We can, however, point people like S. J. Ashton from the UK in directions that will help them locate the water testing and/or water filtration products they need. In this case, S. J. inquired about chlorine testing product currently available in the United Kingdom…

Dear Sirs, I wish to know if your “chlorine” testing products are available in the UK, yours faithfully, S. J. Ashton

As a general rule, pretty much any of the chlorine testing products discussed on any post on the Water Testing Blog can get purchased in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia. We have seen web sites for companies offering water testing products in other countries, but we have never attempted to check their offerings.

Getting back to S.J’s inquiry, Although we do not know if the makers of SenSafe Water Test Kits still have a branch office in the United Kingdom, we do know that they did at one point and that their US-based office used to provide International customers with the names of distributors of their products in other countries.

Additionally, a simple search on Google “Shopping” for chlorine testing products in the UK ought to turn up useful results. Most of the larger online water testing product distributors would probably have no problem shipping your order overseas… but you will more than likely have to pay a bit extra for the shipping charges.

Chlorine test kit web sites that you may find useful…

• Chlorine Tests
• Chlorine test Kit

SONORA – The State Water Resources Control Board says in a proposed order that the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board disregarded excessive chlorine being discharged into Woods Creek from a Sonora sewage treatment plant and also inappropriately increased the amount of chlorine that Sonora and Jamestown government agencies were allowed to discharge into the creek.

The proposed order the state board issued this week would require the regional board to revise its pollution permit for the treatment plant that serves the two cities to bring chlorine discharges within legal limits.

Woods Creek flows into Don Pedro Reservoir, a popular fishing area and a tributary to the Tuolumne River. The order points out that even extremely low concentrations of chlorine are damaging to fish populations. ( source )

Government regulations restrict the amount of chlorine (both free AND total) that a company or water treatment facility may pump back onto the environment because even in low concentrations, chlorine has the ability to inflict serious harm on an ecosystem.

Testing for Chlorine:

• Liquid Test Kits: Companies such as Taylor, Lamotte and others manufactures test kits which make of use liquid reagents.
• Test Strips: Many companies manufacture test strips which measure chlorine levels as low as 0.05 ppm (see SenSafe Free Chlorine & Total Chlorine) and as high as 5,000 ppm (see Water Check Ultra High II Free Chlorine).

• Chlorine Meters: For people with color blindness or simply the desire NOT to have to interpret color changes on the pads of test strips or in liquid samples, chlorine testing meters take all the guesswork out of testing free & total chlorine levels in water samples. Almost all chlorine testing meters use DPD Reagents in the form of liquids, tablets, powders or reagentstrips.

“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.

NSN: 6630010273914, 6630010440334, 6630010673827 — Chlorine, Bromine and pH Visual Test Kits

• WaterWorks and SenSafe Test Strips — Simple dip and read test strips for a wide range of parameters. Easier to use than wet kits, longer shelf lives, and much more convenient to carry.
• eXact EZ Water Quality Testing Meter — EPA Compliant (for free and total chlorine) handheld multi-parameter water quality testing meter. IP67 Waterproof rating.

Note: We have found that the products suggested above meet or exceed the specifications of the original NSN (National Stock Number) item. This does not mean, though, that you may substitute them in place of the item on a Government Contract. We provided the above information as possible sources of water quality testing products for consideration in future Contracts/Bids only.

(Free Chlorine) + (Combined Chlorine) = (Total Chlorine)

Free Chlorine: Typically your main sanitizing/disinfecting agent and sometimes referred to as ‘available chlorine’. In most cases people try to keep a free chlorine residual in their water to act as a buffer against biological contaminants. Chemically speaking this is the amount of hypochlorous acid and hypochlorite ion in solution. find free chlorine test strips

Combined Chlorine: The resulting compound when free chlorine molecules interact with biological contaminants containing Nitrogen which most people refer to as ‘chloramines’. You could also refer to combined chlorine as ‘used free chlorine’, but keep in mind that it still does have the abiity to act as a sanitizer/disinfectant… just not nearly as effectively.  find total chlorine test strips

Total Chlorine: The sum of all free, ‘available’, combined, and ‘used’ chlorine in solution.  find total chlorine test strips

Testing for Free & Total Chlorine at the Same Time?

The traditional testing method for chlorine residuals in water involves the use of a reagent system known as DPD that involves two separate chemical mixing procedures.

The WaterWorks 2 Free & Total Chlorine Test Strips have a total test time of around 30 seconds and detect both free and total concentrations in water in the following range: 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 1.0, 2.5, 5.0 ppm.

If you need to test chlorine levels in your water, then we definitely suggest checking out the chlorine testing convenience and affordability of WaterWorks 2 Free & Total Chlorine Test Strips.