Know Your H2O - Estelle Riche, & Maricar Tarun

Purified water is the most common reagent found in the laboratory, used in experimental protocols in virtually every type of application. Despite its ubiquity in the research setting, the contribution of water to the success of experimental outcomes is often overlooked. Used as blanks, for dissolution and dilution of samples, dilution of standards, preparation of mobile phases and for media and buffer preparation, water is central to experimental success.

Water purity is critical for a wide range of analytical and biological applications.Impurities in water can interfere with HPLC, LC-MS, PCR, microarrays and immunoassays and can impact cell culture and proteomics studies.

Awareness of what may be in the water used for experiments and the possible impact of contamination can help scientists more quickly identify the source of spurious results and put in place best practices to avoid this problem in the future.

What’s in Your Water?
Purified water in laboratories comes from tap water, which commonly contains substances that may be classified as particles, ions/inorganic compounds, organic molecules, microorganisms, and dissolved gases. Depending on how the water is used in the laboratory, some of these contaminants, if not removed effectively by the laboratory’s water purification system, may have an influence on
experimental results.