O.K. I know that the latest trends in education include more flexible, less rigid attempts at grading student knowledge of subjects. This may or may not be simply "the flavour of the month" nonsense that has been ongoing in education for some time now. When your basic English and Mathematics at the public school and high school level are unchanged for decades to centuries, then overpaid, inquiring minds are always looking for ways to enhance, complicate things with new acronyms, new teaching methods, the very latest in advanced educational hooey.
There are a number of fairly minor errors in this paper produced by two Environmental Science students seeking a DEGREE not a Diploma from Conestoga College presumably here in Kitchener, Ontario. I will not go into all of them despite my joy at pricking Lanxess, Woolwich Township and the Ministry of Environment's bullsh*% balloons, junk science and more.
In fact I'm even going to suggest that there is a fairly logical reason for the following significant error in the report listing a number of different remediation methods available to remove NDMA from groundwater. The long time criteria in Ontario for drinking water is a maximum of 9 parts per trillion (9 ppt. (ng/l) ) also known as .009 parts per billion (.009 ppb.) Well it certainly appears as if this research paper has however screwed up the CANADIAN criteria by listing it as 4 ppt. (ng/l) when in fact multiple on-line sources suggest that it is actually .04 ppb or 40 ppt. (ng/l). The Conestoga College report claims that the Canadian standard is less than half as high as the Ontario criteria or standard when in fact the Canadian standard is more than four times higher than the Ontario standard (i.e. 4 ppt versus 40 ppt.).
Now why am I being so generous suggesting a fairly logical reason for this mistake? That is because the on-line Canadian criteria/standard for NDMA in drinking water is written somewhat bizarrely as follows: .000 04 mg/l. Yes there is actually an empty space between the third and fourth zero. What the hell. Therefore it could be a forgotten zero??? Or not???? Regardless if it is supposed to read .00004 mg/l then it means .04 ppb and 40 ppt. (ng/l). Otherwise if that extra zero is included (.000004 mg/l ) then it reads .004 ppb. and 4 ppt. (ng/l).
The website for the Canadian criteria advises that the .000 04 mg/l or .04 ppb. or 4 ppt. (ng/l) are the accurate numbers. While confusion is certainly understandable both can not be correct. So did the Conestoga College folks screw up or is all the blame on our federal government twits writing the concentration in a funny manner?
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