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The Water Test Kit Store: Latest News on Tuesday, February 6th 2018 under: Uncategorized
We recently heard from 'Fred' who asked,
"What is the detection limit for your 'Arsenic in Water Test by National Testing Laboratories' product? Is there any discount for ordering multiple tests? I want to test my incoming city water and water after RO treatment."
Good afternoon, Fred, and thank you for the inquiry..
The minimum detection limit for the
Arsenic Test by National Testing Laboratories is 5ppb (also written as .005ppm and .005 mg/L). The USEPA has set the acceptable limit for arsenic in public water systems at 10ppb.
Regarding discounts for additional test kits, we offer a discount of 5% for quantities of 3 to 10 of the kits. You can find a link to bulk pricing on the product page (
http://www.watertestkitstore.com/arsenic-in-water-test-by-national-testing-laboratories/) under the 'add to cart' button.
What is arsenic and where does it come from?
Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment and may show up in both public and private water supplies. Levels of arsenic occurring naturally in water supplies vary greatly depending upon location and levels in some areas have greater than normal arsenic concentrations in drinking water because of human activities such as industry and agriculture.
As mentioned earlier, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that public water supplies should contain no more than 10 parts per billion, or .010 milligrams per liter dissolved arsenic.
Why should we care about arsenic in drinking water?
Drinking water that contains elevated levels of dissolved inorganic arsenic (As+3/As+5) may cause health problems in humans in both the long and short term. Severity of health effects depends heavily on exposure.
When a person gets exposed to a high level of inorganic arsenic in a short span of time arsenic poisoning takes place and acute effects include vomiting, pain in the abdomen and diarrhea. In severe cases arsenic poisoning may cause numbness and and/or tingling sensations in hands, feet, arms and legs followed by cramping and eventually death.
When exposure to inorganic arsenic takes place over a long period of time (usually happens due to contaminated drinking water and/or food supplies) symptoms typically manifest themselves in or on a person's skin. They include changes in pigmentation changes, lesions on the skin and hard patches on hands and feet. Each of the symptoms may act as a precursor to more serious conditions such as skin cancer.
Scientists have also found convincing evidence of links between prolonged exposure to inorganic arsenic and other conditions such as lung cancer, bladder cancer, kidney failure, heart conditions and also developmental issues in children and young adults.
Reducing arsenic levels in drinking water
To effectively reduce levels of dissolved arsenic in drinking water one or more of the following filtration technologies typically gets used: Reverse osmosis, ultra-filtration, distillation and/or ion exchange.
Will the Propur water filters effectively reduce arsenic levels?
Yes. The Propur FS10 Water Filter has undergone rigorous testing against NSF Standards 53 for metal reduction and it meets the requirements for that standard. If you'd like to see the test results, as performed by an independent laboratory, you can view the
Propur FS10's laboratory test results on the following page:
If you want something a bit larger and with higher filtering capacity, then you may want to consider a reverse osmosis unit like the
Aqua RO from Multipure. You can view more information about the Aqua RO and its filtering capabilities on the following page: