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Mar 7, 2016 | Blogs, Environmental / Industrial, Food / Beverage | 0 comments
Access to clean wholesome water is one of our basic human rights. Human engineering has designed incredible methods to collect, filter, purify, store and distribute water to billions of us worldwide, but does this mean that our water is completely safe to drink? Also, how can concentrations of water contaminants differ from source to source?
Water quality testing processes are in place to ensure the water from our household taps and off supermarket shelves are safe and free from pesticides or other contaminants, but how much do we know about the contents of our water, and what are the advantages of using mass spectrometry to identify and quantify contaminants in water samples?
To help answer some of these questions we’ve collected 5 infographics that shed some light on the state of our household water.
We wanted to start with an infographic that puts water quality into perspective. Using data from 2011 the image demonstrates the varying quality of drinking water, even somewhere as developed as the United States of America.
There are four key considerations to this data:
Crossing the Pacific, the next infographic moves away from an objective study of water quality to a summary of an Australian utility company who presented the numbers behind supplying 163,000 customers with water every day of the year.It’s interesting to see the safeguarding steps taken to protect against contaminants (including pathogenic microorganisms) from a utilities perspective.
According to the infographic there are 7 steps before customers receive the water:
The end result is to produce the best quality wholesome water using the current processing techniques.
The challenge is to ensure the utmost efficiency during the treatment process, thus, what comes out of the consumers tap is fit for consumption. The steps taken in the treatment and processing of raw water into drinking water must be monitored at each stage to make sure that they are working effectively. For example, a water treatment process may include an activated carbon filter plant which when in operation will remove pesticides from the raw water.
Routine monitoring using Mass Spec technology of the water upstream and downstream of this plant will determine its effectiveness at pesticide removal. ACTEW are now Icon Water and recently published their 2015 Water Quality Report detailing the chemical composition of drinking water in Canberra, Australia.
For the 6th World Water Forum in 2012, Suez Environment created this infographic to show the challenges we face as population rises, poverty increases and demand for clean drinking water grows.
From this infographic, it is obvious that nations and their water providers have an even greater responsibility to produce a greater volume of wholesome water to meet the demand. Untargeted water screening on the X500R QTOF systems can be used to identify any potential contaminants from new water sources which may be adopted to satisfy the increasing volume requirements.
Allianz has provided the numbers behind why investing in clean water is not only good for our health but also good financial sense for businesses and investors.
Again, the points most pertinent to this post are the facts surrounding water pollution. With so many contaminants being discharged into coastal water, lakes and rivers how is the quality of our household water ever to achieve a consistent level of sanitation and safety throughout the world?
Whilst we’ve touched on it a couple of times, the efficiency of the water treatment process is paramount to the production of wholesome drinking water. There is a demand to test the water throughout the process, sample throughput and turnaround are key drivers in selecting an appropriate Mass Spectrometer, please read our technical note if you’d like to learn more about screening for unknown contaminants in untreated tap water.
We finish with an infographic that puts into perspective the amount of water used by each of us on average. There’s not a lot to add to this one but it does give you a lot of facts about how integral water is to sanitation, agriculture, and general health. In my opinion, it provides a comparison of water consumption to carbon footprints and how much care needs to go into our water supplies and how fragile the ecosystem is despite our blue planet being so water based.
It is no secret that (bio)pharmaceutical research and development is complex, both scientific and regulatory processes. Here is an overview of just some of the ways SCIEX is working to support these challenges.
In a recent webinar, available on demand, scientists Luiza Chrojan and Ryan Hylands from Pharmaron, provided insights into the deployment of capillary gel electrophoresis (CGE) within cell and gene therapy. Luiza and Ryan shared purity data on plasmids used for adeno-associated virus (AAV) manufacturing and data on AAV genome integrity, viral protein (VP) purity and VP ratios using the BioPhase 8800 system.
Last year, Technology Networks hosted two webinars that featured groundbreaking research utilizing SWATH DIA (data-independent acquisition) for exposomics and metabolomics. Researchers Dr. Vinicius Verri Hernandes from the University of Vienna and Dr. Cristina Balcells from Imperial College London (ICL) demonstrated how a DIA approach can be successfully implemented in small molecule analysis using the ZenoTOF 7600 system. Their innovative approaches highlight the potential of SWATH DIA to enhance the detection and analysis of chemical exposures and metabolites, paving the way for new insights into environmental health and disease mechanisms.
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