The Dangers of inaccurate At-Home water and soil Test-Kits

Hi everyone!

Testing water for contaminants, or screening soil for toxins is a widely accepted, and much needed practice in Canada and US. whether it’s for gardening, well drilling, or other environmental purposes, the areas in and around major cities have been subject to decades of pollution and rural areas have had to deal with wastewater or agricultural runoff.

In many cases, environmental tests are conducted via available – at home – test kits.

Obviously, these kits provide an important service for those without proper access to professional laboratories by checking for the most basic set of safety regulations. Things like hydrogen sulfide, manganese, Nitrates, Nitrites, and several types of bacterial contaminants.

The main issue with at-home-kits is their general reliability. There have been many studies that have tested the validity of popular well water test kits. In some cases, these studies found that the test kits accuracy “ranged between 25 to 69%” (https://doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.2006.0186).

In another paper, the limitations of an Arsenic Field Test kit were brought into question:

Khandaker, Nadim Reza. "Limited accuracy of arsenic field test kit." (2004): 479A-479A.

It is fair to say with such accuracy, many results provided by these at-home-kits are likely to be incorrect, and with the rise of cheaper, faster laboratory services, such tests kits are becoming less and less necessary.

I work at an analytical laboratory which tests environmental samples for safety. We are interested in entering the soil and water testing market for homesteaders and want to find a way to offer them a hassle free and cheaper way of getting real laboratory tests.

But before I do that,  I was interested to see how you feel about environmental or really any kind of testing.

Do you think soil and water testing is necessary?
Have you had any experience with home-kits or professional lab services?
Considering at home kits can range from 50 to 100 dollars, what would you believe is a fair price for a real laboratory test?

I would love to hear your guys' take on this.

Ian Vand wrote:Hi everyone!

Testing water for contaminants, or screening soil for toxins is a widely accepted, and much needed practice in Canada and US. whether it’s for gardening, well drilling, or other environmental purposes, the areas in and around major cities have been subject to decades of pollution and rural areas have had to deal with wastewater or agricultural runoff.

In many cases, environmental tests are conducted via available – at home – test kits.

Obviously, these kits provide an important service for those without proper access to professional laboratories by checking for the most basic set of safety regulations. Things like hydrogen sulfide, manganese, Nitrates, Nitrites, and several types of bacterial contaminants.

The main issue with at-home-kits is their general reliability. There have been many studies that have tested the validity of popular well water test kits. In some cases, these studies found that the test kits accuracy “ranged between 25 to 69%” (https://doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.2006.0186).

In another paper, the limitations of an Arsenic Field Test kit were brought into question:

Khandaker, Nadim Reza. "Limited accuracy of arsenic field test kit." (2004): 479A-479A.

It is fair to say with such accuracy, many results provided by these at-home-kits are likely to be incorrect, and with the rise of cheaper, faster laboratory services, such tests kits are becoming less and less necessary.

I work at an analytical laboratory which tests environmental samples for safety. We are interested in entering the soil and water testing market for homesteaders and want to find a way to offer them a hassle free and cheaper way of getting real laboratory tests.

But before I do that,  I was interested to see how you feel about environmental or really any kind of testing.

Do you think soil and water testing is necessary?
Have you had any experience with home-kits or professional lab services?
Considering at home kits can range from 50 to 100 dollars, what would you believe is a fair price for a real laboratory test?

I would love to hear your guys' take on this.

I would pay someone $50 to $100 to test the water from my new well to confirm it is safe for drinking.

I have been wanting to test our well since we have some health issues.

How do I go about finding someone to do this?

I used to work in a water and soil testing laboratory. We had equipment with sensitivities far above a home testing kit, and we had to pass regular EPA blind tests. If you send identical samples to any analytical laboratory, you will likely get different numbers, but they should be within a decent tolerance. It is still possible to get incorrect results from a lab if they're not managed well so in that respect it can be a crap shoot. But you're still more likely to get better results from a lab.

If I want to test my well, a sample gets sent to a lab.