Mussels monitor the quality of drinking water in Poland

Simple It’s beautiful. Man has developed more complex sensors and computer systems, but in Poland it has been found that nothing in monitoring the water quality will beat the good old lake mussel.

Since the 1990s, the Polish water treatment plants have been used to help monitor the quality of the water. Mussels are known to be extremely sensitive to all impurities and toxins. If the water is bad, the mussel closes its shell and triggers the alarm. Then we look at where the fault is.

The mussel thing that sounds funny occasionally pops into the surface online. Even now, it may have come across it in social media. On the subject has written Previously, for example, the Zmescience site.

For example In Warsaw, the system operates so that there are eight mussels in a small water pool in the control room. Their envelope is glued to small springs and magnetic bars. They measure exactly how much the shell is open.

First, the measuring device itself, or mussels, must be calibrated. Therefore, it must be determined to which angle each individual opens the peel when it filters water. If the mussel is satisfied with the water, its shell is amp.

Then the mussels can live in the pool, through which the water is driven through the water. The computer always calculates how they react. If enough mussels close their shells at the same time and keep themselves closed for more than four minutes, there will be an alarm.

Mussels Of course, they are only one part of the system to monitor water quality. The treatment plant does not depend on them. Still, it has been found that they can also help. The mussel is so sensitive and senses so widespread impurities that it acts as an unparalleled general sensor.

The mussels are used for only three months at a time, as before long they get used to the water and no longer react so sensitive.

When the mussel has made his career as a water engineer, it gets a golden handshake and there is a gently pensioner. They are released back into the lake.