Thank you, Tina, for your question about the Hydrogen Sulfide Low-Range Test Kit (481197-20) and its testing capabilities for aquarium water.  The test CAN get used for aquarium water, yes, but only freshwater samples.

Chemical name for hydrogen sulfide: H₂S

• Detection Range: 0, 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 ppm (mg/L)
• Total Test Time < 2 Minutes
• No Powders to Dissolve or Tablets to Crush
• Each Kit Contains 30 Tests
• Current Inventory Has Expiration Date of 9/2017

The Low Range H₂S Test Kit detects concentrations of H₂S from 0 to 2ppm (mg/L) with its first increment down at 0.3ppm (mg/L).  Other H₂S tests use a 'fizzing agent' to liberate hydrogen sulfide gas from water samples and then detect the gas, but this test does not.  Instead, this product uses a test procedure that changes the color of the sample in direct proportion to the concentration of dissolved H₂S in the aqueous sample.

The color of the sample then gets compared to a visual color chart designed specifically for this water quality test.

Got a rotten egg or sulfur smell in your water?

If so, then you more than likely have dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas in your water... and you also probably want to get that smell OUT of your water as soon as possible.

Before investing in a system to remove dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas you must first determine the concentration of the gas in your water so you can select the correct water treatment system. Otherwise you run the risk of purchasing too little remediation for the job or wasting money on a system that has far more hydrogen sulfide gas removal capabilities than your water quality situation requires.

Learn more about dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas in water, how to test for it, and how to remove it in the Hydrogen Sulfide Archives section of the Water Testing Blog!

Good morning, Nick, and thank you for contacting us about your well water situation. First off, we would like to know why you suspect ‘contamination by gas’ in your well water? Do you smell a particular scent or detect an unusual taste?

Hydrogen sulfide gas (in very low concentrations) gives off a distinct sulfur or ‘rotten egg’ smell.

Methane, on the other hand, has no natural scent or smell to it. The smell associated with methane often resembles that of hydrogen sulfide gas because utility companies and commercial distributors of methane often mix trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas with the methane to aid in leak detection.

As far as testing for methane goes, the gas typically volatilizes very quickly at ambient (room) temperature and therefore testing for it in drinking water becomes extremely difficult.

Facts about Methane: http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/eh/chemfs/fs/Methane.htm

Something else to consider: If you detect a sulfur smell ONLY when running hot water, you may have a problem with your hot water heater.

Location, location, location…

The real estate market has touted that phrase for years as one of the most important factors in determining the value of property.

With that in mind, when it comes to well water quality, the ‘value’ (quality) of well water depends greatly on the placement of the well.

We see that you hail from Texas. By any chance do you live in an area where natural gas harvesting takes place or has taken place recently? If so, or if you live in close proximity to industrial parks or other potential sources of chemicals that could leak into the ground, basic at-home water test kits will more than likely not cover all the bases and you may want to consider laboratory testing

Regarding testing options, you can either contact a local water testing laboratory (your local board of health should have a list of qualified laboratories in your area) and have them perform analyses on your water or you may want to consider using mail-in use water testing services like National Testing Laboratories.

Moral of the story?

While pretty much everyone knows we suggest a regular regimen of well water testing (at the very least annually for things like coliform bacteria, nitrates, nitrites, arsenic, heavy metals, etc.), we ALSO think it of paramount importance that people do NOT procrastinate when it comes to testing their water if/when they suspect a problem.

Taking the time to perform the testing required to effectively and efficiently diagnose a water quality problem always makes sense! Remember: It’s your water, your health, and ultimately… your LIFE!

An ex-employee at an asphalt company has come forward recently with allegations that higher-ups in the company encouraged him to submit fake water samples (taken from a rainwater collection bucket) and submit them for testing by the Oregon Department of Transportation… because the higher-ups feared actual testing of their waste water stream would reveal code violations.

Nothing makes the taste of fresh, clean drinking water vanish quite like… runoff from an asphalt plant, right? Even just saying that to ourselves as we put together this blog posting turned our stomachs.

So, if unlike ourselves you actually believe all of required environmental testing gets done in the proper manner, perhaps now you will see things a bit differently and start testing your water on, at the very least, a semi-regular basis?

Think we made up this story? Not! Read the source article here.

Common water contaminants to test for?

Although far more sinister compounds and elements exist in our world that could enter our water supply (i.e. organic solvents, radioactive isotopes, etc.), we routinely suggest testing for heavy metals as a good starting point because whether you have city/municipal water or your water comes from a well or spring, metals can pretty much always — under the right circumstances — find a way into the water supply.

• Well casings typically get made out of metal.

• City/Municipal water must travel through miles of metal piping before it gets to one’s residence.

• Water extracted from wells comes in contact with rocks and soil that all contain traces of metals.

• While most homes these days contain plastic plumbing, many older homes still contain metallic plumbing (copper w/ lead-laced solder at the joints) plumbing… and metal lines get used to connect most homes (regardless of age) to the municipal water system.

What should I test for next?

After dissolved metals in water testing things get a bit murky. Pardon the expression.

Folks with well water may want to test for all sorts of things such as nitrates, nitrites, coliform bacteria (important!), hydrogen sulfide, arsenic, etc. while folks on city water may want to test for specific metals such as copper and lead, total hardness, free chlorine, total chlorine, etc.

No matter what type of water you have going into your home, school or place of business, only regular testing of the water’s quality will let you know if you have anything to worry about when it comes to the safety and purity of the water you drink.

While many people still blame sulfur for the rotten egg smell in water, sulfur alone does not create that terrible smell. Technically speaking, the sulfur combines with two hydrogen molecules to form H₂S, a compound formally commonly known as hydrogen sulfide gas.

It does not take a large quantity of liberated hydrogen sulfide gas in a water supply to make the water unappealing because of its wretched, egg-like aroma and the smell typically intensifies as the water temperature rises and more H₂S gas leaves the water.

Some would think that simply detecting the rank stench of H₂S gas in drinking water would serve as all the information needed to select the correct water treatment system but, as with most other drinking water contaminants, the concentration of H₂S gas in the water determines what method of removal will make the most sense.

Simple activated carbon filters usually do a decent job of removing smaller amounts of H₂S gas. For higher concentrations of H₂S gas, other, more complicated and expensive methods usually become necessary. In some of the methods chemicals convert the gas back into its elemental form (a powder) and then a filter strains out the precipitated sulfur.

Testing for hydrogen sulfide

We have already mentioned that hydrogen sulfide gas in water does not need to have all that high of a concentration to offend one’s nose so it stands to reason that a good test kit for hydrogen sulfide gas in water would have the ability to detect very low levels of the gas.

Thus far in our travels the kit that seemed to have the easiest instructions, easiest to read color chart, a decent amount of accuracy, and best overall value came from WaterWorks and goes by the name of Low Range Hydrogen Sulfide Check.

This highly affordable hydrogen sulfide test kit for drinking water detects hydrogen sulfide levels from 0 ppm to 2 ppm with the first color pad having a value of 0.3 ppm. Testing time: Under 3 minutes.

Removing hydrogen sulfide from drinking water

The task of removing hydrogen sulfide from drinking water can get accomplished in several ways, but for the average home or business owner using a whole house filter that contains specialized filtration media typically makes the most sense.

A company by the name of Crystal Quest manufactures several different whole house water filters capable of removing hydrogen sulfide and you can find information on how they work as well as the levels of hydrogen sulfide they remove on the FilterWater.Com web site.

Hi..I work in an office building in brooklyn (11211) and the water in the bathroom sink smells really bad. If you wash your hands…which we all do…your hands smell too. I have talked to the landlord many times about this and they have not done anything My staff has complained about the same thing. The land next door used to be a chemical plant and nothing was allowed to be built for years..Could something be seeping in the water somehow. I would like to have the water tested. I am not sure what to test for exactly so hoping you can advise. How much $ will I have to spend to get the water tested and if it is found to be contaminated somehow…then what do I do?

A couple of questions came to mind right away while reading Rachel’s question about water quality in her office:

1) What type of smell or odor do you detect emanating from the water? Does the unpleasant odor resemble the stench of rotten eggs (i.e. does it smell like sulfur)?

2) Does the odor come from both hot and cold water or just from one or the other?

We ask those questions because problems with hot water heaters often serve as the source of odor(s) in many homes and offices.

Water containing dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas produces an offensive (and VERY unpleasant) “rotten egg” or “sulfur” odor and will also have a similar taste. In a lot of cases the odor seems a lot stronger when one first turns on the water or runs hot water from the faucet. ( source )

If the smell you get from the water does not meet the profile above, and actually even it does meet the above profile, we highly suggest getting the water tested by a certified water testing laboratory like National Testing Laboratories or a local laboratory recommended by your local health department.

Given the history of the property (next door) we suggest going w/ the most comprehensive test you can afford. Why? Quite simply because many of the ‘more interesting’ contaminants resulting from industrial activities may not get detected by commonly offered water testing packages.

History… Not just for students anymore!

See what you can learn about what REALLY went on next door before the company closed up shop. What sorts of chemicals did they produce? Why did they shut down? Why did the city (or other agency) put a ban on building there after the company shut down?

While we believe it unlikely that the ‘issues’ left behind by that company have much to do with your current water woes since your water comes from the city, we would not rule it out entirely.

Do your homework, find a certified lab that can test for the sorts of nasty things that company may have left behind, make sure the results of their findings can get admitted as evidence in a legal proceedings, have the results examined by a qualified water specialist, and then determine what needs to happen next — be it legal action on the part of your landlord against the company or the city or the landlord simply installing the correct filter to remove the contaminants that make the water smell so awful.

Hi.

We are a detergent manufacturing company here in Malta and we need to make regular checks on water that is used in the manufacturing process especially for nitrates, bacterias, sulfide and others. What you can suggest me ?

Thanks and Regards

Jesmond F.

Thank you, Jesmond, for your inquiry. Given the items you wish to test for, we have a few suggestions:

• Our Water Test Kit Store currently carries a product it calls ‘Water Quality Test Kit‘ which contains tests for all of the items you mentioned.
• Another kit made by the same company called the Well Driller Test Kit includes tests for all of the tests you asked about and will make it possible for you to test quite a few water samples — up to 50 samples in some cases.
• Now if you’d rather use a meter to perform testing, naturally we suggest the eXact Micro 7+ Meter which, according to the latest information we’ve read, can test for Ammonia, Bromine, Chloride/Salt, Chlorine Dioxide, Chromium (Hexavalent), Copper, Cyanuric Acid, Fluoride, Iodine, Iron, Low Range Total Hardness, Manganese, Nitrate, Nitrite, Ozone, Acid pH, Alkali pH, Potassium, Sulfate, Sulfide, and Turbidity. Granted the meter cannot test for bacteria, but you can always pick up tests for bacteria separately.

• Speaking of separately, simple dip-n-read test strips exist for the purpose of testing each of the tests you asked about — with the exception, of course, of bacteria which uses a presence/absence ‘mug’ test procedure if you wish to test down to drinking water standards: Bacteria, Sulfides (as hydrogen sulfides) and Nitrates.

Hopefully one or more of the options above will suit your water testing needs.

Bad Taste and Foul Odor — Iron bacteria often produce nasty tastes and odors commonly reported as: “smells swampy,” “has an oily or petroleum like smell,” “smells remotely like cut cucumber,” “sewer smell” “stinks like rotten vegetation,” or “stale and musty.”

Often times the bad tastes and odors will seem noticeably stronger after a long period where the water has not run.

Note: If you smell a “rotten egg” smell, this odor most likely comes from something other than iron bacteria. You may want to test, instead, for dissolved hydrogen sulfide in your water.

Discoloration — Iron bacteria have a knack for leaving orange, brown, red or slightly yellow stains on your normally pristine white fixtures and may even cause water in toilets and toilet tanks to become discolored.

Some folks (who have lots of iron bacteria in their water) have even reported seeing rainbow-colored oily residues on surfaces exposed to their water.

Slimy Red Deposits — Should you happen to notice a sticky slime with a rust-like color — or possibly orange, brown, red, slightly yellow or even gray color — in your toilet tank, iron bacteria may have made their home in your water supply.

So… Those Simple ‘Tests’ Always Work?

Not even in a fairytale world, pal! Each of the ‘signs’ and ‘indicators’ of iron bacteria listed above could also come from drinking water contaminants such as ferrous iron, sulfate, hydrogen sulfide, manganese and/or other biological organisms frequently found in water supplies such as sulfur bacteria.

So… How Can I Know for Sure That I’ve Got Iron Bacteria?

No method other than having your water tested by a certified water testing laboratory (such as National Testing Laboratories) will tell you for certain whether or not you have iron bacteria in your water.

While it may not sound like something that occurs naturally in drinking water, it most certainly does. Many different reasons exist for why or how sulfate gets into water supplies and the United States Environmental Protection Agency has set the secondary maximum contaminant level (SMCL) for sulfate in drinking water at 250 milligrams per liter (mg/L or ppm).

For those who do not know, the SMCL’s pertain to aesthetic qualities and characteristics of water such as taste and odor, not matters pertaining to health issues. The Federal Government does not enforce SMCL’s but it does provide them as suggested guidelines which it does encourage public water systems to follow.

You can view the EPA’s Secondary Drinking Water Standards on this web site here.

In recent times, however, some health officials have taken a keen interest in sulfate contamination because of growing suspicions that if ingested in high quantities it can cause diarrhea. Apparently some segments of the world’s population experience bouts of diarrhea when they suddenly start ingesting water that has high sulfate concentrations after residing in areas with much lower sulfate in water concentrations.

How many water systems exceed the EPA’s SMCL for sulfate in drinking water? In an article on the EPA’s EPA’s website, experts estimated that roughly 3% of the public drinking water systems in the United States may have sulfate levels at or above 250 mg/L.

Can the general public test for sulfates in drinking water?

As a matter of fact, yes they can. SenSafe manufactures an easy-to-use, fast and reliable test strip that works quite well for field testing of well water, ground water and surface water. You can find SenSafe’s Sulfate Check product in both the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit and the Water Quality Test Kit in our Water Test Kit Store.

Prefer to use a meter for your testing needs? The eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter has the ability to perform that test when used with the correct reagentstrip.

Sandra77D wrote in and asked, “Hi. My water stinks like something awful. Rotten eggs and nasty smelling funk. Especially the hot water. A neighbor says he has teh same problem and blames his old septic tank. Our houses were built in the same year. Should we blame the septic tank, too?”

In all honesty, Sandra, we do not have the credentials or knowledge to answer that question for you. We can, however, give you a quick education on hydrogen sulfide in drinking water.

Water containing dissolved hydrogen sulfide gas produces an offensive (and VERY unpleasant) “rotten egg” or “sulfur” odor and will also have a similar taste. In a lot of cases the odor seems a lot stronger when one first turns on the water or runs hot water from the faucet.

Higher temperatures result in the generation of hydrogen sulfide gas at a faster rate and this can make showering in water that contains hydrogen sulfide particularly unpleasant!

Blame it on the hot water heater?

Occasionally water that smells like rotten eggs will actually have acquired that smell from a corrosion control rod in the hot water heater. Over time the magnesium-based rod can chemically reduce sulfates in source water to hydrogen sulfide.

If you only get the rotten egg smell from your hot water tap, check the corrosion control rod in your hot water tank.

Can the rotten egg smell harm people?

Aside from its noxious nature, it really does not present all that much of a danger unless the hydrogen sulfide fumes build up in confined spaces. High concentrations of hydrogen sulfide gas in the air can cause headaches and make people pass out… pretty much like any other gas.

The bigger problem people face when dealing with hydrogen sulfide comes from its tendency to corrode iron, steel and copper — three commonly used metals for plumbing fixtures. It also tends to tarnish silverware and discolor copper and brass cooking utensils.

In houses with hydrogen sulfide problems kitchen and bathroom fixtures will typically develop yellow or black stains and beverages such as coffee and tea will have odd discoloration. Foods cooked with hydrogen sulfide water may have unusual appearances and/or tastes.

I’ve heard that water softeners can create rotten egg smells, too?

While not as common as problems with the corrosion control bar in the water heater, yes, water softeners can serve as the source of hydrogen sulfide smells in water. Certain types of bacteria can flourish in the bed of a water softener where they will reduce any sulfate that passes through the bed to hydrogen sulfide.

If you get a black slime on the inside of your water softener and a rotten egg smell to your water despite having no hydrogen sulfide detected in your source water, you may have a problem with bacteria in your water softener.

Hydrogen sulfide from sewage?

Definitely possible! While water containing hydrogen sulfide by itself most likely will not cause disease, hydrogen sulfide smells can possibly come from sewage that certainly CAN can contain disease-producing contaminants.

For that reason, health officials and water experts suggest testing for bacterial contamination when investigating a hydrogen sulfide smell in drinking water.

Getting rid of hydrogen sulfide smell in water

Several different methods for getting rid of hydrogen sulfide in water exist, but as you can see, you must first figure out the source of the gas. Did it come from the source water (if you have well water)? Does it only show up in hot water? Do you have well water and a septic tank? Do you smell it outside of your home on not-so-windy days?

Depending upon the source AND amount of hydrogen sulfide in water, shock chlorination, water heater alteration (changing the metal of the corrosion control rod), activated carbon filtration, oxidizing filtration, or oxidizing chemical injection may reduce or eliminate hydrogen sulfide in water.

In certain cases the preferred method for reducing or eliminating hydrogen sulfide levels in water also has the added benefit of reducing/removing iron and manganese at the same time.

After consulting with a certified water testing professional…

If you have very concentrations of hydrogen sulfide originating from your source water, a filter such as the Crystal Quest Faucet Filter may get rid of the smell using on of its 5 stages of filtration.

If you have higher concentrations of hydrogen sulfide in your source water, you may need to use a much larger systems such as the Crystal Quest Whole House Iron & Hydrogen Sulfide Filter which uses three stages of filtration to filter out unwanted contaminants… including up to 5 ppm (parts per million) of hydrogen sulfide, 15 ppm of total (ferrous & ferric) iron and 10 ppm of manganese. This particular water filter system works well as an add-on to aeration, chlorination, ozone or other pretreatment methods in cases where extremely high levels of hydrogen sulfide exist.