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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

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
  - refurb 5y ago
    This doesn't sound like a solution at all. It went from "pointing a gun at an item" to "concentrating a sample". I've done analytical chemistry before and sampling accurately is not a trivial thing.
    - kragen 5y ago
      It probably isn't important whether the lead content is 10 ppm or 20 ppm in most cases, since neither is acceptable, so the standard of sampling involved here is far less demanding than the standard of sampling needed for analytical chemistry. You just need to avoid contaminating your sample with lead from some other source.
cjrp 5y ago
What if rather than everyone needing their own, there was just a certification standard (like organic) which says the food has been scanned and confirmed to contain less than X lead/mercury/whatever? Side note, is this what archaeologists use, to figure out the composition of a coin, etc.?
- williamtwild 5y ago
  Did the water quality certification miss something in Flint? Certification means trust. Someone breaking that trust can have life long implcations for large groups of people. Giviing the individual power is better.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    It probably passed at the treatment plant where it is easy to test. It would have failed at everyone's home though, where testing needs to be done house by house. (or maybe a statistical sample of houses)
- GistNoesis 5y ago
  Certifications are the current situation for first world countries but it takes time to get them adopted everywhere. And if you have lead paint or pipes in your house, or if you have bought some Chinese plates with beautiful colors, who will tell you that some pigments may leak into your food. There is the question of trust of the measurement where they will just sell you an approval stamp for 100$. There is also the problem that some actors have incentives to cheat, like feeding insects to your salmon, and feeding the insects from literal garbage that may get contaminated by electronic components in the dumpster. Or maybe the specific salmon just ate a ball of mercury but was not selected for testing. A generic tool, that can analyze your immediate environment without having anyone else involved is empowering and can catch a wide variety of problems that you can track further if necessary; feels like a freebie offered by Science. Although it will still need some years of work to make it as sensitive as they show it in Science-Fiction. Humans have not evolved alongside everything we extracted from the ground since the industrial revolution. It's like a new pair of eyes that would help you avoid a bad apple or smelly fish. If we could also get a cheap and easy to use Raman spectrometer to complete the XRF analyser it would also be a great addition. (I don't know what archaeologists use but they definitely can use a XRF analyser to find the composition of coins)
fiziks_hckr 5y ago
Ive been hoping to find others interested in this vein of xrf for community lead detection would be more thab happy to connect.
littlestymaar 5y ago
Aren't those are using radioactive source (which for obvious reasons you don't want to let proliferate…)
- GistNoesis 5y ago
  It's a x-ray tube and a x-ray sensor + analysis. It's bad radiations (like in luggage detector or dentist machine) but when you turn-off the device they stop, whereas radioactive don't stop.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Gravityloss 5y ago
- b112 5y ago
  I agree, but, "rich people" eat at mcdonalds, and buy food at normal grocery stores. "Rich" being able to afford a $100 detector. So while not perfect, it would perhaps force suppliers, chains, and such to clean up their act. To test food themselves, otherwise a random person with a detector may catch something. Outside of lead, arsenic is another biggie, often in rice. I'd love that to be tested, at home, per meal.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Individualistic isn't bad. Individualism is the fundamental basis for thinking that individuals have intrinsic worth; take that away and you may not like the result. Your food can currently be poisoned "at will", assuming someone wants to poison you. OP was saying he wants everyone to have one. Nothing to do with rich people.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    Indeed, it's a lot easier to fix the problem when people can buy a cheap device and verify for themselves that the water is unsafe. Otherwise you'll only get government / corporate hand waving and have to pay lawyers a few million dollars to get anything to change.
  - bobkazamakis 5y ago
    > Individualistic isn't bad. Individualism is the fundamental basis for thinking that individuals have intrinsic worth; take that away and you may not like the result. It's not that individualism is bad, that's a quality of people. The "solution" isn't able to be produced or acquired in any way that's close to calling it a solution. Nobody is coming after you.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      Sorry, but each of those sentences doesn't quite contain enough info to deduce what you mean. Can you elaborate?
judge2020 5y ago
> a 30K$ portable device, but that's because it's a low volume production. Is this inherently true? Do the raw materials and parts the final factory buys to make the machine really cost <$100 (or so) and the cost is all in the up-front investment in the machinery to make it?
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Yeah I doubt it. Applied Science on Youtube did a teardown of one and they've got crazy oil-filled high voltage electronics. It would take an insane amount of engineering to bring them down to an affordable price. Not just economies of scale.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    You mean those same high voltage electronics that every CRT TV from the 90's has? The same TV's that give off so many xrays they have to shield them with leaded glass? They were pretty affordable then, and I expect that now they can be made even more cheaply if there is demand for them.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kragen 5y ago
      CRT TVs are commonly only about 10 kV, while XRF needs 20–60 kV. Larger TVs were up in that range but were not handheld. I agree that you can generate 60 kV pretty easily, though. You can do it in a smaller volume if you fill the electronics with oil, but it's not essential.
fjfaase 5y ago
The amount of X-rays needed to detect trace amounts of lead with a handheld device are probably more dangerous than the lead itself if such an device is used on a daily basis. There is a reason why your dentist goes to stand behind a wall when you she takes an X-ray of your teeth. If you would have a sample with 10% lead, the amount of X-ray used during for taking an X-ray of your teeth might be enough to measure its concentration within a few 1% accuracy, but if you are talking about 1ppm (and that is far above the 15ppb that is considered safe) you need a lot more X-ray to get a good enough reading. Measuring exact contents with XRF is difficult if you do not have homogeneous samples due to all kinds of complicated effects where the XRF from one element interacts with the XRF of another element. To get within 1% accuracy you often need a controlled (vacum) environment and callibrate your instrument with a set of standards at regular interfalls. At least that is how it was 20 years ago when I developed software for a company that produced high-end industrial XRF measurement devices.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  It's viable to get something like it on your supply chain. It's even viable to X-ray inspect fish at random in fisher's markets if you move your machine between them. But yeah, a hand-held machine isn't viable.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kragen 5y ago
  I was thinking XRF used low-energy X-rays with very little penetrating power, but actually they're 20–60 kV. So I guess you're right.
boplicity 5y ago
> 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. Hasn't that been around, in handheld form since the 60s? I think they're called tricorders.
kragen 5y ago
Probably a little cake of dicalcium phosphate is going to be cheaper than an XRF gun for the foreseeable future.
Jenda_ 5y ago
I would like to add a video on XRF from Applied Science, as the device is not very well known (at least in .cz, I have learned about it only recently). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U

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
- refurb 5y ago
  This doesn't sound like a solution at all. It went from "pointing a gun at an item" to "concentrating a sample". I've done analytical chemistry before and sampling accurately is not a trivial thing.
  - kragen 5y ago
    It probably isn't important whether the lead content is 10 ppm or 20 ppm in most cases, since neither is acceptable, so the standard of sampling involved here is far less demanding than the standard of sampling needed for analytical chemistry. You just need to avoid contaminating your sample with lead from some other source.

cjrp 5y ago

What if rather than everyone needing their own, there was just a certification standard (like organic) which says the food has been scanned and confirmed to contain less than X lead/mercury/whatever? Side note, is this what archaeologists use, to figure out the composition of a coin, etc.?

williamtwild 5y ago
Did the water quality certification miss something in Flint? Certification means trust. Someone breaking that trust can have life long implcations for large groups of people. Giviing the individual power is better.
- bluGill 5y ago
  It probably passed at the treatment plant where it is easy to test. It would have failed at everyone's home though, where testing needs to be done house by house. (or maybe a statistical sample of houses)
GistNoesis 5y ago
Certifications are the current situation for first world countries but it takes time to get them adopted everywhere. And if you have lead paint or pipes in your house, or if you have bought some Chinese plates with beautiful colors, who will tell you that some pigments may leak into your food. There is the question of trust of the measurement where they will just sell you an approval stamp for 100$. There is also the problem that some actors have incentives to cheat, like feeding insects to your salmon, and feeding the insects from literal garbage that may get contaminated by electronic components in the dumpster. Or maybe the specific salmon just ate a ball of mercury but was not selected for testing. A generic tool, that can analyze your immediate environment without having anyone else involved is empowering and can catch a wide variety of problems that you can track further if necessary; feels like a freebie offered by Science. Although it will still need some years of work to make it as sensitive as they show it in Science-Fiction. Humans have not evolved alongside everything we extracted from the ground since the industrial revolution. It's like a new pair of eyes that would help you avoid a bad apple or smelly fish. If we could also get a cheap and easy to use Raman spectrometer to complete the XRF analyser it would also be a great addition. (I don't know what archaeologists use but they definitely can use a XRF analyser to find the composition of coins)

fiziks_hckr 5y ago

Ive been hoping to find others interested in this vein of xrf for community lead detection would be more thab happy to connect.

littlestymaar 5y ago

Aren't those are using radioactive source (which for obvious reasons you don't want to let proliferate…)

GistNoesis 5y ago
It's a x-ray tube and a x-ray sensor + analysis. It's bad radiations (like in luggage detector or dentist machine) but when you turn-off the device they stop, whereas radioactive don't stop.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Gravityloss 5y ago

b112 5y ago
I agree, but, "rich people" eat at mcdonalds, and buy food at normal grocery stores. "Rich" being able to afford a $100 detector. So while not perfect, it would perhaps force suppliers, chains, and such to clean up their act. To test food themselves, otherwise a random person with a detector may catch something. Outside of lead, arsenic is another biggie, often in rice. I'd love that to be tested, at home, per meal.
robertlagrant 5y ago
Individualistic isn't bad. Individualism is the fundamental basis for thinking that individuals have intrinsic worth; take that away and you may not like the result. Your food can currently be poisoned "at will", assuming someone wants to poison you. OP was saying he wants everyone to have one. Nothing to do with rich people.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Indeed, it's a lot easier to fix the problem when people can buy a cheap device and verify for themselves that the water is unsafe. Otherwise you'll only get government / corporate hand waving and have to pay lawyers a few million dollars to get anything to change.
- bobkazamakis 5y ago
  > Individualistic isn't bad. Individualism is the fundamental basis for thinking that individuals have intrinsic worth; take that away and you may not like the result. It's not that individualism is bad, that's a quality of people. The "solution" isn't able to be produced or acquired in any way that's close to calling it a solution. Nobody is coming after you.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Sorry, but each of those sentences doesn't quite contain enough info to deduce what you mean. Can you elaborate?

judge2020 5y ago

> a 30K$ portable device, but that's because it's a low volume production. Is this inherently true? Do the raw materials and parts the final factory buys to make the machine really cost <$100 (or so) and the cost is all in the up-front investment in the machinery to make it?

IshKebab 5y ago
Yeah I doubt it. Applied Science on Youtube did a teardown of one and they've got crazy oil-filled high voltage electronics. It would take an insane amount of engineering to bring them down to an affordable price. Not just economies of scale.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  You mean those same high voltage electronics that every CRT TV from the 90's has? The same TV's that give off so many xrays they have to shield them with leaded glass? They were pretty affordable then, and I expect that now they can be made even more cheaply if there is demand for them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kragen 5y ago
    CRT TVs are commonly only about 10 kV, while XRF needs 20–60 kV. Larger TVs were up in that range but were not handheld. I agree that you can generate 60 kV pretty easily, though. You can do it in a smaller volume if you fill the electronics with oil, but it's not essential.

fjfaase 5y ago

The amount of X-rays needed to detect trace amounts of lead with a handheld device are probably more dangerous than the lead itself if such an device is used on a daily basis. There is a reason why your dentist goes to stand behind a wall when you she takes an X-ray of your teeth. If you would have a sample with 10% lead, the amount of X-ray used during for taking an X-ray of your teeth might be enough to measure its concentration within a few 1% accuracy, but if you are talking about 1ppm (and that is far above the 15ppb that is considered safe) you need a lot more X-ray to get a good enough reading. Measuring exact contents with XRF is difficult if you do not have homogeneous samples due to all kinds of complicated effects where the XRF from one element interacts with the XRF of another element. To get within 1% accuracy you often need a controlled (vacum) environment and callibrate your instrument with a set of standards at regular interfalls. At least that is how it was 20 years ago when I developed software for a company that produced high-end industrial XRF measurement devices.

marcosdumay 5y ago
It's viable to get something like it on your supply chain. It's even viable to X-ray inspect fish at random in fisher's markets if you move your machine between them. But yeah, a hand-held machine isn't viable.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kragen 5y ago
I was thinking XRF used low-energy X-rays with very little penetrating power, but actually they're 20–60 kV. So I guess you're right.

boplicity 5y ago

> 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. Hasn't that been around, in handheld form since the 60s? I think they're called tricorders.

kragen 5y ago

Probably a little cake of dicalcium phosphate is going to be cheaper than an XRF gun for the foreseeable future.

Jenda_ 5y ago

I would like to add a video on XRF from Applied Science, as the device is not very well known (at least in .cz, I have learned about it only recently). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdfHVcU8U7U