By Cameron Hyatt, Marina Klein, Iaroslavna Kovalenko, Timothy McCarthy

Faculty Mentor: Sarah Smith

Abstract

Water plays an essential role in everyday life, and different containments in water can affect human health. The water samples from six water fountains across the University of Mary Washington campus will be compared and analyzed on the presence of metals such as Fe, Al, Pb, Zn, Cr, Cu, and Mn using Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-
AES). The water fountains were categorized as “old” and “new” based on appearance. The unknown concentration of trace metals will be found in the water samples using calibration curves constructed based on standard solutions. The calculated concentrations will be compared to acceptable concentrations from the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation Table using the statistical method as confident intervals. The concentrations of metals in the water samples will be compared using paired or unpaired t-tests to determine which drinking fountains contain the highest amounts of trace metals and find significant differences between them. The concentration of metals in water from “old” water fountains is expected to be slightly higher than that of water from “new” ones, but it would still be in the acceptable range based on the regulation table.