll 5y ago
What a nice solution.
refurb 5y ago
They didn't invent a filter to remove lead (those already existed), they just added a chemical that turns a color when the filter is exhausted.
- ianai 5y ago
  Not bad for high schoolers though right?
  - refurb 5y ago
    This is a "feel good" human interest story, not a scientific breakthrough. As someone who worked as a chemist in a lab for a long time, this is a nice classroom demonstration of chemistry, but in no way an actual scalable solution (using calcium phosphate to trap lead? we have way better way to do that).
    - ianai 5y ago
      Thing is I wouldn't want any of the people from the project to see this thread. This is exactly the wrong way to discuss project work of young people. At that age what to a grown adult seems like mild criticism can seem 1000x worse to the person. This is easily an area where HN should not tread at all if it can't get that right. Edit-clarified sentence
GistNoesis 5y ago
These elemental toxicity problems should be a problem of the past. We have the science and the devices to detect and track them easily. I'm speaking about XRF analyzer. Currently it's still expensive : a 30K$ portable device, but that's because it's a low volume production. These are gun-like devices that you point to a material, it shines x-ray on it and analyze the rays that comes back, which allows it to determine the elemental composition and percentages of the material for free in a few seconds. Like magic. Today they are used for checking the paints for lead. They are used by precious metal buyers and sellers to identify precisely the content. But I dream of the day where anybody can just check its steak or salmon with it for traces of anything toxic. It won't detect all food safety problems like bio contamination or organic pesticides, but it can definitely make heavy metal poisoning a thing of the past, by helping track the supply chain, the same way that having an air quality monitor can help improve your air quality.
- blackoil 5y ago
  The dream future is both utopian and dystopian. Technology is advanced enough that such things are in hand of common man but society is so dysfunctional that basic things like clean water and food aren't ensured.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Are they really that sensitive to be able to detect trace amounts of heavy metals distributed in let's say a relatively large piece of meat (larger than the detection area of the device, so the amount of metal it "sees" is even more decreased)?
  - fiziks_hckr 5y ago
    well icp (inductively coupled plasma) is the gold standard (expensive but highly sensitive and used for heavy metals like lead in stuff). xrf can spot higher concrntrations, but one can concentrate beforehand and then use xrf. while xrf fixed cost is 30k usd its cost is a dropjn the bucket compared to icp and solid state keeps on going. forgive my typos commenting via phone
kragen 5y ago
Can't you just mix in a little epsom salt and filter it through a filter paper? Maybe the calcium phosphate (dibasic I assume?) suggested in the article is a better approach, though, and the lead-iodide coloring is a nice touch. Why doesn't all the potassium iodide dissolve away long before the calcium phosphate, though?

161 points by rmason 5y ago

Ah, the old "high school student does what industry cannot" and it's a picture of a 3d-printed device that wouldn't last 2 weeks.

boplicity 5y ago
Change it once a week -- $52 a year seems cheap compared to the alternative of children ingesting lead. Regularly replacing filters is how filters always work.
- dekhn 5y ago
  you're working from the assumption that this could actually be deployed, and work as expected. It would not.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Is your reasoning just that most things don't work as expected, and this is a thing, so it probably won't work as expected? Or do you know something specific about the chemistry of this particular process?
    - dekhn 5y ago
      my reasoning is based on watching large numbers of medical devices and other consumer devices that have been deployed to billions of people. In that sense, yes, I am applying a prior. But also, kids just don't learn the steps required to make reliable field devices. They learn how to set up an experiment and run that with lots of hands-on adjustments. That doesn't work in the field. You have to assume your users are idiots with harsh environments who are actively undermining your device.
      - kragen 5y ago
        All of that is true.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I think the GP is getting at the fact that, as a design, it is impressive enough to get media attention but not robust and comprehensive enough to be an actual real-world product. So much more industrial design would have to go into the concept in order for it to be available in the marketplace. It reminds me of those news stories that pop up from time to time about some high schooler inventing a robot to clean up plastic waste from the ocean. A neat concept, and laudable, but the design they've produced has a whole litany of flaws that they did not address because they don't have real world marine engineering experience - susceptibility to corrosion, bio-fouling, etc.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    Yes. I've built actual solutions for problems. There are things that kids can do in the research realm that's "interesting", but product development is not one of those things. The focus is on finding a thing that "works" (IE, shows at least one true positive), but not a thing "that could be deployed to a million homes for a decade and show a TP rate of 99.9% and a FN rate of 0.01%". Getting a product to the market involves mostly things that don't involve the working of the device, but rather preventing the device from failing in the field. The other problem is that there are 10 other kids who are doing things better (learning to contribute in the long term) who don't get glowing articles written about them.
- Jxl180 5y ago
  It’s a $1 prototype. As soon as manufacturing, labor, and distribution is involved it’s now a $10 filter.
- bastawhiz 5y ago
  That's $52/year per faucet. I've got four faucets in my home that a child could reasonably drink from. That's $200/year and 48 filter changes assuming you don't miss any changes. And that doesn't help with showers and baths, or even pools and hose water. Compare that to a whole-home filter: under $500 with a five year warranty. Filters are a couple hundred bucks every 100,000 gallons. The time savings alone is worth it, but the real value is knowing that you're not relying on $1 plastic filters. Nothing about these $1 filters is good for children. The idea that a household with kids has the time and energy to change filters on every faucet once a month (ignoring all the time your kids spend at school with lead water there!) is laughable.
  - thaway2839 5y ago
    Do you drink water out of every faucet? You just need it for the one faucet in the kitchen you'd be drinking water out of. Would that completely eliminate all your lead consumption? No, when you are brushing I'm sure you swallow some water, etc, but it would eliminate at least 90% of it.
    - bastawhiz 5y ago
      There are at least three faucets in my house that we get drinking water from: kitchen and the two upstairs bathrooms. I'm not walking downstairs to the kitchen to get water in the middle of the night. I'd expect the average single family home is similar. That's still $150/year and 36 filter changes. And have you ever met a child? They'll play with and drink almost any source of water. Telling them not to drink from certain faucets is Sisyphean.
  - etskinner 5y ago
    Using a whole-house filter misses the potential for lead to come from the pipes in the house. Using an after-the-tap filter eliminates that risk.
    - bastawhiz 5y ago
      A permanently installed filtration system isn't as cost effective as a whole home filter, but it's still more cost effective than what's been designed here, and requires an order of magnitude fewer filter replacements. In fact, you probably wouldn't even need a plumber to install the system for you.
convexfunction 5y ago
Would be cool if this is an exception, but yeah, there do seem to be far more "minor invents brilliant new X" news stories (surely thousands by now) than there are cases of these things actually seeing widespread adoption...

rmason 5y ago

Flint is an hour East of here. They are still having problems with lead in the water there. First they replaced all the water mains. While it reduced lead levels it didn't completely fix the problem. Then they replaced the pipes running from the mains to the house. That helped a lot (entire sections of the city are lead free) but those still having problems believe it's in the pipes in the house. There isn't a will among state government to tear up the houses to replace all the pipes. If this works it could help those still suffering.

jansan 5y ago
If the remaining lead is caused by the pipes inside the houses, how come this problem is isolated to Flint? Shouldn't there be the same level of lead all over the US? Maybe they are only measuring lead levels in Flint, because it was they were very high at the beginning.
- sitharus 5y ago
  Flint switched their water source to one that was more corrosive, which resulted in much more lead entering the water. It was down to water chemistry. Water without the corrosive elements won’t pick up much lead.
- AngryData 5y ago
  Most places are smart enough to not falsify water test reports so they can skimp on pH balancing treatment so the water isn't acidic to save literal pennies. The water coming in was acidic enough for the local hospitals to complain about their stainless steel sinks rusting from it. Even if there was no lead in any of the pipes they would have had to replace the entire water system because it ate right through their steel pipes which otherwise had been coated in mineral deposits to protect it.
YATA0 5y ago
>There isn't a will among state government to tear up the houses to replace all the pipes. Nor is there money to fund such a project.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Never heard of this being a problem in this part of the world, but great job figuring out a fix. I don't understand why it took high school students to do this. The science behind it seems simple enough this should have been a product already.

riedel 5y ago
We have a minor problem mostly with the last meters of pipes if water is not flowing. Here it is sufficient to let the (cold) water flow until it reaches a lower temperature to be sure it was not sitting in the overground pipes too long.
MarcScott 5y ago
The article should probably be titled: Talented Chemist teaches students to create a lead filter... The chemistry teacher will have already solved the problem, and then guided her students through to a solution, then just let her students take the credit.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I'm sure it is a fixed problem and you can get faucet lead filters already, they're just not affordable because capitalism. Also the $1 is linkbait; it may be $1 in materials, but especially if the housing was 3D printed, the actual cost would be higher. That said, no reason this product commercially available should be more than $10, and/or given away for free along with refills to the people most impacted while they work on a more permanent solution.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  May I ask how much the already available filters cost? I thought these things would be cheap

Terry_Roll 5y ago

What a nice solution.

refurb 5y ago

They didn't invent a filter to remove lead (those already existed), they just added a chemical that turns a color when the filter is exhausted.

ianai 5y ago
Not bad for high schoolers though right?
- refurb 5y ago
  This is a "feel good" human interest story, not a scientific breakthrough. As someone who worked as a chemist in a lab for a long time, this is a nice classroom demonstration of chemistry, but in no way an actual scalable solution (using calcium phosphate to trap lead? we have way better way to do that).
  - ianai 5y ago
    Thing is I wouldn't want any of the people from the project to see this thread. This is exactly the wrong way to discuss project work of young people. At that age what to a grown adult seems like mild criticism can seem 1000x worse to the person. This is easily an area where HN should not tread at all if it can't get that right. Edit-clarified sentence

GistNoesis 5y ago

These elemental toxicity problems should be a problem of the past. We have the science and the devices to detect and track them easily. I'm speaking about XRF analyzer. Currently it's still expensive : a 30K$ portable device, but that's because it's a low volume production. These are gun-like devices that you point to a material, it shines x-ray on it and analyze the rays that comes back, which allows it to determine the elemental composition and percentages of the material for free in a few seconds. Like magic. Today they are used for checking the paints for lead. They are used by precious metal buyers and sellers to identify precisely the content. But I dream of the day where anybody can just check its steak or salmon with it for traces of anything toxic. It won't detect all food safety problems like bio contamination or organic pesticides, but it can definitely make heavy metal poisoning a thing of the past, by helping track the supply chain, the same way that having an air quality monitor can help improve your air quality.

blackoil 5y ago
The dream future is both utopian and dystopian. Technology is advanced enough that such things are in hand of common man but society is so dysfunctional that basic things like clean water and food aren't ensured.
Nextgrid 5y ago
Are they really that sensitive to be able to detect trace amounts of heavy metals distributed in let's say a relatively large piece of meat (larger than the detection area of the device, so the amount of metal it "sees" is even more decreased)?
- fiziks_hckr 5y ago
  well icp (inductively coupled plasma) is the gold standard (expensive but highly sensitive and used for heavy metals like lead in stuff). xrf can spot higher concrntrations, but one can concentrate beforehand and then use xrf. while xrf fixed cost is 30k usd its cost is a dropjn the bucket compared to icp and solid state keeps on going. forgive my typos commenting via phone

kragen 5y ago

Can't you just mix in a little epsom salt and filter it through a filter paper? Maybe the calcium phosphate (dibasic I assume?) suggested in the article is a better approach, though, and the lead-iodide coloring is a nice touch. Why doesn't all the potassium iodide dissolve away long before the calcium phosphate, though?