Citizen-Led Water Testing
If you wandered through Corby on a damp Saturday morning this autumn, you might have spotted something unusual along the riverbanks. Not scientists in lab coats, not council officials with clipboards — but parents, teenagers, retirees, and local volunteers, each armed with a small water testing kit and a quiet determination.
They dipped bottles into streams, compared colour charts, scanned QR codes, and logged results with surprising confidence. And behind their efforts sat a simple question — one that more and more communities across the UK are asking:
“What’s really in our water?”
Welcome to the rise of citizen-led water testing — an inspiring movement where ordinary people are stepping forward to understand and protect the environments they depend on.
Your Exposome: A Lifetime of Environmental Encounters
To understand why community testing matters, we need to explore a big idea in modern environmental science: the exposome.
Think of it as the sum total of everything you’ve ever been exposed to — the air you’ve breathed, the water you’ve drunk, the soil you’ve walked on, even the dust in your home. Little by little, these exposures shape our health.
Some pollutants linger in the body through bioaccumulation, quietly building up over a lifetime. Others increase in concentration as they move up the food chain through biomagnification, meaning a tiny amount in river sediment can become a much larger amount in the fish we eat.
Most of these encounters are invisible and unremarkable. But when environments contain heavy metals or industrial contaminants, the cumulative effect can be profound — not just for ecosystems, but for the people who live nearby.
The Corby Story: A Community Still Seeking Answers
Corby’s relationship with industrial pollution is long, complex, and painful. From the 1930s until 1981, the town’s enormous steelworks dominated the landscape. When they closed, the site — spanning some 680 acres — had to be dismantled and reclaimed.
That process, carried out between 1985 and 1997, was not done safely. Toxic waste became airborne during demolition. Years later, families whose children were born with severe birth defects fought a landmark legal battle — and won.
But long after the court case ended, one question persisted:
Could contaminants still be present in the environment?
And so, decades later, residents decided to investigate again — this time with the support of Earthwatch Europe and a new generation of citizen scientists.
Why Citizen Science Matters
Environmental pollution doesn’t stay politely within boundaries. It migrates — through soils, into rivers, down into groundwater. Monitoring this movement is a complex and ongoing task, vital for safe land remediation, especially on large brownfield sites like Corby.
In an ideal world, the polluters or local authorities would always fund thorough, long-term monitoring. But reality rarely follows the ideal.
That’s where citizen scientists make a remarkable difference.
- They can access places large organisations cannot.
- They provide wide coverage across a landscape.
- They bring a personal stake — and an urgency — that institutions sometimes lack.
Citizen science doesn’t replace professional testing. But it absolutely amplifies it.
How Community Water Testing Works
The Corby project is a perfect example of what citizen-led testing looks like in practice.
Volunteers collected 60 water samples from streams, ponds, and drainage channels across the old steelworks site. Using simple, low-cost testing kits, they measured five key heavy metals — including cadmium and zinc — and obtained instant results.
These on-the-spot tests are clever pieces of chemistry, designed to give a quick snapshot of what might be happening in a waterway. They’re surprisingly accurate for screening-level work, but they can’t provide the detail needed to draw firm conclusions.
That’s where laboratory analysis steps in.
Science Behind the Scenes: The Water Professor’s Role
Alongside Earthwatch Europe, The Water Professor (the public-facing brand of Artemis Analytical) provided laboratory support for the project. The additional samples collected by volunteers were sent to our lab, where they underwent:
- ICP-MS analysis for 30 elements
- pH measurement
- Total dissolved solids (TDS) testing
This level of analysis — known as absolute quantitation — is what transforms a community curiosity into scientific evidence.
Citizen scientists cast the net wide; laboratories provide precision.
Together, they generate data that can inform councils, regulators, and communities far more effectively than either approach alone.
Why People Test Their Own Water
Across the UK, more and more people are becoming curious about what’s in their water — whether for environmental reasons, concerns about nearby industrial sites, or simply a desire to understand what flows through their streams and taps.
Common motivations include:
- Concern for children’s health
- Aging infrastructure, including old lead pipework
- Environmental awareness and activism
- A desire for transparency
- Raising issues that might otherwise remain invisible
This isn’t alarmism. It’s empowerment.
How to Get Involved
If you’re inspired by projects like the one in Corby, you don’t need a PhD to take part in citizen science.
You can:
- Join projects run by groups like Earthwatch Europe
- Volunteer with local river trusts
- Use testing kits to explore your local environment
- Learn how land use affects water quality
- Report concerns to your local council or water authority
And if you ever get unexpected results, that’s when to involve a specialist laboratory for definitive testing.
A New Era of Water Awareness
Citizen-led water testing isn’t about replacing experts. It’s about expanding the circle of people who care — and equipping them with the tools to act.
In Corby, parents and volunteers are not just collecting samples. They’re reclaiming agency. They’re rebuilding trust. They’re helping to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.
Across the UK, more communities are discovering that they too can play a part in protecting the waters that sustain us.
When science and community work together, remarkable things can happen. And when people understand their environment, they’re far more likely to defend it — for themselves, for their children, and for the generations still to come.
