IX.
THE CHEMIST IN THE WATER RESOURCES LABORATORY MARGARET D. FOSTER
Margaret D. Foster rec&ved the degree of A.B. in 1918 from Illinois College, Jacksontille, Illinois. In June of 1918 she began work in the Water Resources Laboratory of the Geologicel Survey of the United States Department of the Interior, Washington,D. C., and has been there ever since. She received the degree of M S . in 1923 from George Washington University and the degree of Ph.D. in 1936 from American University. Miss Foster has published articles on methods for the determination of borate, calcium, fluoride, manganese, and sulfate, on the composition of surface waters, and spring waters, and has contributed analyses and discussion of chemical pwllity to Geological Sumey and State reports on ground water conditions in many parts of the United States.
and each chemist usually does all the work on a given project. There may be ten analyses made for a project or perhaps several hundred. In this way the chemist becomes familiar with the types of water in the area and the relationships that may exist between them. For example, for several years the writer made all the analyses of the ground water work done in Texas by the Geological Survey. The geologists doing the field work made simple field t e s t s s u c h as chloride, sulfate, and barduess--on samples from most of the wells in an area, or they sent the samples to Washington and the tests were made in the laboratory. When all these tests for the area under study had been made, one of the geologists on the Texas project who was in the office collaborated in study of the results of the tests in relation to the ++++++ depth and location of the wells, the water-bearing forThe writer's work in the Water Resources Labora- mation, and so forth. Representative wells were then tory of the United States Geological Survey may be selected to be sampled for more complete analysis. divided into three phases-water analysis, geochemical These analyses, with the field tests, give a fairly cominterpretation of water analyses, and the modification plete picture of the ground waters of the area. From these data the geochemical relations between the water of old or development of new methods of analysis. The analytical work, which is the fundamental pur- and the geology of the area are studied-that is, a geopose of the laboratory, includes the routine precipita- chemical interpretation of the water is attempted. As an example, the Houston-Galveston study may be tion, filtration, evaporation, weighing, and titration involved in the determination of the mineral matter dis- cited. Several years ago the field geologist made solved in natural waters-total solids, silica, iron, cal- several hundred field determinations of chloride, sulcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium, carbonate, fate, and hardness in waters of the Houston-Galveston bicarbonate, sulfate, chloride, and nitrate, and occasion- area and over a hundred analyses were made in the ally other constituents-fluoride, aluminum, zinc, bo- laboratory in Washington. These analyses and field rate, hydrogen sulfide, and so forth. This work is not, tests' furnished the basis for a study of the relationship however, as routine and monotonous as it may appear between the ground waters and the age and degree of to be on the surface, because of the great variety of weathering of the formations, the extent of salt water water types, and because the work is done by projects, encroachment from the gulf, contamination by salt
water assodated with salt domes and other structuresin which oil and gas deposits occur, and the movement of the water in the formations. This involves not only critical examination and comparison of the analyses but also considerable study of geologic conditions, processes of weathering, hydrologic principles, and other factors that have a bearing on the subject. The third phase of the work involves the modification of old methods of analysis or the development of new methods. For example, when the importance of fluoride in drinking water became apparent several years ago the method used for the determination of fluoride by several investigators was the same as that used for its determination in phosphate rock. It was necessary to determine whether any of the constituents usually found in water affected the results. It was found that the method was not adapted to the determination of the small quantities of fluoride found in water and that the sulfate in water affected the accuracy of the results. Several other methods were then studied. During the course of this work i t appeared that the effect of very small amounts of fluoride on the color of ferric thiocyanate could be measured quantitatively and this means of determining fluoride in water was developed. The amount of time devoted to any one phase of the work varies greatly from time to time. Days, weeks, even months may be spent studying a method-running through the procedure on known samples, devising modifications, testing the results obtained by these modifications, until a satisfactory procedure is evolved or the method is discarded as hopeless; for several months the whole time may be spent making analyses or studying
the results of analyses and writing; or again, several projects may be carried along almost simultaneously as the circumstances require. [In describing the training and personal characteristics required in such work as she has described, Miss Foster has included some important points not hitherto mentioned in this series of articles. ] Training.-It is essential that the prospective chemist be well grounded in inorganic, quantitative, and physical chemistry; it is not so essential, in the work in this laboratory, that he know so much organic chemistry. With this basic training he can easily be trained in the special methods in use here. Most of the chemists who are in the laboratory now came with only a bachelor's degree. Some have since taken additional work a t the various universities in the city a t night, earning their master's and doctor's degrees in this way. Those who come in with this higher training must undergo the same specialized training in the methods we use as those who have not had as extensive training. As for personal characteristics, we like people in the laboratory who have a sense of fairness and cooperation, who are good-natured and even-tempered, neat, quick, and efficient and who are interested in their work and not in the pay, in other words-with a scientific viewpoint and not a laborer's viewpoint. We do not want people who think themselves and what they are doing should take precedence over everyone and everything else, who demand an unfair amount of service from the helpers, who do not do their share of the general workas the making of new solutions-and who talk too much and disturb others.
