Water Monitoring

China’s battle against pollution is getting some help from Jack Ma’s 500 million-strong army.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the e-commerce giant founded by Ma, is asking the public to participate in mapping water quality across China to raise environmental awareness. With testing kits sold through the company for as little as 65 yuan ($10), volunteers can measure pollutants in freshwater sources and upload the data to a digital map via smartphones.

The environmental impact of the clothing industry is large and varied. The most significant factors depend highly on the energy, toxicity and water life cycle of the material in question. In general the largest contributions occur in the material production phase (e.g. agriculture), clothing production phase (factory) and usage phase (washing and drying). These are in the form of energy, water and chemical pollution.

Detection of environmental contamination such as trace-level toxic heavy metal ions mostly relies on bulky and costly analytical instruments. However, a considerable global need exists for portable, rapid, specific, sensitive, and cost-effective detection techniques that can be used in resource-limited and field settings. Here we introduce a smart-phone-based hand-held platform that allows the quantification of mercury(II) ions in water samples with parts per billion (ppb) level of sensitivity.

During recent trials conducted by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), in cooperation with the UK Met Office, OTT Hydrometry’s Pluvio2 raingauge exceeded the target performance requirements of the assessment and over 100 units have now been purchased by the EA.