HOBOKEN, N.J., Sept. 27 — Scientists from Stevens Institute of Technology will meet with Bangladeshi government officials Tuesday, Sept. 28, in Dhaka to demonstrate a new, low-cost filtration system that removes arsenic from drinking water. Arsenic poisoning from drinking water has become a crisis in the country, affecting as many as 70 million people by some estimates.

In Bangladesh, naturally occurring arsenic leaches into aquifers in high concentrations, threatening the health of millions who drink well water. In the last 25 years approximately five million hand-pumped tube wells have been drilled throughout the region. As many as three million of these wells contain high arsenic concentrations, causing arsenic poisoning to reach potentially epidemic proportions. Arsenic, a known carcinogen, causes cancer and other life-threatening diseases when ingested in high concentrations over time.

Stevens developed the low-cost arsenic water treatment technology through its Center for Environmental Engineering. The center also developed the Stevens Direct Coprecipitation Filtration process, successfully used in the United States for the removal of arsenic from contaminated groundwater and surface water since 1997.

Drs. George P. Korfiatis and Xiaoguang Meng of Stevens’ Center for Environmental Engineering have taken their existing large-scale technology to a smaller scale for use in Bangladesh, where large-scale water treatment processes are not an option. About 70 percent of the country’s 126 million people are small-scale farmers who grow crops on the world’s largest delta landscape. The individual wells that contain arsenic are spread across the countryside.

On Tuesday, Korfiatis and Meng will demonstrate their simple and inexpensive family-size filter for the removal of arsenic in tube well water. Tests they conducted this year in Bangladesh have demonstrated that arsenic concentration can be reduced from about 600 micrograms per liter to less than 50 by the Stevens filtration process.

To produce clean drinking water, a family would collect tube well water in a bucket and add a tablet containing ferric chemicals to the water. After mixing, the water is transferred to another bucket with sand-based filter material in the bottom of it. The water that comes out of that bucket’s bottom spout is safe for drinking.

Korfiatis and Meng developed and patented both the bucket filtration system and the chemical tablets for it. The cost for the tablets is less than $2 per family for a year’s supply.

"No electricity is required, and for most people learning the process will be quite easy," said Korfiatis, director of Stevens’ Center for Environmental Engineering.

The scientists have proposed a three-phase plan to bring their invention to the Bangladeshi people who need it so desperately. Earlier this year they accomplished the first phase, demonstrating and evaluating the process with selected families in Bangladesh. Next they plan to run a pilot family filtration program with about 1,000 families participating. That phase will also involve Stevens graduate students. The final phase would implement a nationwide filtration program with the cooperation of the Bangladeshi government. The Stevens scientists would simply give their patented technology to the country for its use.

Speaking to Bangladeshi government officials Tuesday in Dhaka will be Stevens’ president, Dr. Harold Raveche, as well as Korfiatis and Meng. They are expected to address Speaker of Parliament Humayun Rasheed Choudhury, State Minister of Planning Muhiuddin Kahn Alamgir and other high-level Bangladeshi officials and members of the press. The presentation will take place at the Sonargaon Pan Pacific Hotel.

Note: Please see the following news feature for more in-depth background on the arsenic crisis and Stevens’ overall role.

Engineers at Stevens provide solutions to a global crisis

Arsenic in drinking water affects millions—

Environmental catastrophes loom large in any overview of the 20^th century. Chernobyl, the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, and the industrial mercury poisoning in Japan come to mind immediately. Yet one specter in this century’s final years is fast overshadowing them all, and it is occurring in many parts of the world right now.

It is arsenic poisoning, caused primarily by drinking water that is tainted with arsenic levels high enough to cause cancer and other deadly diseases. The potential human toll from this crisis may surpass the century’s other major environmental disasters combined. But there is hope on the horizon.

Today, the Center for Environmental Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology is working to create real-world solutions for removing arsenic from drinking water. Scientists at Stevens have created the technology for large-scale systems that can be used to treat the drinking water for millions in developed countries where water treatment plants are the norm. And recently, they have also made it possible to treat water for millions of people in Bangladesh through small-scale systems that individual families can use to clean water at their local water wells. The overall potential of this technology for alleviating human suffering is immense.

The crisis

High arsenic content in drinking water threatens the health of an incalculable number of people worldwide. In the last five years, it has put the health of as many as 70 million people in Bangladesh at risk, by some estimates. And while the crisis in Bangladesh has recently captured world attention, untold millions in other countries, including the United States, are also at risk through that most basic of life’s necessities, water.

Several factors make arsenic poisoning one of the world’s most intractable and insidious problems. The arsenic responsible for the Bangladesh crisis, for example, comes from geological sources. The naturally occurring arsenic leaches from the soil into the aquifers tapped for drinking water.

Ironically, the drinking water crisis in Bangladesh is the result of a safe-water program. For about the last 25 years, the Bangladeshi government and UNICEF have successfully guided villagers away from drinking surface water, the source of cholera and other life-threatening diseases, and helped them to instead sink pipes into underground aquifers for clean water. Such tube wells in Bangladesh now number about 5 million, approximately 3 million of which may be contaminated with arsenic. Unfortunately, the region’s high levels of naturally occurring arsenic went undiscovered until this decade. So far, action to address the problem, which includes digging deeper wells, has been slow and arduous.

Meanwhile this year, the United States is taking a hard look at levels of arsenic in its own drinking water. In March, the National Research Council issued a report that called for the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a stricter standard for allowable levels of arsenic in the nation’s drinking water.

According to the NRC report, the latest data indicate that the EPA’s current maximum allowable amount of 50 micrograms of arsenic per liter of water, a standard developed decades ago, is potentially unsafe. Now Congress has required the EPA to propose a new maximum allowable amount by January 2000, and to finalize the new standard by 2001. The expected change will have a major impact on the nation’s water treatment plants and individual water wells throughout the country. Last spring, the American Water Works Association, which represents the water treatment industry, endorsed the NRC’s recommendations. In a news release it said, "AWWA supports lowering the MCL of arsenic in drinking water to ensure public health."

Around the world, excessive arsenic in ground water is reportedly a problem in more than a dozen countries, including Mongolia, Taiwan, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Poland. The full extent of the problem worldwide, however, is as yet unknown.

An insidious health risk

The National Research Council’s committee examined clinical studies reported in medical literature and epidemiological data from several international studies, including Taiwan, Argentina and Chile. These studies showed that in addition to causing skin, bladder and lung cancer, consuming arsenic in drinking water can cause skin lesions, anemia, nerve damage and circulatory problems, according to a NRC news release issued about the findings in the report.

The effects of arsenic poisoning are cumulative, so those individuals who are ingesting too much in drinking water may not show symptoms such as skin lesions for years. Arsenic is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract into the blood, the NRC noted. It also said that the mechanisms through which arsenic causes cancer are not well understood; however, it noted that data suggest that arsenic may cause chromosomal abnormalities that lead to cancer.

Sensitivity to arsenic’s effects, including carcinogenic effects, seem to vary with individuals and appear to be influenced by factors such as nutrition and genetic susceptibility, according to the council’s report.

Medical experts agree that more research is needed to fully understand the health risks of overexposure to arsenic. However, in Bangladesh, where the problem has become the most dramatic, people are suffering from the skin lesions and tumors that arsenic causes. Many there have died already, and still more have endured amputations and other drastic procedures to ward off imminent death, as illustrated in the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes story on arsenic poisoning that aired in June 1999.

Solutions for Bangladesh

Individual hand-pumped tube wells are the primary source of water for most people in Bangladesh. Large-scale water treatment plants are not an option for most of the country’s 126 million people. About 70 percent are small-scale farmers who grow crops on the world’s largest delta landscape. Consequently, workable solutions for Bangladesh must be on a local, family-size scale.

In response to the situation, Drs. Xiaoguang Meng and George P. Korfiatis of the Center for Environmental Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a simple and inexpensive family-size filter for the removal of arsenic in tube well water. Tests conducted this year in Bangladesh have demonstrated that arsenic concentration can be reduced from about 600 micrograms per liter to less than 50 by the Stevens filtration process.

To produce clean drinking water, a family would collect tube well water in a bucket and add a tablet containing ferric chemicals to the water. After mixing, the water is transferred to another bucket with sand-based filter material in the bottom of it. The water that comes out of that bucket’s bottom spout is safe for drinking. The residuals left in the bottom of the bucket can be safely recycled by mixing them with concrete or asphalt for construction projects.

By taking its existing large-scale technologies to a much smaller scale, Stevens developed and patented both the bucket filtration system and the chemical tablets for it. The cost for the tablets is less than $2 per family for a year’s supply.

"No electricity is required, and for most people learning the process will be quite easy," said Dr. Korfiatis.

Drs. Meng and Korfiatis have proposed a three-phase plan to bring their invention to the Bangladeshi people who need it so desperately. Earlier this year they accomplished the first phase, demonstrating and evaluating the process with selected families in Bangladesh. Next they plan to run a pilot family filtration program with about 1,000 families participating. That phase will also involve Stevens graduate students. The final phase would implement a nationwide filtration program with the cooperation of the Bangladeshi government. The Stevens scientists would simply give their patented technology to the country for its use.

Beyond Bangladesh

Stevens Institute of Technology also has developed the Stevens Direct Coprecipitation Filtration process, successfully used in the United States for the removal of arsenic from contaminated groundwater and surface water since 1997. The DCF units can be installed in public water treatment plants as well as in groundwater remediation projects.

With changes in acceptable arsenic levels soon to be proposed by the EPA, applications for this larger-scale technology are likely to expand considerably in the 21^st century.

According to a 1997 study commissioned by the American Water Works Association, up to 2,200 of the 56,000 U.S. water supply systems would be affected if the allowable level of arsenic were lowered from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb. Utility costs for this could reach $1 billion per year.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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