Field Trip to Kolar 18, 19, 20 April

We left Bangalore early in the morning and reached Kolar after 10 am. On the first day we took 10 samples walking around Adhima. Adhima was a little uphill from Kolar itself. The weather stayed hot and sunny during both days. That made it difficult to walk around and collect samples. Also the weather wasn't good for keeping the samples. In the evening we got to test two samples with the Orlab kit. On the next day we traveled by bus to KGF, which had had contaminated borewells as per the article Ayan had sent us. We didn't have enough time so we couldn't visit the locations mentioned.

The trip was a good experience. Finally being outside college collecting samples. Samples didn't test for Arsenic contamination, however there could have been many reasons for that including that there was no Arsenic in the first place.

I guess the trip proved that how difficult it is to test for arsenic with the kind of kit we had. It couldn't be done immediately in the field and even if that was made possible, it would have slowed down the day. The kit has a rather complex set up and a low precision range. It's second minimal value after 0, was 10 mcg/l. 10 mcg/l is what is admitted as the maximum limit by WHO, so it could most likely not be detected with this kit. The instructions of the kit weren't even properly clear to us. For example, they didn't even say you are supposed to mix the reagents with the sample water. Lack of such simple information would cause much confusion to the locals unless there was a manual in vernacular languages.