Altoona, PA will start using water fleas to test the water in its reservoirs.
The Altoona City Authority said it will use Daphnia water fleas to check water in the reservoirs. The authority recently agreed to pay $4,450 for a Kingwood Diagnostics Q-Tox startup kit and about $10,200 annually to maintain the system.
The City of Los Angeles has been using these critters, along with fathead minnow larvae, to test the effluent from the sewage treatment plant for toxicity. These critters are the aquatic equivalent of canaries – they're a lot more sensitive to poisons in the environment than anything we expect to be in the offshore waters, so as long as they don't react to the plant effluent, it's OK to dump it into the ocean.
Recently, the DWP has started testing its drinking water supplies using Microtox, which uses luminescent bacteria as microscopic canaries. In these bacteria, the luminescence is tied to their respiration, so the intensity with which they glow is an indication of how well they're functioning. If something doesn't agree with them, their life processes slow down, and the glow diminishes.
Really cool.
And the bugs can be freeze-dried, giving them a shelf life of 18 months.
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