Recently this author wrote an article about our own city water quality report. In it, I expressed concern that our city water is only tested once a year, even less for pollutants with minimal risk of appearing. My questions was, what if we have a sudden unexpected surge of one of these pollutants? How long would it take the city water engineers to detect and remove it?
After this article, we received promising news that such a danger can be virtually eliminated using an Israeli invention, a machine that continually monitors the quality of water. To add to the uniqueness of this instrument, the article goes on to state that the machine would use bioluminescent bacteria! How would that work?
Bioluminescence is a chemical reaction that gives off a highly efficient light. The most famous example is the firefly. It occurs in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as microorganisms and terrestrial animals. Besides a variety of marine life, a wide variety of land animals can give off “cold light” including both fireflies and glow worms. Other insects, insect larvae, annelids, arachnids and even species of fungi possess bioluminescent abilities. Even certain species of elephants have demonstrated the ability to glow in the dark.
CheckLight Ltd., a company based in Israel, will be showcasing its new AquaVerity early warning biomonitoring system in the Israeli New Tech booth at ACE ‘10 in Chicago. The system is based on the fact that bioluminescent bacteria give off a consistent amount of light in clean water at a given temperature. If the temperature drops or the water is polluted, the amount of light the bacteria give off will be reduced.
Freeze-dried luminescent bacteria are hydrated and kept in the device at 4°C to maintain a stable luminescent culture. The light given off by the bacteria is constantly monitored using a luminometer. If the water is polluted by any number of different substances, the light from the bacteria will be reduced and this will immediately be detected by the machine and automatically reported.
A number of safeguards and self-calibrations are built into the system too complex to describe in this article. After four weeks, the bacteria are removed and a fresh supply of freeze-dried bacteria are introduced.
The monitoring stations can be set at key places in a water system and all monitored from one control station. We see here another example of how nature’s design is the basis of new inventions that protect and enhance the quality of life.
Obviously this system is some time from becoming a standard for city water systems. In the meantime, the threat of a surge in one or another type of pollutant remains. Another natural method of dealing with this threat is that of filtering all drinking and cooking water through an activated charcoal filter like the Berkey. The natural processes of adsorption remove a variety of pollutants, virtually guaranteeing your water supply is clean and safe.
Possibly related articles:
- E. Coli Contamination of Drinking Water
- Berkey Filters Are The Premiere Home Water Filter
- Guard Your Life From Mercury Poisoning
Tags: Bioluminescent Water
