About ICP for Home Water
So, why should you do ICP-Mass Spec analysis? What will it tell you about your water at home?
How it Works
The instrument we use is the same one used to do testing to comply with the EPA regulations in environmental issues, so it's reliability is without question. To start, ICP stands for Inductive Couple Plasma. What it does is simple - it injects a sample into a plasma chamber that is approximately 10,000 degrees. This extreme temperature breaks everything in the sample apart into the basic elements. Every element is released at a specific wave length. We can then tell the concentration of the element by how much energy is released at that specific wave length. This process allows every element to be picked up from just a few drops of water.
What ICP Does for You
In light of recent events in places like Michigan and New Jersey, people have been taking control of finding out what is in their drinking water. However, not everyone can afford the incredibly expensive and high end equipment required to have accurate testings. That is where we come in. We are offering water sample tests that tell you what elements are present in your water down to the parts per million (ppm), or even parts per billion (ppb). To see a complete listing of exactly which elements we test for, please see our Element Testing Page.
How to Use ICP Testing
It is important to note that our testing only tests for elements in the water. It does not test for compounds. However, we make it not only easy, but affordable to do one time or regular testing for the water in your home. Simply purchase the test kit(s). Once this kit arrives, fill the sample tube according to the instructions in the kit and mail the test sample back to us. Once we receive your sample, we will run the test on your water and send the results back to you in the form of a pdf.
To get started on ICP Analysis now, see our product page.
Our Detection Levels
Since we care about water and the accuracy of the data that we are providing, we are doing what other people don't. We're going to tell you what our instrument’s detection levels are. Detection limits are the smallest amount of the element being tested that the ICP can see. For example, in a Fresh Water sample, we can find Calcium, Ca, at 3.349 ppb. That means we can tell you how much Calcium is in your water down to 3.3 parts per billion.

Fresh Water
