REPORT 
ON THE 
Condition of file Pawtuxet Water, 
SUPPLIED TO THE 
CITY OF PROVIDENCE, R. I., 
MADE BY 
JOHN HOWARD APPLETON, 
Professor of Chemistry in Brown University. 
Al'l'EN nix TO T|1IRI> QUARTERLY REPORT OE THE BoARD OE I'EBl.K WORKS 
(Tty Dwijiest No. 20, Series oe 1883. 
PROVIDENCE: 
PROVIDENCE PRESS COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE CITY. 
1883. REPORT 
ON THE 
Condition of tlie Pawtuxet Water, 
SUPPLIED TO THE 
CITY OF PROVIDENCE, R. I., 
MADE BY 
JOHN HOWARD APPLETON, 
Professor of Chemistry in Brown University. 
Appendix to Third Quarterly Report of the Board of Public Works 
City Document No. 20, Series of 1883. 
PROVIDENCE: 
PROVIDENCE PRESfJ COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE CITY. 
1883. THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE. 
In Board of Aldermen, October 18, 1883. 
Ordered, That fifteen hundred copies of the report upon the condi- 
tion of the Pawtuxet water made by Professor John Howard Appleton, 
and presented by the board of public works to the city council as an 
appendix to their quarterly report in city document No. 20, series of 1883, 
be printed. 
Witness: 
HENRY V. A. JOSLIN, City Clerk. REPORT 
OF 
PROFESSOR JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
To the Board of Public Works, Providence : 
Gentlemen :-I propose in this report to present in a 
convenient and popular form some of the results of my ex- 
aminations of the water of the Pawtuxet river as supplied 
to the city of Providence. 
My analyses of this water have continued for a term of 
nearly eight years ; a few analyses were made in the year 
1875, and then, beginning with the year 1876, the water 
has been tested regularly twice a month up to the present 
time. For this series of tests, the water has been obtained 
from the river itself, near the in-take of the Pettaconset 
pumping station. At certain irregular intervals, however, 
the water has been tested from the distribution pipes of the 
city of Providence. 
PURPOSES OF THESE TESTS. 
In having these tests made it has been the intention of 
the Water board and the Board of public works to keep a 
vigilant watch over the quality of our water at its source of 
supply, and also to keep a permanent record of the results. 
The superior softness of our water, whereby it is so ex- 
cellent for washing purposes, is readily recognized by all 
users ; and again its fitness for use in steam boilers has been 
beyond question. For the variety of other business uses 
to which it is put, it is acknowledged to be admirably fitted. 
While then, my tests had reference to the qualities which 4 
APPENDIX TO CITY DOCUMENT NO. 20. 
adapt it to'these uses, I have given special attention to 
those which applied in any way to its fitness for drinking 
and cooking purposes. 
In case of nearly every sample a series of six tests has 
been applied. Notwithstanding this number of tests it can- 
not be denied that chemistry finds one of its most difficult 
problems in the question-Is a certain given sample of 
water fit to drink ? Some of the sources of this difficulty 
will be now stated. 
THE SOLVENT POWER OF WATER. 
One of the most important of the properties of water is its 
solvent power. Thus it is capable of dissolving greater or 
less amounts of a large proportion of all the substances 
known. Now in nature, water is constantly progressing 
from stage to stage in a sort of circulation, in course of 
which there are frequent opportunities for the water to ex- 
ert its solvent power upon the substances with which it 
comes in contact. For example, the atmospheric air is 
permeated with water in the form of an almost invisible 
vapor, and this vapor is readily condensed into the liquid 
drops of rain; now, while these drops are at first pure 
water-that is consist of absolutely nothing else but water- 
they do not long remain so. In falling, they begin to dis- 
solve substances they meet in the air during their down- 
ward progress. Upon reaching the earth, portions, at least, 
of them flow from the surface into larger bodies of water, 
as rivers for example ; other portions soak into the ground 
and flow beneath the surface toward wells or other subter- 
ranean reservoirs. In either case the water takes into solu- 
tion certain substances with which it comes into contact in the 
earth ; indeed the water that flows into rivers carries to them 
in addition various floating solid matters that hang suspended 
in it and cannot be said to be ever properly dissolved in it. 
These matters are carried to the ocean, whence great quan- 
tities of pure water evaporate into the atmosphere, ready 
upon proper occasion to begin again the round we have REPORT OF PROFESSOR JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
5 
briefly pictured. Of course the substances left behind in 
the ocean, serve in some degree to increase the impurities 
already gathered in it. 
RARITY OF PERFECTLY PURE WATER. 
So it appears that in nature it is difficult to find anywhere, 
water that is perfectly pure ; in fact it is no easy matter for 
the chemist to prepare-even by the most skilfully devised 
artificial processes-absolutely pure water, that is water in 
which he cannot detect some substances dissolved. And 
thus it occurs that the principal differences between natural 
waters arise from variations in the kind, character, and 
amount of the impurities that they contain. Of course it is 
plain that the word impurity may be used in two widely 
different senses; in the chemical sense it is not intended to 
convey any suggestion other than that of some substances 
different from water itself, dissolved or suspended in the 
latter; in the every-day sense, the word impurity appears 
to carry the impression that the thing referred to possesses 
some foul or unwholesome quality. It is evident then that 
twyo different samples of drinking water may contain sub- 
stances which the chemist would designate as impurities, of 
which those in the one sample may be harmless or even ben- 
eficial, while those in the other may be highly injurious to 
health. 
THREE CLASSES OF WATERS. 
Of course the chemist encounte'rs a class of waters, the 
members of which are extremely unwholesome ; they con- 
tain mineral substances well known to be injurious or they 
are charged with animal matters in a recognizable condition 
of putrefaction. He also meets another class which are in 
the opposite extreme : it consists of waters of marked de- 
gree of purity, almost entirely free from mineral and or- 
ganic matters of any kind. 
Evidently, then, it is in waters of a third class that the 6 
APPENDIX TO CITY DOCUMENT NO. 20. 
chemist finds difficulty in forming a correct opinion. These 
may contain, in moderate quantities, impurities which in 
larger amounts would be plainly unwholesome. 
Here, then, must be met the not uncommon difficulty of 
adopting some definite point, in a continuous series of num- 
bers, at which it will be decided that all less quantities are 
harmless and all greater quantities are dangerous. 
Again it is difficult to experimentally determine the ef- 
fects of samples of water of this third class upon individ- 
uals using them ; for initial physical condition, the articles 
of food of a more decided character, as well as various 
other circumstances make it hard to fix any given effect as 
distinctly referable to the use of water of this class. 
METHOD OF THIS REPORT. 
In this report, I propose to dwell mainly upon two kinds 
of tests that have been applied to the Pawtuxet water. 
The one test gives us the total amount of solids yielded 
upon evaporation of the water-a very general sort of test; 
the other gives us the amount of albuminoid ammonia 
yielded by the water-a very special sort of test. 
In discussing each kind of matter I intend to refer to the 
amount of it in the water supplied to other cities and also in 
the water supplied to the city of Providence for the last 
eight years. 
In my references io other cities I compare the waters 
by means of the tests made by Professor Albert R. Leeds, 
of Hoboken, N. J. In the months of June and July, 1881, 
this gentleman, one of the most eminent of American 
chemists, was called upon to examine the waters of the 
Passaic river which supply the cities of Newark, Jersey 
City and Hoboken. He obtained in addition, samples of 
water from a number of the principal cities of the Union 
(but not including Providence) and tested them. His re- 
sults were intended to be compared with each other; they 
may be fairly compared also with those of tests of the 
water of the city of Providence made at that time in accord- REPORT OF PROFESSOR JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
7 
ance with our custom. While it is probable that the water of 
some of these cities may have been better at some other 
dates than at those chosen by Professor Leeds, and the same 
is known to be the fact in case of the Providence water, 
viz. : that on many occasions, both before and since, it has 
been better than in June and July, 1881, yet on the whole, 
the report of Professor Leeds affords the best means of 
comparison of city waters to which I have been able to 
gain access. 
TABLE I. TOTAL SOLIDS IN PAWTUXET AND OTHER WATERS. 
The amount of total solids in a water is learned by evap- 
orating a measured quantity of the water in a suitable 
weighed dish ; the water then goes off as steam while there 
is left behind in the dish, as a residue, every solid substance 
that was either floating in the water or was dissolved in an 
invisible condition within it. Upon taking the weight of 
such residue, we obtain an outside datum which is a very 
valuable one, since it tells us at once whether a water is 
grossly polluted or not. Now I have prepared table I. for 
the purpose of displaying both the absolute and the relative 
amounts of total solids in our water supply. 
This table expresses throughout the number of parts, by 
weight, of total solids that the various kinds of water re- 
ferred to yield per million parts of water, also by weight; 
moreover the kinds of water are in all cases placed in the 
order of their amounts of impurities-those having the least 
impurity coming at the top. 
First. Column one (table I.) shows the total solids ex- 
isting in waters furnished to certain of the principal cities of 
the United States in June and July, 1881. 
The list will be found to include the following important 
municipalities :- 8 
APPENDIX TO CITY DOCUMENT NO. 20. 
New York, (population by census of 1880) 
1,206,299 
847,170 
Philadelphia, 
- - - 
Brooklyn, 
- 
- 566,663 
Boston, 
- 
362,839 
Baltimore, 
- 
- 332,313 
Cincinnati, - 
- - - 
255,139 
Washington, 
- 
- 147,293 
Jersey City, 
- - - 
120,722 
Providence, 
- 
- 104,857 
Rochester, - 
- 
89,366 
Paterson, 
- 
- 51,031 
Wilmington, 
- 
42,478 
Hoboken, 
• - 
- 30,999 
Oswego, 
- - - 
21,116 
This column also contains the results of the analysis of one 
sample of water from the Providence distribution pipes which 
was taken incidentally on June 8, 1881. 
From this column it appears that at the comparison dates 
the Providence supply, both in the river and in the distribu- 
tion pipes, had a smaller amount of total solids than had any 
of the other cities mentioned; so far then, it must be credited 
with a higher degree of purity than any of them. 
Second. Professor Leeds also examined waters from the 
sources of the Boston supply; for purposes of comparison 
with the water of our own source, I have placed the result 
from the Boston sources in the second column. It is plain 
that so far as this datum is concerned the Boston sources 
are far below our own in purity. 
Third. The results in the first and second columns may 
be said to refer to one particular period or occasion ; in the 
third column therefore I give a resume of the results ob- 
tained in case of the Pawtuxet water upon nearly two hun- 
dred different occasions and covering a period of about 
eight years. 9 
REPORT OF PROFESSOR JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
From this column it appears that the average amounts of 
total impurities in our source of supply for each and every 
one of the last eight years-and consequently for the whole 
of them-was much less than in the purest of the other city 
waters upon the comparison dates. 
The third column of table I. is one of averages. Now 
it may be said of averages that they sometimes flow from 
the improper combination of discordant extremes and thus 
become meaningless or misleading. In order to try the 
Pawtuxet averages just given, upon this point, I have in- 
troduced column four in which is given the very largest 
amounts of total solids found in the water upon any occasion 
during the last eight years-those in which we have had a 
critical examination of it. The figures of this column clearly 
show that our averages are not open to the objection sug- 
gested ; for the variations have been extremely moderate ; 
and even at the times of largest amounts our water compares 
favorably with that of the other cities at the comparison 
dates. 
Fourth. Columns five and six of table I. relate to waters 
from the Providence distribution pipes. They display the re- 
sults of tests of nearly twenty samples of water tested in 
the last few months of the year 1882 and in the first few 
months of the year 1883. 
If we except numbers 14 and 21, which I am informed came 
from points entirely inaccessible to consumers, we find that 
the average amount of total solids is slightly less in these 
samples tested from the distribution, than the average amount 
in water taken at the same period from the river. 
TABLE II. ALBUMINOID AMMONIA IN PAWTUXET AND OTHER WATERS. 
This table needs less explanation than table I. because the 
principles guiding in its arrangement are the same as in that 
one. The fact must not be overlooked however that in this 
table the numbers represent amounts only one one-hundredth 10 
APPENDIX TO CITY DOCUMENT NO. 20. 
as great as in the other-namely, they represent hundredths 
of one part of albuminoid ammonia by weight in one million 
parts of water, also by weight. 
Again the substance-albuminoid ammonia-which forms 
the subject of the table demands some comment. As has 
been already suggested some of the matters dissolved in 
water defy the attempts of the chemist to definitely char- 
acterize them. Thus it is often impossible to declare the 
presence of animal matter upon the basis of any direct test. 
Hence recourse must be had to an indirect one. The test 
based upon albuminoid ammonia is that which is almost uni- 
versally adopted as the best at present known. The term 
implies that kind of ammonia which is produced by the nat- 
ural or artificial decomposition of animal matters - and in 
some cases of vegetable-of which albumen is taken as the 
type. In testing water, the chemist subjects it to a pro- 
cess which will develop ammonia from all of the matters 
present, capable of this change ; then he finds out with ex- 
actness the quality of ammonia so formed. The value of 
this test is enhanced by the fact that the process used-called 
Nessler's test-is one of the most delicate known to science. 
On the other hand, as has been acknowledged, certain harm- 
less animal and vegetable matters may by this method be 
counted as dangerous ones. But as this course keeps us on 
the safe side it is usually adhered to, and the test for al- 
buminoid ammonia is considered one of the most important. 
First. Column I. (table II.) shows that the amounts of 
albuminoid ammonia, of the principal city waters compared, 
group themselves mostly in a space between the numbers 
iViy io* 
At approximately the same dates, the three tests of the 
Providence sources all came well up in this space, while the 
sample from our distribution was surpassed by only one, 
and that one, much the best of all those compared. 
Second. Column II. (table II.) shows that at the com- REPORT OF PROFESSOR JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
11 
parison dates, the Boston sources were all of them inferior 
to ours. 
Third. Column III. (table II.) shows that for a period 
of eight years the average amounts of albuminoid ammonia 
per year, have been between and ; that is, always 
above the middle of the group already referred to ; and fur- 
ther, column IV. shows that these averages are legitimately 
derived and are not merely the results of calculations from 
remote extremes. 
Fourth. Columns V. and VI. (table II.) show the amounts 
of albuminoid ammonia in the samples of water from the 
Providence distribution in 1882 and 1883. 
If we except numbers 14 and 21, which I have remarked 
came from points entirely inaccessible to consumers, we dis- 
cover that the average amount is an amount much 
less than the average (yVu) 'n the water taken directly 
from the river at the same period. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
The results given and the explanations added, appear then 
to show conclusively that our water is one of the best; that 
it is not now grossly polluted and has not been so since our 
critical knowledge of it; that there is no distinct ground for 
decided complaint of its quality nor for fear with regard to its 
use. 
These statements are of course based largely upon its 
analytical returns as compared with those of other cities. 
But is comparison valuable in such a case ? I think it is ; 
and that for two reasons. First, in the matter of water 
supply there exists no absolute standard of fitness ; thus we 
are necessarily shut up to comparison. Second, cities must 
get their water from natural terrestrial sources (not from 
ideal or supernal ones) ; now when a careful search for good 
water is prosecuted by a large number of communities, es- 
pecially by those possessing well-ordered, healthy, intelli- 
gent and opulent populations, it may be fairly assumed that 12 
APPENDIX TO CITY DOCUMENT NO. 20. 
some among them will discover superior sources of supply. 
So that if the Providence water were now, or ever had been, 
in the inferior condition some persons have imagined, it 
■would not be able to take the high position among those of 
American cities, that it properly secures in the tables here- 
with presented. 
To the conclusions already stated, I wish to add this quali- 
fication. So far as any pollution of our water supply is 
known to be in progress now or at any future time, it ought 
to be arrested. While notwithstanding some differences of 
opinion, it is generally admitted that even sewage in mod- 
erate quantities is often oxidized and rendered harmless in 
flowing streams, it is also universally accepted that it is not 
wise nor right to allow such contamination to go on under 
cover of a reliance upon the unremitting purifying pro- 
cesses of nature. 
Again, in matters of health we ought not to be satisfied 
with a fair position or even a good one ; a city like Provi- 
dence ought to demand the very best. I believe, therefore, 
that unceasing efforts ought to be made to preserve the Paw- 
tuxet water supply free from every sort and kind of impur- 
ity that may be liable to get into it. 
Respectfully submitted, 
JOHN HOWARD APPLETON. 
Brown University, 
Providence, September, 1883.