How can i test for mercury and other pollutants in the soil or water?

Question

How can i test for mercury and other pollutants in the soil or water?

Answer 1

Unless you are a chemist, your best bet is to take the samples to a lab.  Costs money though.  Not cheap.

Since you ask, I doubt that you have the equipment and facilities to perform the tests yourself.  There are field methods (colorometric, the old fashioned way of field analysis) for getting semi-quantitative measurements of some metal contents, but mercury is not a simple one, as I recall.  there are also portable xrf (xray fluorescence) units that can give decent results in the field if you have appropriate standards.  These units are expensive, of course.

There are other portable detection systems one can use, but for accuracy and precision, and cost minimization, your best bet is taking the sample to the lab.  

Answer 2

You may be able to buy a water testing kit from a home supply store like Home Depot or Lowe's or a garden store. But I am not sure if they test for mercury.

I know you can buy things like that from environmental science suppliers.

I'd be willing to bet there's some in there. I just did a research paper on Hg pollution in the US. Its ridiculous.