Ann asked, “Hi. I work in the food and beverage industry and our our most recent health inspector told us we need to have a way to test for 800ppm or greater free chlorine residual in our washing solutions. Do you carry anything for that? I saw the ones that go up to 120ppm but I need higher. Thanks.”

Well, Ann, we do actually carry a product for testing higher concentrations of free chlorine in water: Free Chlorine Check Ultra High Range II tests up to 2,000ppm free chlorine and does so in about a minute.

Below you will find the color chart for the :

Color Chart for Free Chlorine Check Ultra High Range II

As you can see, this high range free chlorine test strip product has a low detection level of 25ppm and a high detection level of 2,000ppm.

What’s the deal w/ the sanitizing & disinfection solution labels?

The manufacturer’s of this product, Industrial Test Systems, originally created this product to meet a need in North Carolina. Because of several unfortunate incidents where young children in daycare and childcare facilities came in contact with disinfecting and/or sanitizing solutions mixed way too strong, laws were enacted that required licensed daycare and childcare facilities in North Carolina to test the concentrations of their ‘bleach water’ on a daily basis.

Childcare and daycare facilities in North Carolina have authorization to use the Free Chlorine Check Ultra High Range II test strip product for the purpose of testing disinfecting and sanitizing solutions.

Note: Different states have different laws governing what constitutes a properly mixed sanitizing or disinfecting solution and different industries will also have different requirements. Check with your local health department or health inspector before deciding on the concentrations you will use!

Looking for the “The Childcare Kit – Part No: 480124-3K” ?

If so, then you already know it includes the following…

• (3) Bottles of 100 Tests… for a Total of 300 Tests
• (1) Tablespoon Measuring Tool
• (1) 1/4 Cup Measuring Tool
• (1) Sanitizer Preparation Method

… and you can purchase The Childcare Kit – Part No: 480124-3K in the Water Test Kit Store.

We mentioned this filter (the Pentek ChlorPlus) in the past and now feel the need to mention it again since we continue to receive inquiries from people asking why their water filters fail to remove all of the chlorine smell from their water.

The majority of water filters readily available in the marketplace do NOT remove chloramines, also known as combined chlorine. Most carbon filters remove free chlorine only. It takes a specialized type of filter like the Pentek ChlorPlus to cleanse water of unwanted chloramines.

Does my water contain chloramines?

Whether your municipal water system uses free chlorine or chloramines as its primary sanitizing agent we cannot say, but in either case your water will certainly contain chloramines. Unsure why? Take a look at this brief tutorial on free chlorine, total chlorine and combined chlorine.

That’s just a cartridge… What sort of housing does it go in?

A very keen observation followed by a very good question! The Pentek ChlorPlus filter for chloramine removal fits in most standard sized 10″ (by 2.5″) filter housings available from online retailers like Filter Water..

As always before purchasing a replacement cartridge for your water filter system, check, double check and TRIPLE check to make sure your housing will accommodate the filter cartridge you wish to buy!

Well, in this case, we would pity the person who could make this stuff up because the very idea of a guy putting his ‘man seed’ in another person’s drinking water — for fun — makes us gag.

Apparently for one man, who also had a voyeurism addiction, the idea of sharing himself with unsuspecting female counterparts made perfect sense — and for that he will spend the next 18 months in jail.

Sorry, folks, but we think that punishment does not fit the crime. He willingly endangered his victims using bodily fluids which, given his affinity for the unusual, could have contained a whole lot of unwanted bacteria, diseases, etc.

Even if the water he contaminated had the full, legally allowed amount of free chlorine residual in it, we cannot think of ANYone that would still voluntarily drink that water and feel safe doing it!

SINGAPORE – In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, a man who mixed his semen into the drinking water used by his colleagues was jailed for 18 months yesterday.

Sim Keng Tee, 35, a former civilian officer at the Singapore Police Force, admitted that he committed the offences between Feb 21 and April 3, 2008.

Two women who used to work with him drank the tainted water without their knowledge.

Sim recorded them doing so with his mobile phone camera. The medium-built, bespectacled man then saved the clips onto his computer at home.

These acts of mischief only came to light after another female colleague caught him recording an underskirt video of her at their workplace on Sept 10 last year. She lodged a police report and the authorities raided his Farrer Road flat soon afterwards.

Officers seized items including hard disks and thumb drives from his home.

Following his arrest, Sim was referred by the police to the Institute of Mental Health, where he was diagnosed with voyeurism. The court heard that Sim decided to stop his treatment halfway as it required the participation of his family members.

Sim told District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan that he did not want his parents to know of his crimes.

During sentencing, the judge said Sim’s acts of mischief were “purely reprehensible”.

Sim had pleaded guilty last week to eight counts of taking underskirt videos and two counts of mischief. Another 149 charges, mainly for taking upskirt images of women, were taken into consideration. He could have been jailed up to a year and fined for each charge. ( source )

We posted that article in its entirety… because if we had to feel that queasy feeling in the pits of our stomachs, we thought you should, too.

Biological contamination of the usual sort

Water lines break, machines at the water treatment plant go offline unexpectedly, well casing cracks, animals get into the wellhead area, etc. Any and all of the aforementioned events can result in unwanted biological contamination of drinking water.

So as usual, we suggest performing periodic bacteria testing on your water — especially if you have a private well. Water treatment plants have to follow strict testing schedules to ensure the quality of the water they distribute whereas no one, by law, has to test the quality of water coming from a private well after it passes its initial tests.

While the average person does not have a need to for chlorine levels much above 3 to 5 parts per million, and even then they would typically only need to do so to make sure their swimming pools had a sufficient amount of free chlorine, but other folks have the need to test for free chlorine levels in excess of 25 or 50 parts per million on a regular basis. Below we will list a few of the places where you might expect to see a need for high range free chlorine testing.

Fruit & Vegetable Processing

After fresh produce leaves the fields it travels to a processing facility where it typically gets washed with a solution containing some sort of sanitizer such as chlorine, ozone, etc. In cases where the produce processing plant uses chlorine employees must make sure the rinse water contains a certain amount of free chlorine after it has passed over the fruit/vegetables.

Levels of free chlorine drop with an increase in biological load (contamination) and the rinse water having free chlorine left after use indicates that the produce no longer contains biological contamination on its surfaces.

Childcare Facilities

State laws require that childcare facilities clean their surfaces with properly mixed sanitizing and disinfecting solutions that contain an appropriate concentration of sanitizing or disinfecting chemicals. In many cases these facilities use chlorine bleach solutions for cleaning purposes.

As a general rule these solutions must contain anywhere from 50 to 200 parts per million free chlorine for sanitizing solutions and anywhere from 500 to 800 parts per million free chlorine for disinfecting solutions. In case like this the Waterworks High Range Free Chlorine Test Strips will not work because they have an upper detection limit of only 120 parts per million free chlorine, but WaterWorks Free Chlorine Check Ultra High II has an upper detection limit of 2,000 parts per million free chlorine and works well in this application.

Some states leave it up to individual childcare facilities to determine testing frequency of sanitizing and disinfecting solutions while other states, like North Carolina for example, have strict laws dictating how often childcare facilities must perform testing.

As of January 1, 2006, all licensed, non-in-home daycare centers in the State of North Carolina had to have the ability to test the chlorine bleach content in both their sanitizing and their disinfecting solutions. Previously the law stated that they had to test only the chlorine concentration in their sanitizing solutions. ( source )

If interested in purchasing a test kit for testing sanitizing & disinfecting solutions in a childcare facility, you can find them readily available in the Water Test Kit Store.

Water Lines and Water Mains

Before a water line can go into service for the first time or go back into service after a breakage or leak has gotten repaired technicians must flush (burn) the lines with water containing a high concentration of free chlorine to clean out any and biological contaminants. Typically the technicians must test the discharge water periodically until the free chlorine level remains constant at a high level for a set amount of time.

Waterworks High Range Free Chlorine Test Strips work very well for this application.

Product-specific information about Waterworks High Range Free Chlorine Test Strips:

• Testing requires just 32 seconds
• Each bottle contains 50 ready-to-use tests
• Color chart has easily distinguished color blocks at 1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 120 ppm
• No harmful chemicals or reagents to handle

“In school we recently learned that chlorine added to drinking water by water treatment facilities reacts with organic contaminants in the water and forms harmful compounds called trihalomethanes. Does the EPA have a guidleine which limits the amount of trihalomethanes are considered safe?” — Trinity in Washington

First of all, we want to clarify something in Trinity’s question: Not all forms of chlorine added by water treatment facilities will cause trihalomethanes to form. Adding ‘free chlorine’ to water containing organinc contaminants will result in the formation of thrihalomethanes while adding ‘combined chlorine’, also referred to as chloramines, to water containing organic contaminants will not.

Unsure of the difference between free chlorine and total chlorine? The following Water Testing Blog postings will help:

• Free Chlorine, Combined Chlorine, Total Chlorine
• Free, Combined and Total Chlorine Re-Visited
• Testing Chlorine Levels — Drinking Water vs. Pool Water

Getting back to Trinity’s question, though, prior to 2004 the EPA set the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for trihalomethanes in drinking water at 100 parts per billion (ppb). In 2004 the EPA lowered the MCl for trihalomethanes in drinking water to 80 ppb. ( source )

Simple: Viruses like influenza can spread when one person sneezes and coughs their nasal discharge and/or saliva (gross!) lands on a surface that other people touch. The germs will then travel to whatever surfaces those people touch… including their own food, eyes, mouth, etc.

Proper use of sanitizing and disinfecting solutions on a regular basis helps to reduce the number of germs hanging out on surfaces and thus reduces the likelihood of people unknowingly picking up germs and accidentally infecting themselves or others with an illness.

Is chlorine bleach an effective sanitizer/disinfectant?

In most cases, yes. Chlorine bleach works quite well as a germ-killing agent on surfaces and as a matter of fact, many states require childcare facilities to use dilute bleach solutions to clean changing table surfaces and other areas where human waste, a known haven for harmful germs and bacteria, may (inadvertantly) come into contact with surfaces.

As an example, North Carolina requires childcare workers to wipe down a changing area with a disinfecting bleach solution containing between 500 and 800 parts per million free chlorine after they change each child’s diaper. How do they verify that they have the proper concentration of free chlorine in their disinfecting bleach solution? They test with a product such as the Free Chlorine Water Check Ultra High II test strip.

Perhaps ahead of its time, North Carolina REQUIRES childcare facilities to test the free chlorine levels eachtime thet make new batches of disinfecting solutions (for wiping down bathrooms, changing areas) AND sanitizing solutions (for wiping down tables, chairs, doorknobs, toys, etc.). Making sure each solution contains the proper free chlorine levels before use goes a long way to help prevent the spread of germs, bacteria and illnesses.

Sanitizing: 50 – 200ppm Free Chlorine | Disinfecting: 500 – 800ppm Free Chlorine

So what have we learned? Testing the free chlorine levels in cleaning solutions helps to ensure that cleaning efforts accomplish the goal of properly sanitizing and disinfecting surfaces where children and adults can easily pick up germs capable of infecting someone with the common cold, the ‘traditional’ flu, or worse yet, a case of Swine Flu.

Keeping the facilities clean during the flu season is also a consideration, both Shafer and Baeuchle said.

“We regularly sanitize all the toys. After a child has a toy in their mouth, it has to be sanitized,” Shafer said. “We sanitize the tables and chairs on a regular basis in the classrooms.”

Baeuchle said she is asking the school custodians to pay special attention to high frequency areas like water fountains and doorknobs. ( source )

Interested in testing the concentration of chlorine bleach sanitizing and disinfecting solutions? You can pick up a Childcare/Daycare Kit which includes (3) bottles of North Carolina Licensed Child Care Association approved test strips (total of 300 tests!), quarter cup and tablespoon measuring devices (for proper on-site metering of the bleach), and a copy of the procedures North Carolina wants child care workers to follow when mixing their sanitizing and disinfection solutions.

The results of this more recent study, which broadened its focus to include children who swam in outdoor pools, indicate that children exposed to chlorinated pool water stand a much greater chance of developing allergies and asthma than children who swam in pools using alternate sanitizers such as silver/copper ionizers, which use far less chlorine.

MONDAY, Sept. 14 (HealthDay News) — Swimming in pools disinfected with chlorine may increase the odds that a child will develop asthma or allergies, new research suggests.

The study found that teenagers who spent more than 1,000 hours swimming in chlorinated pools, either indoors or outdoors, had more than eight times the risk of having asthma than did teens who primarily swam in pools using a copper-silver disinfecting method.

“Chlorinated pool attendance has a very significant impact on the prevalence of allergic diseases in the studied population,” said lead author Alfred Bernard, a professor of toxicology and research director at Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium. ( source )

Does this mean all pool owners with chlorinated ought to run out into their backyards, drain their pools, and/or toss in a few pounds of chlorine neutralizer? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Thus far the evidence indicates that proper usage of chlorine as a pool water disinfectant remains safe. The problems start, it seems, when chlorine levels get ‘too high’ in the water and when chlorine gases build up in the air above and around swimming pools.

“When used properly, [chlorine] is an efficient and safe disinfectant for swimming pools. However, when too much chlorine is added to water or builds up in the air of indoor pools, there is unavoidably some irritation of the organs of the bather in contact with the water and air,” he explained. “There is now increasing evidence that these irritating effects may be detrimental to the airways of regular swimmers, especially the children who are the most vulnerable and the most frequent attendees of chlorinated pools.” ( source )

So what can the average pool owner do to minimize the risks presented by their chlorinated pool? Simple: Test chlorine levels, and other vital water parameters, often and make sure not to use more chlorine than necessary to keep the water properly disinfected.

Bernard said that if you have a backyard pool, you should use as little chlorine as you can to safely disinfect the pool. He said that many people over chlorinate their pools to get clear blue water. But, he said, “chlorine is a disinfectant, not a cleaning agent.” ( source )

Indoor pool owners need to follow the preceding advice AND make sure their pool enclosure area has proper ventilation. Water in indoor pools typically has a higher temperature and thus tends to evaporate and also give off chlorine gas at a faster rate than cooler water.

“How can I test the chlorine level in my swimming pool?”

Swimming pool test kits come in three basic forms, for the most part: Liquid Test Kits, Test Strips, and Pool Testing Meters.

Pool Testing Meters

Liquid Pool Testing Kits

Pool Test Strips

After reading this article you may find yourself thinking, “I will switch to a copper-silver ionizer and say ‘goodbye’ to chlorine forever!” Sorry, but that last part will most likely not happen.

Many copper-silver ionizer pool water systems suggest maintaining low residual levels of free chlorine in pool water. Often times the suggested free chlorine levels will fall below the detection level of most test strips, liquid test kits and even some meters.

To monitor such low levels of free chlorine in pool water we suggest the Pool Check Low Chlorine 3-in-1 Test Strip which can detect free chlorine levels as low as 0.05 ppm.

Therefore we have located yet another online source for Pool Water Testing and Pool Chemical Supplies. Below you will find quick links to various pool testing supplies, pool chemicals, pool shock treatments and other items such as automatic chemical feeders for swimming pools.

Just as with your drinking water, though, nothing beats a professional water test if you have reason to suspect that harmful bacteria or harmful levels of contaminants have entered your pool water.

For most people opening their swimming pool means raising the water level off with fresh, untreated water from a garden hose or in some cases, a delivery truck. Once full of water, the testing can begin.

How Should Pool & Spa Owners Test Their Water?

Excellent question! In the ‘old’ days most pool and spa owners had a simple two-sided test kit for chlorine/bromine and pH which looked like this:

click here for more details Part Number: A8100

2-Way Liquid Solution Water Test Kit 2-Way Test Kit “Pool water test kit reagents should be replaced every year. Testing swimming pool water every day will ensure proper chlorine, pH and alkalinity levels in the pool water. In The Swim pool test kits.”

… and each year the owners of these pool water and spa water owners made a pilgrimage to their local pool store to acquire replacement reagents for their pool and/or spa water test kits which looked like this:

click here for more details Part Number: A8120

2-Way Liquid Solution Water Test Kit Reagent 1 (chlorine) 1 oz. “Pool water test kit reagents should be replaced every year. Testing swimming pool water every day will ensure proper chlorine, pH and alkalinity levels in the pool water. In The Swim pool test kits.”

click here for more details Part Number: A8122

2-Way Liquid Solution Water Test Kit Reagent 2 (pH) 1 oz. “Pool water test kit reagents should be replaced every year. Testing swimming pool water every day will ensure proper chlorine, pH and alkalinity levels in the pool water. In The Swim pool test kits.”

While at their local pool store picking up the replacement reagents for their pool/spa water test kits, pool and spa owners would usually submit a sample of water from their freshly filled pool or spa to a smiling person behind the counter at the ‘water testing station’. Within minutes of handing over a soda can, mason jar, yogurt container or other (hopefully) sealed container full of water the same smiling water station attendant would return with a sheet of paper telling them the free chlorine, total chlorine, ph, alkalinity, total (or calcium) hardness, cyanuric acid, total dissolved solids, copper and iron levels in their water.

Can’t Pool & Spa Owners Test Their Own Water?

Of course they can. Swimming pool and spa water test kits

Then came the fun part: Picking up and paying for all the various tubs and canisters of powders and liquids that would hopefully bring their water back in line with what pool and spa water professionals consider healthy.

This seems like a good time to end today’s posting. Later we will go into the different methods a person can use to test their OWN pool or spa water: At-Home Pool & Spa Water Test Kits & Water Testing Meters and At-Home Pool & Spa Water Test Kits and Testing Supplies

“WASHINGTON – Pick a tomato in the blazing sun and plunge it straight into cold water. If that happened on the way to market, it might be contaminated. Too big of a temperature difference can make a tomato literally suck water inside the fruit through the scar where its stem used to be. If salmonella happens to be lurking on the skin, that’s one way it can penetrate and, if the tomato isn’t eaten right away, have time to multiply.

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t wash their tomatoes — they should, just probably not in cold water.

But as the Food and Drug Administration investigates the nation’s outbreak of salmonella from tomatoes, the example shows the farm isn’t the only place contamination can occur — and checking things like water quality and temperature control in packing houses and other supply stops is one key to safety.”

This raises the question of what sorts of water quality parameters packing houses should monitor on a regular basis.

Sanitizer and Disinfectant Levels — If the water used to wash, rinse and cleanse the tomatoes contains enough sanitizer, then theoretically no salmonella or other forms of bacterialogical contaminants could survive in the water. No contaminants in the water means no contaminants that a tomato could ‘suck up’ if submerged in cold water.

“Water is an automatic first suspect. Was clean water used to irrigate, mix pesticides sprayed on crops, wash down harvest and processing equipment, and wash field workers’ hands?

Then in packing houses, tomatoes often go straight into a dump tank, flumes of chlorinated water for a first wash. To guard against salmonella washed into the water in turn being sucked into the tomatoes, producers often keep wash-water 10 degrees warmer than the incoming crop, says food-safety scientist Keith Schneider of the University of Florida, also part of FDA’s tomato initiative.

Beyond packing houses, the industry points to cases where suppliers were shipped unwashed, warm tomatoes and dunked them in ice-water baths to firm them for further processing.

Another question: How often does the water have to be changed? Dirt, leaves and other sediment reduce the chlorine’s effectiveness.”

Produce handlers and packing houses could reduce the chances of accidentally passing fresh produce through improperly disinfected wash water by implementing test procedures and protocols which make use of simple, inexpensive chlorine test strips such as SenSafe^TM Free Chlorine Water Check, a product approved by the USEPA and by several states for drinking water compliance monitoring.

The manufacturer of this product also has dip-n-read test strips capable of detecting chlorine concentrations as high as 2,000ppm and as low as 0.005ppm.