One thing I noticed was that the guy who tested the shots from a Silvia was very proud of his scientific rigor, but never bothered to test (or at least he didn't mention it) whether there was lead in the water he put into the machine to begin with. Which for me renders his results meaningless.
Disclaimer: I am not a subject matter expert. But I would like to point out that the collection section begins with: "With spring water in the machine". One would presume the "spring water" means lead-free as it has not been subjected to lead piping.
I, too, am a bit suspicious as the numbers seems to vary a lot and, with the exception of first 24h collection, the lead-content decreases while the time of exposure increases. But I wouldn't call the results meaningless.
> One would presume the "spring water" means lead-free as it has not been subjected to lead piping.
You would presume. Still, the whole analysis now hinges on that one thing - what really was in that "spring water". Maybe some lead got in there in some way they didn't expect. Or maybe they're just lying and that spring water was really tap water. Or maybe it really was lead-free. Point is, this is a core thing that should've been tested, and not doing so implies either malice or laziness, neither of which instill confidence in the research.
Hanlon's razor would only apply if the person doing the test was being accused of deliberately ignoring the issue of initial water quality for malicious purposes. Besides that, it is a simple, judgement-free fact that if you are measuring how much a device changes something, you have to compare the output to the input, independently of any hypotheses about how the input got to be the way it is.
Assuming the spring water company is actually complying with the limits. That would also be worth testing. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if a spring water company was lax with ongoing testing and making sure to test the water once it has been through their whole process and is in bottles.
There was a case with cranberry juice in Australia (I think it was) where school kids tested store bought cranberry juice and found it contained zero vitamin C. Something about the way the juice was processed and bottled destroyed all the vitamin C but no one had ever bothered to test the juice after processing and bottling.
was it difficult to get distilled / purified water? I could go sprinkle some lead into Nestlē’s springs. They took the time to note that it’s spring water, why didn’t they just go “oh maybe we should use distilled” for the sake of easily ruling out a questionable impurity? Have we not learned anything from the polywater debacle?
> in the least, sample the water from your silvia and sample the water from your water source if your source isn't already testing their water and send the sample(s) to an accredited lab
There's no indication that he actually sampled his water, though. If he did, he should/would have given us figures for the lead level in said water. It's unlikely that it was absolutely zero. I think he just trusted his water source.
All I see is that the geologist says you need to test both the water from the machine and from the source, but he or she still never posts what the source results were nor directly claims that their results were zero.
Agreed - without a control it's definitely not super reliable, with that said he does mention he's using spring water to test it (I'm assuming shop bought - if that had lead it'll be a whole other scandal).
