Can you see metal contaminants in water?

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could literally see and hence detect the presence of contaminants in water? We did just this! Well close to this at least.

We used a molecule, part of which is basically a denatured version of the very common bovine serum albumin, derived ultimately from cows. This molecule ‘complexes’ with heavy metals (mercury, cadmium, copper, lead), a serious class of contaminant, and results in a change in color (in fact yielding light emission, when UV is shined into this solution). This would in fact be a straightforward way to detect contaminants, down to the limits considered acceptable today.

Ref: ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2016, 4, 6, 3497–3503

https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b00543