So I saw the headline to this article

Purple Substance In Allegheny River Harmless, Officials Say and I have to admit I chuckled because I knew exactly where the article was headed. No, I don't work out there in Pittsburgh but I do know that one does not dump even a little Potassium Permanganate into a sewer, or, into a stream the public might see. This is some seriously purple stuff:

 and we hesitate to use it to treat water, although sometimes it is the only thing that will oxidize out the geosmin. I know, too technical. Geosmin is not harmful, but it smells like a wet paper bag, or a musty basement, so people complain if it gets into the drinking water. And, funny enough, only a few people complain because only certain people can smell it. I happen to be one of those people, lucky me. It takes too much Chlorine and Carbon to neutralize the geosmin so if we have a nasty outbreak (this is cause by algae), we add Permanganate. This results in an additional set of tests every hour to ensure we don't turn the drinking water purple! It does not take much.

Okay, that's my blog for the day...