I'm looking into options for soil testing that are more accessible
but also reliable, and am curious about what folks out there have been
using to test soils for heavy metals, PAH's, and other oil and gas
related contaminants. Have you used colorimeters, spectometers, reagants
or something else to characterize these in soils? Do you know of any
extension offices, agencies or makers spaces offering cheap soil
contaminant testing? Which guidelines do you use to compare your soil
test results to in terms of contaminant limits?
I'll
be at the Barnraising in Houston and hoping we can get together to
explore soil testing options- what can we further develop to be more
usable and give us better results? If you have experience with soil
testing for contaminants, please be in touch and lets work on this
together!
@falbriard @jjcreedon thank you for the info! Can you join us for a brainstorm about soil testing at the Upcoming OpenHour?
Date: Monday, April 1st
Time: 6pm London / 1pm NYC / 12pm New Orleans
Soil testing through professional labs can be expensive. While there are more affordable options such as XRF and other field test kits, most are still out of community’s price range or aren’t widely available. DIY and open source soil testing methods and technology need further development.
Are you interested in low cost soil testing?
Are you concerned about heavy metals, organic chemicals, or other soil contaminants?
Have you explored colorimetry, reagents, spectrometry, microbial, or other approaches to analyzing soils?
Come to share and brainstorm open-source, DIY methods for soil testing. We'll spend time discuss pathways forward for soil testing that are more accessible, and meet others working on this!
Or call in: +1 646 876 9923 US (New York), Meeting ID: 924 452 960 or Find your local number here.
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Yes, agreed. I was just thinking about this yesterday. There most def is a cost barrier associated with soil testing. Thats why if a community group can collaborate with a local University lab, this would be the way to go. Yes, Im interested in the OpenHour
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Dear DanielleS. I'm a software developer, retired but still active with code writing, developing analytics for natural resource management. We just had a major incident at the Brumadinho iron mining dam in State Minas Gerais Brazil, which might cause some of the worst environmental disasters, we've ever seen. I'm doing research how to create a basic monitoring device, possibly based on spectrophotometer to detect traces of contaminants, mainly the heavy metal elements in river water, or soil. Avoiding reagents would be great, as it helps to automate the measurement without need for human intervention, or expensive laboratory assistance. Not sure yet, if this will be possible, for now its just a line of thoughts and research. I'm happy to exchange ideas about this techniques, also for soil measurement, as there is growing market for such type of monitoring. Regards, Claude (Brazil)
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I know it's expensive, but the quickest heavy metal monitor is to dry the soil and do X-Ray flourescence (XRF).
After that, there are many set chemical tests for heavy metals. How well they work on soil, I don't know.
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