5. The Flint Water Crisis: In order to avoid lead contamination in drinking wate

Question

5. The Flint Water Crisis: In order to avoid lead contamination in drinking water, municipalities in the US. have to test their drinking waters for lead regularly. If more than 10% of sites tested within a public drinking water network contain over 15 ppb of lead, then people may be in danger and action must be taken. In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan was constructing new water lines to carry water into the city. During construction, they switched to waters from the Flint River. This water was untreated and corrosive to iron and lead pipes. During the crisis, at- risk homes showed 10s to 100s of ppb of lead in their drinking water. The highest measured was a whopping 13,200 ppb of lead! How many liters of water at 13,200 ppb of lead would together contain 1 gram of lead?

Explanation / Answer

ppb= parts per billion

1 ppb = 1 microgram of substance per liter of water = 10-6 g / L

Hence 13200 ppb of lead = 13220 x 10-6 g of lead in 1 Liter of water

That means 1 g of lead will be present in {1 / ( 13220 x 10-6)} liter of water = 75.75 liter of water

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