Testing The Waters

With World Water Day on 22 March, we honour Dr Robin Kirkpatrick, founder of an awardwinning, easy and cost-effective water contamination testing kit called CarboTect

- SUSAN REYNARD

Chatting to Dr Robin Kirkpatrick is a revelation – he is that rare breed of scientist with a practical idea of just how easy and cost-effective solutions should be. He has a thorough understanding of the kinds of preventable illnesses that afflict animals and humans from contaminated water, food and preparation facilities.

Robin’s invention – CarboTect – is deceptively simple and something he refers to as “kitchen chemistry”. Place 100ml of water to be tested in a sample bottle; add a sachet of CarboTect powder; shake to dissolve; wait a few minutes for colour change to occur; and check colour against colour chart to determine level of contamination. The degree of colour change and speed at which this occurs indicates how contaminated the water is, or the extent of contamination from the bacteria-rich biofilm footprint. All the ingredients are conventionally used in the water treatment and food processing industry so, once tested, the water can simply be disposed of down the drain. CarboTect is positioned as your quality assurance laboratory in a box: each one contains 10 sample bottles, sachets of reagent (powdered chemicals used for the water analysis) in a resealable, impervious pouch and a reference colour chart. And with instant results comes the ability to make immediate decisions about what to do next: send product out with confidence or hold it back as you check the system and consumer product for contamination. The time it would take for a similar test to be conducted in a laboratory by experts is either significant time lost in production or, worse, product sent out and operations continued on a wing and a prayer.