It seems there’s a never-ending stream of ideas to curb water pollution. Would you believe glow-in-the-dark tampons are one of them?

Newer homes are often equipped with technology that allows unused surface water that doesn’t need to be treated to run straight back into water systems while sending wastewater from the dishwasher and toilet, to the water treatment plant. This is meant to reduce the energy loss in treating clean water. But sometimes these systems are installed improperly, and wastewater ends up making its way to local rivers and streams. But what if glow-in-the-dark tampons were a simple solution to detecting unnecessary water pollution? Yes, you read it right.

Professor David Lerner at the University of Sheffield, who led a new study on the subject, explained in a statement: “More than a million homes have their waste water incorrectly connected into the surface water network, which means their sewage is being discharged into a river, rather than going to a treatment plant. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to detect where this is happening, as the discharge is intermittent, can’t always be seen with the naked eye and existing tests are complex and expensive.”

Researchers found that detecting detergents and other contaminants with untreated cotton tampons is an easy avenue for displaying the “optical brighteners” that are often present in detergents. These materials have a bluish glow when displayed under UV light, reported The Washington Post.

Tampons begin to glow when they’re contaminated. By hanging them on the underside of manhole covers, scientists can quickly spot when detergents, soaps, and other contaminants have made their way into the water system. Researchers found that the tampons begin to glow after just 0.01 ml of detergent per liter of water is released into rivers and streams. Plus, strategic placement under certain manhole covers makes it possible to know where the water is coming from in the first place.

“Often the only way to be sure a house is misconnected is through a dye test – putting dye down a sink or toilet and seeing where the coloured water appears in the sewer,” says Professor Lerner. “It’s clearly impractical for water companies to do this for all the households they supply, but by working back from where pollution is identified and narrowing it down to a particular section of the network, the final step of identifying the source then becomes feasible.”

This way the problem can easily be fixed in individual homes and water officials don’t have to test a large number of homes. Detergents can have a major impact on the water supply if left untreated. Game fish can die of an oxygen deficiency, which can cause an accumulation of vegetation because there’s nothing to feed on it. Excess phosphorus in the water can also lead to algal growth, which can choke the water system of oxygen and create dead zones. Even detergents that are considered biodegradable can have a negative impact on water systems, that’s why detecting water pollution early on protects local water supplies from such issues.

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Image of a man testing the water from Shuttershock

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Seventeen-year-old budding scientist Smitha Ramakrishna found out the artificial sweetener sucralose, marketed as Splenda, might be invisible to the bathroom scale – but can pose a hefty danger to fish and other living creatures because it accumulates in the water supply after people excrete it. Pretty sweet discovery for someone who hasn’t finished high school yet!

Scientific American profiled the teenager as one of 40 finalists in the 2009 Intel Science Talent Search who gathered in Washington, DC, for the final judging rounds this week.

While she didn’t make the top 10, she still won a lap top computer and $5,000 for her talent, as well as  recognition for her devotion to water safety and conservation.

Ramakrishna, a senior at Corona del Sol High School in Chandler, Arizona, was granted permission to study sucralose at Arizona State University – looking into various modern treatments such as bacterial digestion used in wastewater treatment plants.

She discovered sucralose was able to resist most treatments, breaking down into biodegradable molecules with extensive time and concentration of titanium oxide and ultraviolent light. Yet, her research showed few treatment plants bother with these methods. As a result, almost all the sucralose consumed winds up in the ecosystem.

Despite the controversies surrounding it, Splenda is wildly popular for weight control and is added to many brands of treats, sodas and cereals to satisfy the nation’s sweet tooth. In fact, one diabetic who is allergic to Splenda blogged that this finding explains why she continues to have reactions even though she tries to avoid the sweetener. “It turns up in everything,” she complained.

Ramakrishna became interested in water issues on a family trip to India when she was only 12. Her parents took her to an orphanage, where she says she was shocked by the poverty – the lack of tables and chairs for eating, for instance – but what struck her most is that these children didn’t even have access to clean water.

She tells Scientific American that upon her return home she founded AWAKE, an organization dedicated to water conservation (including the golf courses of Arizona) and education. Apparently, her cause has already made a dent, helping to get clean water to 3,000 kids in India through reverse osmosis and rainwater harvesting projects.

As far as the breakthrough study that made her a finalist, the young scientist says, “It’s opened a whole new door.” She plans to study the impact on fish when she attends college, perhaps at A.S.U. where her research continues.

Meantime, the student taking the top $100,000 prize in the Intel competition is Eric Larson, 17, of Eugene, Oregon, for his research project classifying mathematical objects called fusion categories. Eric’s work describes these in certain dimensions for the first time. More than 1,600 high school seniors from around the nation entered the search.

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