Turbidity and Suspended Solids

Another method of analyzing water quality is through the measurement of turbidity and its correlation with total solids.  Turbidity is a relative measure of the clarity of a water sample by measuring the scatter of light as it passes through a sample. A sample with high turbidity will appear unclear while a sample with low turbidity will appear more clear because light passes through it with less scatter and absorption. It is relative in that it is measured against a standardized sample of stabilized formazin or gelex. The preferred units used in turbidity measurements are nephelometric turbidity units or NTUs. It is usually measured with a nephelometric turbidimeter or spectrophotometer. A key point here is that the turbidity can be measured in just a few minutes including calibration.

Total solids can be categorized into 4 categories: suspended solids, dissolved solids, settable solids, and volatile solids. They include all the solid materials that are contained in the water matrix. They can be measured as a concentration of the sample volume using gravimetric measurement techniques. This requires that we use an Imhoff cone to measure settlable solids, a filter to measure suspended solids, and the filtrate to measure dissolved solids. Usually suspended solids is the primary concern. These constituents are what typically affect the clarity of the water. However since it is time consuming and not necessarily practical to collect a sample, put it in an evaporating dish, evaporate the water in an oven over the course of 24 hours or more, and weight the solids remaining, we attempt to find a correlation between suspended solids and turbidity. Turbidity cannot by itself be used to quantify the concentration of suspended solids in a body of water. However by analyzing a few samples we can find and plot the correlation between concentration of suspended solids and turbidity. This gives us a relationship (valid only for a particular location and time) so that we can determine the amount of suspended solids in a body of water by simply measuring the turbidity.

The primary reasons that suspended solids are a concern is first, simple aesthetics and second, the harboring of pathogens or pathogen supporting envirnoments. The EPA has set primary drinking water quality standards at less than 1 NTU. Prior to 2002, less than 5 NTU was acceptable.