(Credit: J. M. Garcia et al.)
It may not make your list of must-have camping gear, but a new sheet that detects mercury levels in water may prove useful to those who live or work downstream from industrial and mining sites (such as gold mines and coal-fired powered plants) and want to drink the local water.
When dipped in water for five minutes, the sheet, manufactured by chemists at the University of Burgos in Spain, signals the presence of mercury by turning red -- a process that can be seen with the naked eye.
Take a picture of that sheet with a digital camera, and you can learn the specific concentration of the mercury, a metal that is liquid at room temperature and has been found to cause long-term neurological issues after accumulating in the brain.
The researchers, who've just published their findings in the journal Analytical Methods, say they used the open access GIMP program to see the color coordinates, which are then compared with reference values to determine mercury concentration.
The sheet itself houses a fluorescent... [Read more]
by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore via CNET
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