p. 13 | Test Water With Sugar

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 17, 1904

Test Water With Sugar

THE supply of drinking water for the family should be tested occasionally. Water that at one time is pure and wholesome may become too impure for use, yet it may be without color, and have no odor or taste to show its dangerous qualities. Typhoid fever is frequently communicated through the drinking water.

A simple test of drinking water is the Meisch test. Fill a clean pint bottle three quarters full of the water to be tested, and dissolve in it a teaspoonful of granulated sugar. Cork it, and set it in a warm place for two or three days. If during this time it becomes cloudy or milky, it is unfit for domestic use. If it remains perfectly clear, it is probably safe. Be careful that the bottle is absolutely as clean as you can make it, and the sugar pure.

The second test is also a simple one. Obtain from a trustworthy chemist a pennyworth of saturated solution of permanganate of potassium. Add about five drops of this to a pint bottle of water. This will turn the water a beautiful rose-purple. If there is any considerable amount of organic matter, the color will give place, in the course of a few hours, to a more or less dirty reddish-brown. If the color of the water in the bottle remains for twelve hours unchanged from the rose-purple it assumed when the permanganate of potassium was first added, it may be considered free from organic contamination.—Selected.