- Water can be purified by 1) boiling, 2) iodine, 3) sip or squeeze water filters, etc.
1) is a traditional method of water purification as it kills germs/microorganisms but it requires time and may not effectively remove chemical contamination. Furthermore, boiling requires fuel and might therefore release soot and CO2 into the environment.
2) is an easy and effective short-term method (but should not be used long-term!) Similar to boiling water, iodine does not remove chemical contamination despite killing microorganisms.
3) this is an example of a filtering device; it does not use any chemicals int the process and at the same time can remove microorganisms not killed by boiling or iodine. These are however, the most expensive option. - Distillation and reverse osmosis are the two most common desalination techniques. Both require energy to remove salts from seawater, hence expensive – this is why they are not used more widely to produce potable drinking water.
- a) a likely major source of lead in the drinking water is from the lead pipes in the building; corrosion – a dissolving or wearing away of metal caused by a chemical reaction between water and the plumbing
b) While it is theoretically true that research/experiment materials (including chemicals and lead compounds) should not be flushed down the drain/sink, in reality chemicals and compounds such as lead might still be flushed down the sewage and into the drinking water – however, this should not account for a majority of the lead levels in the drinking water. - Only water-soluble vitamins would be expected to be polar molecules. Although a fat-soluble vitamin will often have individual polar bonds or small regions of the molecule, this is out-weighed by nonpolar sections. Polar covalent bonds attracted to water through hydrogen bonding may allow the molecules to dissolve in water, while nonpolar covalent bonds favour interactions with the nonpolar chains in lipids.