Is your drinking water safe? Are you sure? Now you have a chance to find out by bringing a sample along to an exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin dedicated entirely to water.
Surface Tension: The Future of Water seeks to make people think about water and how they use it, says joint curator of the exhibition, Ralph Borland. Water is usually treated as a limitless, costless commodity here but in fact only one per cent of the world's entire water supply is readily useable for humans, he says.
"The way people use water is really the issue," he says. Americans are the single largest users of water, gurgling through an astounding 575 litres per person per day, and the Australians also place high demands on water supplies. They drink or drain away an average 493 litres per person per day.
The Irish are relatively modest in comparison, consuming an average 150 litres of the wet stuff per person per day, but we use more than three times as much as the Bangladeshi. And those living in Mozambique get by with a tiny four litres per day, says Borland.
The exhibition which opens to the public this morning offers a powerful mix of the visual, the artistic and the scientific. The line-up includes a waterfall that copies out words selected at random from the internet and a mysterious whirlpool created in a giant tank of water.
Then there is the water testing lab, with a full set up ready to check for contamination by microorganisms, by heavy metals or other nasty stuff. And if you trust Borland and his fellow curators, Gallery director Michael John Gorman, Bruce Misstear and Jane Withers, you can drink water collected from the Grand Canal complete with swimming fish and filtered for impurities right in front of you.
There is much to surprise and intrigue, not least the preparation of a "water footprint" for the foods we so love to eat. For example it takes 90 litres of water to deliver your typical tuna sandwich but a colossal 1,650 litres to cook up a beef goulash stew.
Visit Surface Tension at the Science Gallery on Pearse Street Tuesday through Friday from 12-8pm and Saturday and Sunday from 12-6pm. It is closed Mondays.