Example: If the sample contained 60ppb dissolved nickel, 40ppb dissolved  iron, 100 ppb dissolved copper... this test strip would give a reading of 200ppb. It would not, however, identify individual metals detected or their individual concentrations.

Detailed water analysis including metals

To get a better, more detailed analysis of potential water contaminants including dissolved metals we suggest taking a look at the mail-in water testing services of  National Testing Laboratories.  You can select from a number of water testing packages ranging from 'basic' to 'advanced' and test results typically come back in approximately 10 business days.

Good morning, Paige, and thank you for your inquiry.

All of the water test strip products we carry bear expiration dates not from date of opening, but rather expiration dates based on manufacturing dates.

With that said, the SenSafe™ Ozone Check product (MPN 481234) packaged in bottles of 50 tests a 24 month shelf-life from date of manufacture.

Proper Storage Matters:

As with any testing product, how one stores the product before opening and after opening matters a great deal.  Water test strips exposed to excessive temperatures (high or low), sunlight, moisture, and/or chemical vapors in the air (i.e. storing chlorine test strips near containers of dry or liquid chlorine) will have a negative effect on the accuracy, range and shelf-life of the products.

About SenSafe Ozone Check:

SenSafe™ Ozone Check detects ozone levels in water as low as 0.05 ppm and as high as 0.5 ppm in approximately 30 seconds without the need for expensive meters, messy chemical reagents, or complicated test procedures.

• Current inventory (as of 12/30/14) has expiration date of August 2016.

Detection range:

• 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, > 0.5 ppm (mg/L)

Patented SenSafe™ aperture technology:

The SenSafe™ Ozone Check water testing product provides accurate ozone level in water test results in only 30 seconds and offers sush a low detection limt (0.05ppm) because of its patented aperture technology.

Simple test procedure:

Dip one SenSafe™ Ozone Check test strip into a water sample measuring at least 50mL (roughly 1 3/4 ounces) with constant, gentle back-and-forth motion for 10 seconds.

At the end of ten seconds remove the strip from the sample, shake one time to remove excess water from the testing window, wait 20 seconds, and match the color in the aperture window to the nearest color on the color chart on the bottle.

Visit WaterTestKitStore.Com between now and 12/31/2014 and use discount code XMAS2014 to save 10% on every water test kit and water test strip!

WaterTestKitStore.Com carries popular name brand water testing products like WaterSafe, SenSafe, Pool Check, and WaterWorks and boasts standard order turnaround times of 1 to 2 business days. This means you can have the water testing products you know and trust en route to your office or job site in no time!

What makes these products better?

We often get asked WHY our stores carry the brands they do and the answer is simple: Reliability, Ranges, Accuracy, Affordability, and Portability

• Reliability – The products we carry yield repeatable results.
• Ranges – The products we carry offer higher and/or lower detection levels as well as more color blocks between end point detection levels than competitive products on the market.
• Accuracy – Several of the products we carry meet or exceed standards established by recognized governing bodies in the water testing world. Examples: SenSafe Free Chlorine Water Check and SenSafe Total Chlorine Water Check.
• Affordability – The products we carry allow average homeowners as well as water industry professionals to test for a wide range of critical water parameters quickly and easily for very low costs per test.
• Portability – Water test strips eliminate the need for bulky test equipment, difficult to mix and/or easy-to-spill reagents and cumbersome test procedures… making them ideal for field testing.

Additionally, all of the water testing products offered on WaterTestKitStore.Com are manufactured here in the United States and the companies responsible for their production have excellent reputations in the water testing products market.

Remember to visit WaterTestKitStore.Com between now and 12/31/2014 and use discount code XMAS2014 to save 10% on your order!

Happy Holiday Season, Everyone!

Good evening, Blair, and thank you for your inquiry.

Yes, the SenSafe Heavy Metals Check product should detect dissolved Manganese since it typically has a +2 valence state for its electrons BUT do keep in mind that other dissolved metals, if present in your samples, will also yield positive results and the test kit will not differentiate between (or identify) the metals it detects.

If you require a more manganese-specific test kit, then you may want to consider the SenSafe Manganese Check product which includes interference masking agents on each strip to reduce false positive readings given by metals other than Manganese.

Normally if a homeowner finds that he or she has a higher than desirable level of ANY metals in his or her water, regardless of the metals’ identities, that person typically seeks out additional, more qualitative (i.e. laboratory) testing so that a decision regarding what filtering solution will work best for their unique water quality situation can get made.

Laboratory testing for manganese

In the event that you do decide to seek out laboratory testing, we suggest first contacting your local health department to get a list of qualified water testing labs in your area. If that does not work then we suggest considering one of the WaterCheck Test Kits manufactured by National Testing Laboratories.

In the water business testing for free chlorine happens quite frequently (as Scott just said)… and we know of two ways to make that task easier:

• DPD ReagentStrips — If you use DPD-1 to test for free chlorine residual, then undoubtedly you do so using DPD in powder or tablet form. Both methods work, but DPD-1 ReagentStrips make testing for free chlorine residual in water a faster and easier process while staying in compliance with 4500-CL G. Simply insert a DPD-1 ReagentStrip into a 10mL water sample, move it back and forth (liberated required DPD chemistry off of reagent pads), and read visually or with your favorite meter.
   
• SenSafe™ Free Chlorine Water Check — In the original recommendation letter from the USEPA, dated October 2003: “We believe that the ITS test strips will provide the regulatory community with a valuable option for monitoring free chlorine levels in drinking water.” This method bears USEPA Approval for in drinking water applications.

While both testing methods make free chlorine residual testing much easier without losing accuracy, we highly suggest check with your State and Local inspectors first before using either product for compliance monitoring… because as you know (probably better than we do!), sometimes State/Local regulation changes do not always keep up with Federal Regulation changes.

Whether testing drinking water at home, process water used in an industrial application, or wastewater for its chlorine before discharge into the environment, we feel quite certain that at least one of the chlorine test strip products above will come in handy — and this weekend you can save money when buying them!

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask! You may reach us easily using our Contact Us Form…. and yes we work on the weekends. 🙂

Have a great weekend, everyone, and don’t forget to stay hydrated!

We have a water purification system in our home that uses iodine instead of chlorine. I would like to change over from using tablets to test for the strength of the iodine needed for purification to a strip. Do you have a product that can do
this? Thank you.

Thank you, Georgeanne, for your inquiry, and yes, we do carry (as a result of your question) test strips that you can use to test iodine levels in drinking water.

We contacted the makers of the SenSafe and WaterWorks to see if they made anything that would meet the needs of a person looking to test iodine levels in treated drinking water and learned that they manufacture a product called SenSafe Iodine which detects iodine levels in drinking water between 0.02 and 5.0ppm (parts per million).

Iodine as a water disinfectant?

Many people know that iodine gets used in medical applications to treat cuts, scrapes, etc. but not nearly as many know that iodine also gets used as a chemical treatment for water suspected of possibly containing organic contaminants.

Hikers, campers and military personnel on patrol in the wilderness sometimes carry iodine tablets with them as a means of treating ground water and surface water for biological contaminants. Adding the iodine tablets to water collected for drinking and/or cooking can efficiently reduce the risk of accidentally ingesting potentially hazardous water contaminants such as bacteria and parasites.

Iodine of iodine versus chlorine?

In our experience people tend to not like the taste of iodine or chlorine in their water supply… but overall most we have ever asked find the taste of chlorine slightly more palatable (possibly due to familiarity w/ it in tap water?).

Disinfecting capabilities of iodine versus chlorine?

Both work very well at killing off unwanted biological contaminants in drinking water but use of either one does not necessarily guarantee that treated water contains absolutely no unwanted parasites or bacteria… but you will more than likely fair MUCH better with treated water than untreated water!

We think you have excellent taste water test kits, Ramprakash, because the Well Driller Master Test Kit puts the power to perform multiple samplings on water sources right where it belongs: In the hands of private well owners.

The Well Driller Master Test Kit comes with 50 Free Chlorine Test Strips, 50 Ultra Low Total Chlorine Test Strips, 50 Hydrogen Sulfide Tests, 50 Total Hardness Test Strips, 50 Nitrate/Nitrite Test Strips, 50 pH Test Strips, 24 Manganese Tests, 50 Water Metals Test Strips, 10 Arsenic Tests, 25 Iron Tests, 50 Copper Test Strips, 2 Lead in Water Tests, 2 Pesticide Tests, and 1 bottle of Bacteria Test.

Where to buy the Well Driller Master Test Kit?

At this time we know that FilterWater.Com carries both the Well Driller Standard Test Kit and the Well Driller Test Kit.

The Standard kit has a few less tests and costs around $160 while the Master kit has a cost of around $240.

Regardless of which option you choose, we suggest picking up extra Coliform Bacteria Tests since both kits come with only one test for bacteria. You can acquire extra Coliform Bacteria Tests in our Water Test Kit Store for around $7 per test.

Today we heard from ‘Ilija S’ who asked, “Who do we contact to get well water tested?”

Hello, Ilija, and thank you for your inquiry.

When it comes to well water testing we suggest contacting a certified well water testing laboratory in your area. Your Local & State Health Departments should have a list that they can send.

Please keep in mind that if you have reason to suspect well water contamination, you should always defer to the expert testing services of a qualified, certified water testing laboratory; preferably one in your immediate area since their staff will know more about the intricacies of your local water situation than a laboratory located in a different city, county or state.

For spot testing of basic water quality parameters, test kits such as the WaterSafe Well Water Test Kit or SenSafe Water Quality Test Kit work quite well… but they do not test for more complex, man-made chemicals such as VOC’s (volatile organic compounds).

If you want a more thorough analysis that includes things like pesticides and volatile organic compounds, you may want to take a look at test kit options like the National Testing Labs Mail-In Water Testing Kit that includes a number of commonly found pesticides and different VOC’s.

We hope this has helped at least a little bit!

Today’s Chromium-6 well water finding comes to us from the Coachella Valley region of California known and the detected levels of Chromium-6 in the water greatly exceed California’s public health goal.

Hexavalent chromium, a potentially cancer-causing heavy metal made famous by activist Erin Brockovich, is found in drinking water supplies throughout most of the Coachella Valley at 150 to more than 1,000 times above California’s public health goal, a Desert Sun review of local water agencies’ well-testing results found.

The National Toxicology Program of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded in 2008 that hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, in drinking water shows “clear evidence” of causing cancer in laboratory animals. And a 2010 draft toxicological review by the EPA found the contaminant in tap water is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

But scientific study on chromium-6 is ongoing, and some recent findings call into question at what levels and under what circumstances ingesting the metal may cause cancer.

California’s public health goal for chromium-6 levels is not a regulatory standard, only a step in the process of establishing one. State and federal regulators have yet to set a maximum allowable drinking water contaminant level for the metal, but work toward one is under way. ( source )

Regardless of whether or not California or the USEPA has established an official safety limit (i.e. Maximum Contaminant Level) for Chromium-6 in drinking water, none of us here at Water Testing Blog would want to drink water that contained that high a concentration of Chromium-6.

Testing for Chromium-6 in water?

You may pick up an easy-to-use test kit for chromium made by SenSafe/WaterWorks in our online water testing store.

As an alternative, yo can use a test called Heavy Metals Water Check Test Strip, a product also manufactured by SenSafe. It detects Chromium-6 but the product will not differentiate between Chromium-6 and the other metals it can detect. But, in all honesty, any heavy metals detected in one’s drinking water should make a person want to take action.

Removing or reducing Chromium-6?

A company called ZeroWater manufactures point-of-use water filters & water pitchers using NSF Certified (NSF 42 & NSF 53) technology that supposedly reduce the number of Total Dissolved Solids in drinking water to zero.

For those who in search of a water filter system capable of producing quality drinking water out of the tap rather than a pitcher or dispenser, the NSF 58 Certified Goldline Reverse Osmosis System which carries the WQA Gold Seal installs under the sink (i.e. out of sight) and produces just under 11.5 gallons of purified drinking water per day.

NSF 58 Certified RO System for the Reduction of Barium, Chromium III & VI, Fluoride,
Lead, Nitrate, Nitrite, Radium, Selenium, and TDS Levels