There are strict government standards in place with regards to permissible amounts of arsenic in drinking water. All of the municipal facilities are tested regularly to find out if they are in compliance. State officials are also encouraging those who drink from wells to have their water tested, too, by having a moderately-priced $20 test taken.

There are two courses of action that facilities and well-owners alike can choose from when it comes to correcting the problem. They can either add a specialized treatment to the water to bring the levels down, or they can mix the water with uncontaminated water from another source in order to decrease the element’s strength to acceptable levels. Unfortunately, there are towns where compliance is impossible due to the lack of a sewer system necessary for carrying away wastes created by the treatment process. This problem could also be remedied, but the cost is prohibitive to some small districts.

Of Iowa’s 1900 municipal water facilities, 1400 are tested for arsenic on a regular basis. Only 3% have been found lacking, but that’s 3% too many people who are being exposed to excess quantities of the element. While the problem isn’t as prevalent as coliform bacteria and nitrates, the fact still remains that exposure to arsenic over decades of ingestion can lead to skin cancer, damage to the liver, lungs, prostate, and bladder, and cause heart and respiratory problems. Even in the short term, very high levels of arsenic can result in skin problems, vomiting, and diarrhea.

The state of Iowa is working hard to right this harmful problem that is endangering the health of its citizens. New treatment options are being considered, and one county has received federal assistance to ensure that all of its wells, public and private, are safe. Water filters are being checked more often, and the amount of chlorine being added to public water sources has been reduced as that seems to also help with the problem of arsenic.

For more info visit http://www.separmaticsystems.com.

Country folk will almost certainly discover the night sky at an earlier time than city dwellers because the atmosphere over a city is normally so polluted that you cannot see the stars from below. There are two kinds of pollutants that prevent you from seeing the stars in a city, smog and light. Street lights give off a halo that stops you from seeing the weaker light from the stars behind.

If you would like to recapture that moment in your life, why not take a child out into the country to look at the stars one night? If you have a pair of binoculars, so much the better, but they are not necessary. If you have forgotten which stars are which, get a book on the subject or a map of the night sky. Nowadays you can download a map of the night’s sky for the day that you want.

The night sky actually alters every night. The stars and the constellations do not move far, so you should not have too much difficulty finding them, but if a planet is passing by, it will be in a different part of the sky each night, which is why it is helpful to have an up-to-date map of the night sky for the date you want to go star gazing.

One of the hardest concepts for a child (or anyone else for that matter to grasp is the magnitude of the universe – the sheer size of it. Here are a few facts that will amaze most individuals: 

1] Our Sun is a star in the galaxy called the Milky Way and it has its own planets revolving about it. However, there are estimated to be 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) stars like our Sun in the Milky Way.

2] The Milky Way is one of approximately tens of billions of galaxies in the universe and the Milky Way is one of the smaller galaxies.

3] It would take over 100,000 years to get from one edge of the Milky Way to the other, if you were travelling at more than five trillion miles per year or more than 570 billion miles per hour.

4] It has been worked out that our Milky Way is 14,000,000,000 (fourteen billion) years old
It is very difficult to comprehend astronomical numbers like this but this may help:

1 billion seconds ago, it was 1980

1 billion minutes ago, Jesus had only just died

1 billion hours ago, mankind was not yet on the planet

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with the Kids Building set. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.

The actual history of tattoos is very indistinct, their history is that long. The oldest tattoo that we have uncovered so far is on Oetzi The Iceman, who died around 5,300 years ago. His tattoo was a simple grid of horizontal and vertical lines. However, tattooing was almost certainly going on long before Oetzi’s era. But what was their objective?

One theory about Oetzi’s tattoos (all 57 of them) is that they were done over tender joints, so that an acupuncturist would better be able to insert needles into the correct places when his joints ached, but this is definitely not the only reason people got tattoos. 

These days most Western tattoos are for decoration and it is likely that that has always been a fact, although warriors would have used them to seem more terrible in battle. They might also have been a symbol of social status.

I introduced to the mother of an Algerian-Berber friend of mine twenty years ago. She had lived on the top of her mountain alone for many years and I was honoured to be taken out to meet her. She was very small and slight and every inch of skin that I could see was tattooed. Her face, her hands and her feet. 

When I asked my friend why she had had that done, he said that it was tradition. She had at one time been the most beautiful woman in the region and so that everybody would understand that for long after she had lost her physical beauty, she was tattooed. It was an a costly and lavish mark to say that she had been the most beautiful woman in that region in her day.

Russian archaeologists found mummies in the Altai Mountains of Siberia which were 2,400 years old. These people had animals tattooed all over them – some real and some make-believe animals. It is thought that some of these tattoos were decorative and that others were signs of status.

The Egyptians used tattoos liberally and lots of mummies have been discovered that are completely covered in tattoos. Women were tattooed too, but it is considered that only women and the husband were permitted to see a woman’s markings These mummies go back 2,100 years.

Many Thai men have a substantial tattoo on their chest and on their back. These men have normally been in the army and the tattoo is meant to stop them from being shot by staving off bullets. This is an ancient practice in Thailand and probably predates the invention of the gun.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on many topics but is currently concerned with Hello Kitty from Japan. If you would like to read more, please visit our web site entitled Kitten Cannon 3.

However, you can cut out lots of useless searching and comparing if you can answer two important questions before you begin, namely: what do you want the telescope for and how much can you afford to spend?

In many ways, it is best to begin with a fairly simple telescope, discover what its deficiencies are for what you want a telescope for and then trade up into the correct type of telescope. Another good way to start is with a pair of binoculars and then buy a telescope that matches your interests. Binoculars will disclose a great deal more that the naked eye – it is really surprising how much.

If you want to use your optical aid for a number of purposes such as bird-watching and astronomy, then binoculars are probably the answer until you choose to specialize in astronomy, at which time you can buy a telescope dedicated to that hobby and its tremendous distances.

The eyepiece is the most important part of a telescope and you will want one with adjustable magnification. The quality of this lens is vital: the view through it ought to be crisp and bright with very little to no chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is a kind of colour distortion that shows itself as halos around outstandingly bright lights.  

Knowing where you will be using your telescope is also vital, because of unfavourable reasons in cities. The skies over cities are often polluted with contaminants like smoke or smog, but they are always polluted with street light.

This street light pollution can become a real annoyance, so enquire if your telescope can become fitted with filters to overcome these pollutants.

A telescope has to collect light in order for you to see through it. This is achieved by the primary lens and the amount of light that the telescope collects is in direct proportion to the size of this primary lens or objective. If you would like more light, you need an objective with a larger surface area.

Light is needed more than magnification occasionally, particularly while searching the stars because of the distances concerned. It really scarcely matters whether you are magnifying a star 10 or 12 times when it is 1,000 light years away. However, what you can see, you want to be able to see clearly.
Too much magnification can make directing the telescope very problematic for novices unless there is a ‘sight’.

This is a weaker lens outside the main telescope that makes it easier to direct at the item that you would like to look at. 

It is not possible to cover all the aspects of purchasing your first star-gazing telescope in a short piece, so be prepared to do some more research.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with the Kids Building set. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.

It is so amazing that the overwhelming majority of people in the world have taken part in it and do on a regular basis. It fascinates millions of individuals each day.

Or ought I to say each night, because I am referring to amateur astronomy or, more in essence, star gazing. Each sighted person in the world throughout the history of mankind, has looked up at the planets and the stars in the night sky and thought of something. People ask themselves different questions, but everyone has thought about something when looking at the stars.

Astronomy is a excellent hobby that surely everyone is interested in. It is there to do, free of charge most nights of the week if the sky is clear. If you want to see more, you can buy a pair of binoculars and if you want to study items even further away, you can get a telescope. 

Neither of these optical aids is highly costly at the entry stage, but the difference they will make to your level of enjoyment of the hobby is, well, amazing.

Books on astronomy are not expensive and they will point the greenhorn in the right direction for seeing all kinds of amazing sights: constellations, planets, meteor storms, visiting comets etc.. 

There is also a wealth of free information on line. Join Jodrell Bank (the British Observatory) on Twitter to be kept informed about what is going on in the night sky in the near future in your area.

This is a different fascinating aspect of this hobby, visiting observatories, where you get the chance to observe the universe from as close as we can be and still be on terra firma. If you have never looked at the night sky through a colossal telescope (or even any telescope), you have a colossal pleasure in store for yourself.

Children love astronomy and I have heard numerous famous astronomers say that their love of astronomy started whilst a relative pointed to the night sky and explained something to them.

This led to taking out library books on astronomy and asking for a telescope for Christmas. Twenty years later they are on TV explaining some astronomical fact to the nation.

That is amazing. Not lots of chess players or stamp collectors or football fans can say the same. And there is still so much to learn about the solar system. Everyone has a opportunity to endeavour to explain something. Even though most of the ‘easy stuff’ has already been discovered, it has not all been explained to the satisfaction of all astronomers.

If you are not so interested in astronomy yourself or do not have the time, why not give the chance to some child you know? Instead of the usual Christmas or birthday gifts, give a book on astronomy, binoculars or a telescope, you could be encouraging the next Patrick Moore, but at least you will be introducing someone to the most amazing hobby in the world or even in the universe.