Counter Culture Labs:Environmental Justice Project

Environmental Justice Project Group Page

• contact: Zach Smith, Project Organizer - zach.dsmith27@gmail.com
• goal: to identify and address social inequities within our local community as they relate to the consequences of human activity and climate change, with a general interest in water, air, and soil quality
• main function: to assist in community efforts to address aforementioned inequities, coordinating with local organizations and stakeholders to identify relevant and efficacious efforts for us to participate in

previous workshops: 2/04/23 Temescal Creek Bacterial contamination monitoring

• members of the lab teamed up to test water quality of local creek, Temescal Creek, at various points using R-cards to test for relative contamination of common bacteria

what are R-cards?: https://www.rothbioscience.com/collections/r-card-products Above: Map of Temescal Creek and the points from which we took samples

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  R-Card of sample taken at Outflow point of creek into the SF Bay

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  R-Card of sample taken from creek at point near busy street

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  R-Card of sample taken from undergound section of creek near Post Office(via run-off drain)

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  R-Card of sample taken from toilet in our lab's Water Closet (as a positive control)

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  R-Card of sample taken from Lake Temescal, point 1

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  R-Card of sample taken from Lake Temescal, point 2

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  R-Card of sample taken from Lake Temescal, point 3

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  R-Card of sample taken from Lake Temescal, point 4

• takeaways: clearly, Temescal Creek is not without contamination. While these R-card do not give quantifiably actionable results, they do indicate that further testing could elucidate additional issues, and the community needs to be wary of attempting to use the creek or its water. While further testing is beyond the capabilities of our lab, it is our hope that other organizations with the means either take this on themselves or are open to collaborate with us on further testing

Summer DIY home water quality testing workshop

• members of the lab and local community members brought hot and cold water samples from their home, which we tested for common pollutant contamination using three different online-purchased water quality testing strips, comparing the efficacy of each test in the process

what tests did we use:

• Testpert: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BG63JJ3T
• Varify: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0837Z5PBJ
• JNW: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06W2JXKD5

Link to data table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A73ZDeJR2qROEW1a6XVcz5S-4c3af93LHJR0qCHQ8uY/edit?usp=sharing data was collected using hot and cold home water samples from 5 volunteers, as well as hot and cold samples from additional location from 1 volunteer's home.

• takeaways: Due to the small sample size, this was more demonstrative of the relative capabilities of each test strip, but we hope to continue validating these test strips to determine the best one to later use in a larger scale workshop, which we would aim to capture more data points to determine more about the relative water quality of our community's home water supply