The Flint water with a lead supplement has got a lot of folks scared about their own tap water or even the bottled water.
So here is what we do:
Get The President or Head of the National Science Foundation or some other mucky muck with the clout to make a national speech or commercial. (Since it
is an election year, they shouldn't be too hard to find.)
The message should be along the lines of "Dip a post card in your water, let it dry,
write your zip code and water company on the back, and send it into the NSF. We will test it and publish the preliminary results on the web site "Drink.it@nsf.??? "
They do some tests. The water is fine. Everyone breathes sigh of relief. Goes back to watching the game.
Some refinements would be:
- to ask for dried samples to be on 100% cotton typing paper, to avoid the sulfur in most papers screwing up the test validity.
- to ask them to smell, look at, and taste the water before they send postcard in and send that information along as well. (If some zip code has orange water that smells rancid, call the tiger team.)
- to ask the water companies to hold public information meetings to show off the testing they routinely do. They might also take and test samples.
- pools have test strips for Cl, ph, and other stuff. They are easy to misread. If the thing degenerates to where the Government is providing postcards, adding test spots to the postcards should be tried.
-----
But basically just some public relations hand holding until the crisis blows over.
(I drink tap water and I don't twitch that much. )