Imagine looking onto a lake or river, perhaps at an overlook at the end of a hike, or simply driving past it. Maybe you think about taking a sip of that water yourself. So you pull out your smartphone, and with a snap of a picture, you can tell that it’s contaminated.
Such a tool may soon be a reality, if astronomers from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have their say. They are developing a simple smartphone attachment that makes it ridiculously, comically easy to measure the quality of water by pointing the tool at it, nothing more.
The tool’s primary purpose is a quick and precise measurements of water pollution.
This kind of data can steer environmental policies on a national level. Citizens can tell if their drinking water is contaminated. Fishermen are able to determine the quality of their catch, and how pollution could affect local fish populations. Polluted water can even determine human migration patterns by forcing fishermen to move or give up their trade altogether.
The technology behind the smartphone attachment actually is a spin-off of sophisticated astronomy technology that can tell if oxygen is present on planets around other stars. This also foregoes the need to take local samples and send them back to the lab — a relatively expensive process that can take a lot longer.
The device is expected to be ready for its initial deployment by late 2019, and will release 3D models, so anybody with a 3D printer can build one for themselves.
The technology is still in its early stages, and at least a couple of years away. The hope is to combine cutting-edge astronomy technology with environmental science to create a device that’s both easy to use, and is capable of measuring the quality of surface water accurately.