Profile

I originally come all the way from Canada but now I live in the South West (Exeter) with my husband who comes from England. I competed all of my schooling including my BSc biochemistry in Canada but decided that it was too cold to stay there forever since I don’t like cold winters!

My husband and I love the outdoors and in our free time we like to participate in lots of different outdoor activities. My favourites are rock climbing and downhill mountain biking.  Because we like the outdoors so much we both think it’s really important to look after our planet and its diverse environments.

I have always loved science from a very young age and my mum who is a scientist would always let me do messy experiments in our kitchen!

My favourite food is chocolate cake, my favourite movie is legally blonde, and one day I really want to adopt a dog!

I can’t wait to see all of your amazing questions.

-Lauren

I work in the Inorganic section of my laboratory at south west water. In this section we do hundreds of different tests on waste water samples and clean water samples. We test hundreds of thousands of samples every year! We do this testing to make sure clean water is safe for people using it and to make sure the environment stays safe when releasing waste water back into the natural water systems.

Some things we test for include heavy metals like lead, arsenic, chromium, and 23 other metals. It is important to make sure there are very low amounts of certain metals in waste and clean water since some metals like lead and arsenic can be very poisonous to humans and animals in the environment. To test for metals we use a very expensive instrument called an ICP-mass spectrometer that uses a plasma torch to ionise our samples! This torch can get very hot, up to 4000 degrees C.

We also test for things referred to as nutrients that include things nitrites and phosphates that can end up in run off water from farms and other companies. We test for these using a robot called smart chem that mixes sample with some chemicals that will cause a colour change of different strength depending on how much nutrient is in our sample. My favourite reaction is the nitrite one since it turns a bright pink!

We also test for things like pH (how acidic or basic the sample is), turbidity, and conductivity. These are just some examples of the many tests we run at my lab. There is also a microbiology department that even tests for bacteria in water!

We have to report results the the environment agency to show them south  west water is doing a good job with treating waste water. We also report results to the drinking water inspectorate to show that our water is safe to drink.