Researchers in Britain found an unorthodox way to track down the sources of sewage pollution: glowing tampons. By placing the tampons under UV light, they could successfully determine that water was contaminated.
Co-author of the study and professor of environmental engineering at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, David Lerner, said that “it does the detective work,” according to an interview with Wired.
Cities and towns usually have two sewage systems. Storm sewers collect rain and runoff from parking lots, roofs and paved roads, and then they empty that water in rivers or streams. Sanitary sewers collect anything that gets flushed down the drain and moves it to a sewage center for treatment.
Storm sewers are not equipped to handle untreated waters, so keeping them clean is imperative. Lerner said that someone connecting his or her appliance to the wrong drain can lead to sewage in the river, according to Science Times.
Lerner and his team of researchers were looking for an inexpensive way to monitor water contamination. They wanted something that people could safely practice in their community.
As a result, two engineers turned tampons into environmental samplers. And they could use them because they picked up optical brighteners, which make the tampons glow under UV light, at low concentrations.
They placed tampons in 16 surface water sewers and attached them to bamboo poles using the strings on the tampons. They were retrieved after three days and tested under UV light.
The tampons did detect water contamination. The only problem the researchers ran into was that people threw away tampons at test sites.
This experiment is safe to try at home, according to Lerner. He said that people may look at you “strangely” but the glowing tampon is “not that obvious.”
Lerner plans to show the tampon test to community groups. He said that he wants to get “a bunch of volunteers” to “go out and dip tampons in the river” in as many places as they can. That way, they can work out which areas might be polluted.
