Laboratory Equipment

Swimming Pools Can Be Unhealthy Environments

As Memorial Day approaches heralding the summer pool season, a new survey on swimmer hygiene conducted by the Water Quality & Health Council (WQHC) finds that although nearly all Americans (93 percent) say they would never re-use someone else’s bath water, almost seven in 10 (68 percent) admit they do not always shower before getting in the pool. Failing to shower before swimming adds contaminants to the pool that can lead to unhealthy swimming conditions.

“Swimming is not a substitute for bathing. Too many people unknowingly treat the pool as a communal bathtub,” says Chris Wiant, chair of the Water Quality & Health Council. “It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s important to shower before you jump in the pool to help keep swimming healthy for everyone in the pool.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Swimming-Pools-Can-Be-Unhealthy-Environments-052212.aspx

Salt Method Purifies Cloudy Drinking Water

Nearly 80 percent of disease in developing countries is linked to bad water and sanitation. Now a scientist at Michigan Technological Univ. has developed a simple, cheap way to make water safe to drink, even if it’s muddy.

It’s easy enough to purify clear water. The solar water disinfection method, or SODIS, calls for leaving a transparent plastic bottle of clear water out in the sun for six hours. That allows heat and ultraviolet radiation to wipe out most pathogens that cause diarrhea, a malady that kills 4,000 children a day in Africa. It’s a different story if the water is murky, as it often is where people must fetch water from rivers, streams and boreholes.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Easy-Method-to-Purify-Cloudy-Water-for-Drinking-050212.aspx

Device Rids Buses of Dangerous Pathogens

The best place to enjoy a breath of fresh air may be a city bus, if Rice Univ. students have their way. A team of graduating seniors has created a system for public transit that would continually clear the air of pathogens that can lead to tuberculosis (TB), flu and pneumonia.

The CityBusters – Joseph Spinella, Jerry Lue, Sundeep Mandava, Grace Ching and Shidong Chen, all seniors – have installed a $500 device on a METRO bus in Houston that has proven effective at killing 99.8 percent of the pathogens that circulate through the air-filtering system. The device, called FluProof, incorporates high-powered ultraviolet lamps that sterilize the air on the fly.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Device-Rids-Busses-of-Dangerous-Pathogens-043012.aspx

Oral Health May Be Key to Healthy Joints

The culprit behind a failed hip or knee replacements might be found in the mouth.

DNA testing of bacteria from the fluid that lubricates hip and knee joints had bacteria with the same DNA as the plaque from patients with gum disease and in need of a joint replacement. This study is one of many coming from the Case Western Reserve Univ. School of Dental Medicine that have linked oral bacteria to health problems when they escape from the mouth and enter the blood.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Oral-Health-May-Be-Key-to-Healthy-Joints-041912.aspx

Streamlined Wastewater Recycling Could Prevent Floods

The use of a more streamlined process to recycle wastewater could have saved Brisbane from severe flooding in 2011 and mitigated recent flood risks in NSW, a leading water expert at the Univ. of New South Wales says.

Direct potable reuse (DPR) of wastewater could free up billions of liters of water from reservoirs around Australia, giving cities a greater buffer to capture rainwater and control major flooding events, says Stuart Khan, an environmental engineer at the UNSW Water Research Centre. Current plans for water recycling in Australia generally involve Indirect Potable Reuse (IPR), where reclaimed water is treated to a high standard and then returned to rivers, lakes and aquifers, where it mixes with environmental waters before being re-extracted for further treatment.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Streamlined-Wastewater-Recycling-Could-Prevent-Floods-041912.aspx

Enzyme Advance Yields Long-Lasting Laundry Products

Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a way to reuse — hundreds of times — the expensive, dirt-busting enzymes that boost the cleaning power of laundry detergents and powdered bleaches that now disappear down the drain. The discovery, reported in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, opens the door to new laundry products, like special scrub brushes or reusable enzyme-coated plastic flakes and strips that might be added to cheaper detergents and then saved for reuse.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Enzyme-Coating-Could-Make-Long-Lasting-Laundry-Products-041812.aspx

Sunlight, Lime Juice Disinfects Water Faster

Looking for an inexpensive and effective way to quickly improve the quality of your drinking water? According to a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, sunlight and a twist of lime might do the trick. Researchers found that adding lime juice to water that is treated with a solar disinfection method removed detectable levels of harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) significantly faster than solar disinfection alone. The results are featured in the April 2012 issue of American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Sunlight-Lime-Juice-Could-Make-Clean-Water-041812.aspx

Rainwater Could Meet Clean-Water Needs

Rainfall can provide an alternative to polluted groundwater in developing countries, but systems are needed to keep it clean. At a remote village called Bisate in the desperately poor nation of Rwanda, a clinic faced chronic shortages of water during the nation’s twice-yearly dry seasons. Sometimes there was simply not enough water available even for seriously dehydrated patients to drink, or for health workers to maintain basic standards of sanitation.

Collecting rainwater during the rainy periods was the obvious answer, but figuring out how to do so safely and economically was not a trivial problem: how big should the collection tanks be? And how much water should be diverted at the beginning of each rainfall to avoid contaminating the supply with the dirt, dust and animal droppings that accumulate on a roof during a dry spell?

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Rainwater-Could-Meet-Clean-Water-Needs-030612.aspx

Consumer Water Filters Are Put to the Test

Wikimedia A Univ. of Arizona study of pour-through and refrigerator water filtration devices and the chemicals they removed is scheduled for publication in the March issue of Good Housekeeping. The Good Housekeeping Research Institute, or GHRI, has partnered with the Univ. of Arizona to perform extensive testing on everyday filters found in water pitchers and refrigerators to see if the consumer products are able to remove chemicals considered an emerging concern for public safety.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Consumer-Water-Filters-Are-Put-to-Test-021712.aspx

Materials Use Light/Dark to Purify Air

Removing the smell of new carpet from a room may eventually be a matter of turning the lights on or off. Manindu Weerasinghe, a Kansas State Univ. doctoral candidate in chemistry, Sri Lanka, is studying materials that use light or darkness to purify air filled with toxins that are harmful to human health and the environment. Her research could one day lead to filters, humidifiers and other devices that can detoxify air in windowless rooms, manufacturing facilities and other indoor areas.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Materials-Use-Light-Dark-to-Purify-Air-012712.aspx

Miracle Tree’s Seeds Purify Water

A natural substance obtained from seeds of the “miracle tree” could purify and clarify water inexpensively and sustainably in the developing world, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, scientists report. Research on the potential of a sustainable water-treatment process requiring only tree seeds and sand appears in ACS’ journal Langmuir.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Miracle-Trees-Purify-Water-011912.aspx

Fabric Cleans Itself When Exposed to Sunlight

Imagine jeans, sweats or socks that clean and de-odorize themselves when hung on a clothesline in the sun or draped on a balcony railing. Scientists are reporting development of a new cotton fabric that cleans itself of stains and bacteria when exposed to ordinary sunlight. Their report appears in the ACS’ journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-cotton-cleans-itself-when-exposed-to-sunlight-121411.aspx

Clean Seeds Lead to Clean Food

“Once seeds have germinated, it’s too late. Sprouts are extremely complex structures with a forest-like root system that conceals microorganisms,” says Hao Feng, associate professor of food and bioprocess engineering at the Univ. of Illinois. “Just a few E. coli cells can grow to a substantial population during germination and sprouting, and it’s very difficult to get rid of them all.” For a new study published in the Journal of Food Science, Feng used both the FDA-recommended dose of chlorine to kill microorganisms and a new sanitizer that is a combination of surfactant and organic acid.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Clean-Seeds-Lead-to-Clean-Food-102111.aspx