When it comes to river pollution, there can be many different causes for this problem. One of the biggest ones that the public is facing in the United Kingdom is the issue of leaking sewage. When a house has its pipes misconnected, it can cause sewage to end up in the rivers, which then leads to serious pollution problems.
By using glow in the dark tampons, the authorities in England are looking to help remedy this pollution. This may seem very unusual at first, but could actually make a lot of sense in the long run.
By nature, tampons are made to be extremely absorbent.
Scientists are using this property to their advantage and placing them at strategic points in the rivers and water systems.
The idea is to use UV light on these tampons and they will help show scientists where the pollution is starting.
How can glow in the dark tampons help with water pollution?
Well, the engineers at the University of Sheffield have it all figured out. They realized that in most, if not all, sewage there are properties called optical whiteners that can be identified. These optical whiteners are the same kind that you would normally see in detergents and shampoos. These same chemicals, when absorbed by a tampon, make it glow under UV light.
The hope is that by placing these tampons strategically, they will pick up even the smallest amounts of optical whiteners and will then reflect that to the scientists once under UV light. There have been many tests done to ensure the accuracy of this method. Tampons are actually extremely sensitive, and can absorb minute amounts of chemicals that would otherwise be extremely difficult to detect. For example, there was a test done where the scientists put just 0.001 ml of detergent in a liter of water. This is 300 times more dilution than one would normally see in river pollutions, and the tampon was able to absorb it and then show it through UV light.
Glow in the dark tampons many not be the most conventional way of going about this particular pollution issue, but there has been success achieved using this method. By starting with the rivers, they can pinpoint which one is polluted, and go from there. This means that they are able to trace it back to the source step by step through the waterways by placing these glow in the dark tampons in different manholes and are able to even pinpoint which house is causing the problem.
This method could help save the UK a lot of money when it comes to river pollution as many times it can be very costly and troublesome to identify the source of the problem. The only other way that authorities had previously been using was to dye the water in a house to see if there was a leak. It is very easy to see where the problem would be with this method, as it could take a very long time to go through each house and test each separate one for problems. By using the glow in the dark tampons, the authorities in the United Kingdom are very hopeful that there will be a solution to their problem of river pollution very soon. The Bradford Beck River has been selected to be tested and treated next, as it poses one of the biggest problems for the United Kingdom at the moment.
