July is my favorite month. When I think of summer, there are two primary things I love: sun and water. You really need water to enjoy summer…swimming, boating on a lake, watering the garden, bike riding along the river. It’s always been at the center of my family’s summer.
Drinking water on hot days is also very important. It helps maintain a normal body temperature and blood pressure, flushes out toxins, and cushions our joints. Our July Continuing Education article is on diabetes mellitus. Water is the perfect drink for people with diabetes. It has no added sugar like many beverages and can lower blood glucose levels. Adequate hydration also helps our organs perform at their best. For example, water helps the kidneys to filter and absorb excess glucose from the blood. There are also some studies that suggest a healthy lifestyle that includes drinking an adequate amount of water regularly can prevent prediabetes.
In the clinical laboratory, water is a key factor every day. On average, laboratories use hundreds of liters of water a day depending on the size of the lab, the types of tests performed, and the specific equipment used.
Water is used in the lab for numerous tests such as blood tests, tissue sample tests, toxicology tests, and microbiology tests. Water is the most frequently used reagent in the lab for lab analyzers, as it is used to prepare solutions or dilute manufacturers’ reagents.
Certain laboratory equipment needs water for operation and cooling, and water is used for the cleaning of lab surfaces, glassware, and equipment, including sterilization machines that produce steam. And obviously, water is used by laboratory staff for handwashing.
In the laboratory, the availability of pure water is essential, and while most outside the lab might consider tap water to be “pure,” laboratory scientists regard it as highly contaminated with impurities such as dissolved inorganic compounds and dissolved organic compounds. The quality of the water is extremely important in clinical diagnostics because it affects the chemistry of the tests and the general operation of lab analyzers, which would reduce the reliability of patient test results. There are standards regulating water in the laboratory and water purification systems are in all laboratories. Reagent water is the most pure and is categorized in types 1 through 3. Most labs use a water purification system that combines filtration, reverse osmosis, and deionization.
A day without water to enjoy in July would be a bummer, but a day without water in the lab would be a day without any work or tests being completed.
I welcome your comments and questions — please send them to me at [email protected].
