While the idea of a shower head changing colors in response to a change in water temperature sounds kind of amusing, we think people ought to consider installing a shower head that will improve the quality of their shower water rather than the lighting in their shower stall.

Again, we find the following ‘technology’ rather cool… but somewhat superficial in the grand scheme of things.

You got your skin burned in the hot shower due to a mistake of turning up the temperature control too high as you couldn’t see the reading on the control knob clearly. So, you’ll need a better gadget that would tell you in a more prominent way that the water is burning hot. Here comes a color changing illuminated shower head, which changes color according to the temperature of the water. When you’re increasing the temperature of the water, the color will change from white when it’s cold, to blue, then purple and finally the hot red.

The color changing illuminated shower head features a temperature-sensitive color-changing LED. The shower head needs neither battery nor external power to run. All it depends is the water that runs through it. Installation is easy, just unscrew your current shower head and screw this one on. ( source )

Really cool looking shower colors may do a lot to set the mood for some things, like, um… Well, never mind that. Let’s just focus on the idea that shower heads designed to remove chlorine, excessive water hardness, or other water impurities make a lot of sense.

Note: WaterSafe makes a test kit to test both chlorine and water hardness. Details here.

We don’t know anyone that would LIKE the idea of drinking water containing human waste… except those two girls from that nasty ‘2 girls, 1 cup’ viral video that circulated for a while. Nasty. Just plain nasty.

At any rate, people installing a new well should make sure to place it no less than 100 feet from the nearest septic tank and/or septic system. See below.

Most Star Valley residents get their water from a well, flush their toilets into to a septic system and have never tested their groundwater.

That’s a potentially toxic combination, especially if a septic system is within 100 feet of a well or starts to leak. In that case, it could deposit waterborne pathogens and fecal matter into the groundwater.

Because residents are not required to test their well water, “they could be drinking themselves to death and not even know it,” said Vern Leis, chairman of the Water and Sewer Commission. ( source )

Homeowners have sole responsibility for the quality of the water coming from their wells and should maintain an active regimen of well water testing in addition to having their water checked by a certified water testing laboratory at least once a year and definitely after unusually heavy rains, periods of drought, or whenever some other event, natural or caused by mankind, may have affected the source of your drinking water.

China makes the news once more, and this time it looks like some public officials may wind up in a lot of trouble with the Chinese Ministry of Health if they don’t straighten up and fly right when it comes to telling the truth about the number of H1N1 cases and H1N1 related fatalities in their provinces.

BEIJING — China’s health ministry ordered accurate reporting of the spread of H1N1 influenza and threatened to punish officials who conceal cases of the virus after a prominent medical expert raised doubts about the true number of deaths reported to date.

In a statement posted late Thursday on the Ministry of Health’s Web site, spokesman Deng Haihua reiterated the need for local health departments to ensure timely reporting of H1N1 cases, and welcomed the media and the public to supervise and discuss the ministry’s work in fighting H1N1. Mr. Deng said that concealment, underreporting, or delays in transmitting information about the spread of the illness would be subject to punishment.

Earlier Thursday, state-run media in the southern province of Guangdong reported that Dr. Zhong Nanshan had voiced suspicions about the low number of reported fatalities from H1N1. Dr. Zhong, director of the Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Guangzhou, is best known for speaking out in 2003 against official reports that initially covered up the extent of the SARS epidemic.

“I basically don’t believe the current reported number of nationwide H1N1 deaths,” he was quoted as saying by the Guangzhou Daily. Dr. Zhong said he believed that some regions had concealed reports of H1N1 deaths to create the impression that they had been successful in their local prevention efforts, according to the report.

Since mainland China reported its first H1N1 death in early October, there have been only 53 deaths reported out of nearly 70,000 confirmed cases. According to the World Health Organization, the world-wide mortality rate for H1N1 has been four deaths per 1,000 cases of illness, a ratio that was repeated by China’s Ministry of Health when it warned of the threat posed by H1N1 a few weeks ago. ( source )

While they have not, to our knowledge, found any cases of H1N1 traveling from person to person via drinking water, that does not mean anyone should let their guard down when it comes to water quality testing or purification. Diligent use of available water testing and water disinfecting methods may not play an active role in stopping the spread of the H1N1 virus, that we know of right now, but it can help prevent a whole host of other illnesses.

One place where proper use of sanitizing and disinfecting REALLY matters… childcare facilities and daycare centers. Children know nothing about how germs and bacteria spread and often leave mucous, saliva or other bodily secretions on commonly touched surfaces such as toys, doorknobs, furniture, etc. They mean no harm and don’t do things like that intentionally, but it happens.

For that reason health officials suggest, and have mandated in some states, that operators of childcare and daycare centers have their staff check the chlorine levels in their sanitizing and disinfecting solutions daily. Think of it this way: What good would it do to wipe down a contaminated surface with a cleaning solution incapable of properly disinfecting or sanitizing?

Tags: h1n1 china, h1n1 testing

Anyone who knows the authors of Water Testing Blog knows how much they love to drink beer… so it ought to come as no shock that an article involving a brewery AND pristine spring water would catch their attention.

St. Paul, Minn. — Long before glaciers rolled through Minnesota, a massive pool of water circulated throughout the Twin Cities, and soon, residents will be able to line up at a well in St. Paul, and fill up their jugs with the water that experts say is about 30,000 years old.

“When you think about it, the woolly mammoths were drinking that water, potentially,” said Michael Convery, a hydrologist with the Minnesota Department of Health. ( source )

We have always believed that better beer would come from better water and now even though the water won’t get put to use as a beer ingredient, some folks in Minnesota will certainly have some fine tasting water — unless the woolly mammoths did a lot of backwashing! Ha ha. Gross.

The brewery will have to test the water for all sorts of things before selling it to the public so woolly mammoth backwash ought not cause any health issues… but what about the water coming from YOUR well, huh?

Recently an article in a Pennsylvania newspaper credited New York City with knowing a very interesting ‘fact’… and apparently that ‘fact’ warrants attention on both sides of the NY/PA border.

New York City has one thing right: We are what we eat and drink, and the water used in Marcellus Shale gas drilling is not sounding very appetizing.

In a startling finding this week, radioactive material was discovered in the wastewater samples analyzed by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

More testing is sure to follow, but the announcement has New Yorkers on edge and should have Pennsylvanians looking closer, too.

The Marcellus Shale gas drilling process is extremely water intensive. Millions of gallons of water are run through the shale. The resulting wastewater is then treated and discharged, mostly back into public waterways. ( source )

So whether you live in the area affected by the wastewater mentioned in the article or you live pretty much… anywhere that wastewater could possibly enter your drinking water or well water supply, routine testing of your water makes sense.

While no simple testing methods exist (yet) for detecting ‘bad’ Chinese Drywall, a person CAN make their life a little easier when trying to determine whether or not sections of already installed drywall may have come from China.

Depending upon what a person needs to do in order to get a look at the back of the drywall (the side facing the inside of the wall), one of the following tools may come in handy… and two of them will prevent that person from haing to cut a huge a huge hole in the wall, ceiling, etc.

Tags: borescope, digital borescope, drywall inspecting tools

Another town has received notification that their drinking water may contain levels of lead and copper higher than deemed acceptable by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

A few residents have experienced lead in their drinking water in recent weeks, prompting discussion of Belleville’s aging infrastructure and a warning to people about how to protect their health.

Township Manager Victor Canning said that “a couple of samples” of tap water tested positive for lead, and by law the township had to send notices to those residents. He said there is a bigger picture problem.

“This is something that has to be addressed in areas with older infrastructure,” Canning said.

For now, he has this advice: “People should let the water run for a couple of minutes to remove any lead or copper issues.”

The substances come from old underground water pipes that need replacing, an expensive proposition, he said.

“We are trying to address this, spending a couple of hundred thousand [dollars], but we’re talking millions and millions to fix it all,” Canning said. ( source )

As stated in the article, tearing up and replacing older copper water lines joined together with solder that contains lead costs a pretty penny and a lot of towns like Belleville simply cannot come up with the money. Therefore residents in these towns owe it to themselves to test their drinking water for dangerous heavy metals such as copper and lead on a regular basis.

“Invasion of the Giant Jellyfish!” sounds like the title of a hastily made Godzilla era Japanese film where people dressed in torn bedsheets float around in a pool killing innocent swimmers. Ironically, though, giant jellyfish really HAVE invaded Japanese waters and some scientists blam changing (rising) water temperatures.

This year’s jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.

Scientists believe climate change — the warming of oceans — has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes. ( source )

So for all of you oceanographers out there we have a simple piece of advice for you: Make sure your thermometer can resist the elements and watch out for jellyfish! They sting!

Tags: jellyfish, Temperature, temperature meters

According to a study conducted in Australia involving 300 households where half received real filters to filter the collected water and half used fake filters which contained no filtration media, scientists detected no real differences in health or general wellness between those who filtered the rainwater and those who did not.

Does this mean you can safely drink the water falling from the sky in your neck of the woods without filtering it first? That all depends upon where you live… so play it safe and don’t take chances with your health.

1) Submit a sample of collected rainwater to a certified water testing lab for through analysis before consuming.

2) Research safe and effective way to store your collected rainwater because water falling from the sky contains no disinfectants or sanitizers to keep bacteria from living, thriving and breeding.

3) Get into the habit of performing routine testing on your rainwater. Ever-changing environmental factors (including, but in no way limited to, pollution caused by mankind) can result in sudden shifts in water quality. Remember: Experts say acid rain results from pollution and acid rain has killed off entire ecosystems.