Water safety is extremely important, but sometimes, I do wonder if we go overboard with it. Yes, I'm sure various bacterias cause all sorts of stomach upsets and skin problems, and that we should try our best to prevent them. But after awhile, we just seem to be chasing a growing list of bacteria, viruses, and other contaminants. I've seen control rooms where multiple sensors are blinking red, and the operators tell me, "It's no problem -- those sensors are always red anyway. We're actually only concerned with these ones [gestures to 10 parameters out of the more-than-100 parameters being monitored]". At the end of the day, a sensor is only as effective as the operator monitoring it.
My personal gripes aside, there seems to be a race to develop sensors that can detect bacteria in water quickly. Last year, Singapore's Environment & Water Industry Development Council (EWI) issued a research challenge for proposals to detect a certain strain of bacteria in drinking water in under an hour. Three research proposals were eventually awarded the grant. One proposal used sound waves combined with nanoparticles, another was a filtration method with DNA identification, and the third was based on the bio-optical signature (somewhat equivalent to fingerprinting) of the parasite.
UCLA claims to have yet another method -- using magnetism and a light-emitting enzyme. Granted UCLA's method was designed to test water quality at beaches and to protect swimmers, while EWI's projects look at drinking water for large quantity consumption. Nevertheless, I'm sure each method could probably be modified to address the other's concerns.
The technologies seem to be there. But how big, really, is the market for such sensors? Maybe along those Californian poster beaches, where the authorities are constantly harassed by conspiracy theorists and the rich in turns. For the rest of us, we might be better off teaching our operators the importance of each of those 101 sensors already in place!
Above: Rapid detection kit developed by UCLA fits in a small car
Source: UCLA Newsroom
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