1. Rapid Detection of Arsenic in Water
Bikas Vaidya
Small Business Water Innovation - An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Solutions
Session II - Innovative Detection Technologies
March 23, 2016

2. Arsenic in Water
Arsenic in drinking water poses a serious health hazard to tens of millions of people, especially in parts of the world where the arsenic concentrations far exceed the 10 ppb guideline value set by WHO.
Global occurrences of arsenic in groundwater
B. Panda, Int. J. of Ecosystem 2015, 5(3A): B.

3. Arsenic Detection
Arsenic in drinking water poses a serious health hazard to tens of millions of people in different parts of the world.
Rapid and reliable testing to distinguish wells with high and low arsenic levels is critical.
Conventional methods for determination of arsenic, such as ICP-MS and ICP-AES, are time consuming, and expensive, while colorimetric tests are not reliable.
Colorimetric test kits use highly toxic chemicals containing mercury or lead and also produce highly toxic arsine gas during the test.
Lynntech is developing a rapid, reliable and convenient test kit for quantitative determination of arsenic in water samples without using toxic chemicals or metals.

4. Lynntech Approach
Simple handheld system that utilizes disposable cartridges for rapid detection of arsenic in water.
Disposable dry cartridge consisting of two blocks (reagent block and detection block) and eliminates the need for handling any corrosive or toxic chemicals.
A simple colorimeter used for quantification.
1. Pass water sample through the test cartridge.
2. Attach the detection cartridge block to a colorimeter and take reading.

5. Preliminary Results 0 ppb 5 ppb 10 ppb 20 ppb
Water samples with higher concentration of arsenic produced deeper green coloration.
Reagent (top) and detection (bottom) blocks used for detection of arsenic.
Reflectance absorption spectra for the samples containing 0, 5, 10 and 20 ppb As.

6. Features and Benefits Detection of both As(III) and As(V).
Quantitative. A handheld colorimeter used for quantification.
Rapid. Result within minutes.
Simple. Does not require a skilled operator.
Safe. Spent reagents are neutralized for convenient disposal.
Green. Does not use toxic metals like mercury or lead.
Reactions occur in a prepackaged flow through cartridge minimizing reagent handling and operator error.
Long shelf life. Uses dry (stable) reagents in disposable cartridges.
Inclusion of a step to remove phosphate.

7. Acknowledgement and Contact Info.
This research is funded by:
The Superfund Research Program
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
National Institutes of Health (R43 ES )
Contact:
Bikas Vaidya 6