How pure is our drinking water? The answer to that question varies by region, country, etc. But what has begun to scare me is the threat of toxins polluting drinking water everywhere.

This danger prompts me to think about the new ways researchers are finding to test the purity and toxicity of this water. From paper strips to monkey hair, the tests become more and more interesting, and make me think… “what’s next?”

In a recent press release from the Univ. of Michigan, researchers are using a strip of paper infused with carbon nanotubes to test the toxicity of the drinking water we partake of daily. This biosensor, according to the release, performs much faster than current techniques used to detect microcystin-LR—the chemical compound produced by cyanobacteria. Microcystin-LR, in any quantity, is hypothesized to cause liver damage and even liver cancer, and is the leading cause of biological water pollution found in our drinking water.

This new biosensor is a quick, cheap, portable, and sensitive test—it is the size of a home pregnancy test—that could allow water treatment plants, which can't always remove MC-LR completely, verify the safety of water on a more regular basis. It works by measuring the electrical conductivity of the nanotubes in the paper, which before being impregnated in the paper, are mixed with antibodies for MC-LR. The release states that when the strips come into contact with water contaminated with MC-LR, the antibodies squeeze in between the nanotubes to bond with the MC-LR, which causes the nanotubes to spread apart and change their electrical conductivity.

Yet another pat on the back for nanotechnology in environmental applications.

Now, from nanotechnology to just odd. Researchers have also begun to test monkey hair for toxic threats that may be in drinking water. Although supposedly the closest mammal to humans, I personally would have never guessed research would start here. According to a press release issued by the Univ. of Washington—also seen in last weeks R&D Daily—researchers have begun to examine the hair of macaques in parts of South and Southeast Asia. Since macaques and the people of the region are synanthropic—they share the same ecological niche—this means macaques and people drink from identical water sources, breathe the same air, and share the same food sources. By extracting the hair from these macaques, the researchers were able to test for lead in the drinking water.

So…what methods are next? Will nanotechnology continue to make a splash in this area? Will animals continue to help support science?