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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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Turbidity is the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid caused by large numbers of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye. The measurement of turbidity is a key test of both water clarity and water quality.
Fluids can contain suspended solid matter consisting of particles of many different sizes. While some suspended material will be large enough and heavy enough to settle rapidly to the bottom of the container if a liquid sample is left to stand (the settable solids), very small particles will settle only very slowly or not at all if the sample is regularly agitated or the particles are colloidal. These small solid particles cause the liquid to appear turbid.
Turbidity (or haze) is also applied to transparent solids such as glass or plastic. In plastic production, haze is defined as the percentage of light that is deflected more than 2.5° from the incoming light direction.[1]
Turbidity in open water may be caused by growth of phytoplankton. Human activities that disturb land, such as construction, mining and agriculture, can lead to high sediment levels entering water bodies during rain storms due to storm water runoff. Areas prone to high bank erosion rates as well as urbanized areas also contribute large amounts of turbidity to nearby waters, through stormwater pollution from paved surfaces such as roads, bridges, parking lots and airports.[2] Some industries such as quarrying, mining, and coal recovery can generate very high levels of turbidity from colloidal rock particles.
In drinking water, the higher the turbidity level, the higher the risk that people may develop gastrointestinal diseases.[3] This is especially problematic for immunocompromised people, because contaminants like viruses or bacteria can become attached to the suspended solids. The suspended solids interfere with water disinfection with chlorine[4] because the particles act as shields for viruses and bacteria. Similarly, suspended solids can protect bacteria from ultraviolet (UV) sterilization of water.[5]
In water bodies such as lakes, rivers and reservoirs, high turbidity levels can reduce the amount of light reaching lower depths, which can inhibit growth of submerged aquatic plants and consequently affect species which are dependent on them, such as fish and shellfish. High turbidity levels can also affect the ability of fish gills to absorb dissolved oxygen. This phenomenon has been regularly observed throughout the Chesapeake Bay in the eastern United States.[6][7]
For many mangrove areas, high turbidity is needed in order to support certain species, such as to protect juvenile fish from predators. For most mangroves along the eastern coast of Australia, in particular Moreton Bay, turbidity levels as high as 600 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) are needed for proper ecosystem health.[citation needed]
The measurement of turbidity is a key test of both water clarity and water quality.[citation needed] There are two standard units for reporting turbidity: Formazin Nephelometric Units (FNU) from ISO 7027 and Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) from USEPA Method 180.1. ISO 7027 and FNU is mostly widely used in Europe, whereas NTU is mostly widely used in the U.S. ISO 7027 provides the method in water quality for the determination of turbidity. It is used to determine the concentration of suspended particles in a sample of water by measuring the incident light scattered at right angles from the sample. The scattered light is captured by a photodiode, which produces an electronic signal that is converted to a turbidity. Open source hardware has been developed following the ISO 7027 method to measure turbidity reliably using an Arduino microcontroller and inexpensive LEDs.[8]
There are several practical ways of checking water quality, the most direct being some measure of attenuation (that is, reduction in strength) of light as it passes through a sample column of water.[9] The alternatively used Jackson Candle method (units: Jackson Turbidity Unit or JTU) is essentially the inverse measure of the length of a column of water needed to completely obscure a candle flame viewed through it. The more water needed (the longer the water column), the clearer the water. Of course water alone produces some attenuation, and any substances dissolved in the water that produce color can attenuate some wavelengths. Modern instruments do not use candles, but this approach of attenuation of a light beam through a column of water should be calibrated and reported in JTUs.[9]
The propensity of particles to scatter a light beam focused on them is now considered a more meaningful measure of turbidity in water. Turbidity measured this way uses an instrument called a nephelometer with the detector set up to the side of the light beam. More light reaches the detector if there are many small particles scattering the source beam than if there are few. The units of turbidity from a calibrated nephelometer can be either NTU or FTU, depending on the standard method used. To some extent, how much light reflects for a given amount of particulates is dependent upon properties of the particles like their shape, color, and reflectivity. For this reason (and the reason that heavier particles settle quickly and do not contribute to a turbidity reading), a correlation between turbidity and total suspended solids (TSS) is somewhat unusual for each location or situation.[9]
Turbidity in lakes, reservoirs, channels, and the ocean can be measured using a Secchi disk. This black and white disk is lowered into the water until it can no longer be seen; the depth (Secchi depth) is then recorded as a measure of the transparency of the water (inversely related to turbidity). The Secchi disk has the advantages of integrating turbidity over depth (where variable turbidity layers are present), being quick and easy to use, and inexpensive. It can provide a rough indication of the depth of the euphotic zone with a 3-fold division of the Secchi depth, however this cannot be used in shallow waters where the disk can still be seen on the bottom.[10]
Cameras and computer vision have also been used to measured turbidity.[11] Such monitoring can make use of machine learning to identify problems in sewage.[12]
An additional device, which may help measuring turbidity in shallow waters is the turbidity tube.[13][10] The turbidity tube condenses water in a graded tube which allows determination of turbidity based on a contrast disk in its bottom, being analogous to the Secchi disk.
Turbidity in air, which causes solar attenuation, is used as a measure of pollution. To model the attenuation of beam irradiance, several turbidity parameters have been introduced, including the Linke turbidity factor (TL).[14][15]
Governments have set standards on the allowable turbidity in drinking water. In the United States, public water systems that use conventional or direct filtration methods must not have a turbidity higher than 1.0 NTU at the plant outlet and all samples for turbidity must be less than or equal to 0.3 NTU for at least 95 percent of the samples in any month. Systems that use filtration other than the conventional or direct filtration must follow state limits, which must include turbidity at no time exceeding 5 NTU. Many drinking water utilities strive to achieve levels as low as 0.1 NTU.[16] The European turbidity standard is 4 NTU.[17]
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published water quality criteria for turbidity.[18] These criteria are scientific assessments of the effects of turbidity, which are used by states to develop water quality standards for water bodies. (States may also publish their own criteria.) Some states have promulgated water quality standards for turbidity, including:
Published analytical test methods for turbidity include:
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Turbidity is commonly treated using a settling or filtration process, or both settling and filtration. Depending on the application, flocculants may be dosed into the water stream to increase the effectiveness of the settling or filtration process.[25][26] Potable water treatment and municipal wastewater plants often remove turbidity with a combination of settling tanks, granular media filtration, and clarifiers.
In-situ water treatment or direct dosing for the treatment of turbidity is common when the affected water bodies are dispersed (i.e. there are numerous water bodies spread out over a geographical area, such as small drinking water reservoirs), when the problem is not consistent (i.e. when there is turbidity in a water body only during and after the wet season) or when a low cost solution is required. In-situ treatment of turbidity involves the addition of a reagent, generally a flocculant, evenly dispensed over the surface of the body of water. The flocs then settle at the bottom of the water body where they remain or are removed when the water body is drained. This method is commonly used at coal mines and coal loading facilities where stormwater collection ponds have seasonal issues with turbidity. A number of companies offer portable treatment systems for in-situ water treatment or direct dosing of reagents.
There are a number of chemical reagents that are available for treating turbidity, including aluminium sulfate or alum (Al2(SO4)3·nH2O), ferric chloride (FeCl3), gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O), poly-aluminum chloride, long chain acrylamide-based polymers and numerous proprietary reagents.[27] The water chemistry must be carefully considered when chemical dosing as some reagents, such as alum, will alter the pH of the water.
The dosing process must also be considered when using reagents as the flocs may be broken apart by excessive mixing.
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Turbidity is the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid caused by large numbers of individual particles that are generally invisible to the naked eye. The measurement of turbidity is a key test of both water clarity and water quality. Fluids can contain suspended solid matter consisting of particles of many different sizes. While some suspended material will be large enough and heavy enough to settle rapidly to the bottom of the container if a liquid sample is left to stand (the settable solids), very small particles will settle only very slowly or not at all if the sample is regularly agitated or the particles are colloidal. These small solid particles cause the liquid to appear turbid. Turbidity (or haze) is also applied to transparent solids such as glass or plastic. In plastic production, haze is defined as the percentage of light that is deflected more than 2.5° from the incoming light direction.
Ocean turbidity is a measure of the amount of cloudiness or haziness in sea water caused by individual particles that are too small to be seen without magnification. Highly turbid ocean waters are those with many scattering particulates in them. In both highly absorbing and highly scattering waters, visibility into the water is reduced. Highly scattering (turbid) water still reflects much light, while highly absorbing water, such as a blackwater river or lake, is very dark. The scattering particles that cause the water to be turbid can be composed of many things, including sediments and phytoplankton.
A turbidity current is most typically an underwater current of usually rapidly moving, sediment-laden water moving down a slope; although current research (2018) indicates that water-saturated sediment may be the primary actor in the process. Turbidity currents can also occur in other fluids besides water. Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute found that a layer of water-saturated sediment moved rapidly over the seafloor and mobilized the upper few meters of the preexisting seafloor. Plumes of sediment-laden water were observed during turbidity current events but they believe that these were secondary to the pulse of the seafloor sediment moving during the events. The belief of the researchers is that the water flow is the tail-end of the process that starts at the seafloor. In the most typical case of oceanic turbidity currents, sediment laden waters situated over sloping ground will flow down-hill because they have a higher density than the adjacent waters. The driving force behind a turbidity current is gravity acting on the high density of the sediments temporarily suspended within a fluid. These semi-suspended solids make the average density of the sediment bearing water greater than that of the surrounding, undisturbed water. As such currents flow, they often have a "snow-balling-effect", as they stir up the ground over which they flow, and gather even more sedimentary particles in their current. Their passage leaves the ground over which they flow scoured and eroded. Once an oceanic turbidity current reaches the calmer waters of the flatter area of the abyssal plain (main oceanic floor), the particles borne by the current settle out of the water column. The sedimentary deposit of a turbidity current is called a turbidite. Seafloor turbidity currents are often the result of sediment-laden river outflows, and can sometimes be initiated by earthquakes, slumping and other soil disturbances. They are characterized by a well-defined advance-front, also known as the current's head, and are followed by the current's main body. In terms of the more often observed and more familiar above sea-level phenomenon, they somewhat resemble flash floods. Turbidity currents can sometimes result from submarine seismic instability, which is common with steep underwater slopes, and especially with submarine trench slopes of convergent plate margins, continental slopes and submarine canyons of passive margins. With an increasing continental shelf slope, current velocity increases, as the velocity of the flow increases, turbulence increases, and the current draws up more sediment. The increase in sediment also adds to the density of the current, and thus increases its velocity even further.
An estuarine turbidity maximum, or ETM, is the zone of highest turbidity resulting from turbulent resuspension of sediment and flocculation of particulate matter in an estuary. The turbulence is driven by tidal forces, waves, and density-driven currents that push a salt wedge upstream and beneath outflowing freshwater discharge.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
