- Conducting the test: A nitrate test kit is used. A sample of the river water is combined with a solution, and the color of the resulting solution is compared to a color bar in the test kit to determine the concentration of nitrates.
- Testing: The amount of nitrates found in the Chicago River in terms of mg/L.
- Importance: Nitrogen-containing compounds act as vital nutrients on streams/rivers. Nitrate reactions in fresh water can cause oxygen depletion, this can cause the death of oxygen dependent aquatic organisms.
- Natural Occurrence: Nitrogen comes from any decaying organism or organic tissue. These natural amounts are healthy. However, if there are excess amounts, eutrophication could cause the presence of increased algae growth, leading to fish kills and making the water unclean.
- Human Impact: Runoff of water that has ran over fertilizer that contains nitrogen can cause eutrophication in streams or rivers. This eutrophication can lead to algal blooms which are harmful to marine organisms, as well as humans. Other conditions that arise due to excess nitrogen in water is "blue baby disease" which increase methemoglobin in the blood stream which destroys red blood cells. Can also enter water ways through sewage, industrial wastewater, and septic tanks.
- Data: Our tests revealed an average of .07mg/l. This equates to a Q-value of 96/100 which is really good. This indicates that the portion of the river that we tested had safe amounts of nitrates in the water for all organisms to survive.
- Explanation of Results: The tests revealed a healthy amount of nitrogen, so this indicates that there is little human contamination of nearby land. If there was use of fertilizers then the runoff would appear in our data results. The surrounding land is a also a nature preserve so there is not likely to be high amounts of sewage leaking into the water ways.