Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
One of the joys of writing for this blog is that I can promote good ideas. Here’s one I just came across, thanks to a commenter on another post of mine. The idea is solar disinfection of water, or SODIS. Follow the link, lots of good info.
Figure 1. The SODIS method in graphical form.
The idea is bozo simple. Put water into a clear plastic bottle. Shake it up well to oxygenate it. Put it out in the sun. Six hours in the sun and the oxygen plus the solar UV kills diarrhea.
I mean, how great is that? Now that’s solar tech I can get behind 100% … plus it uses up old water bottles. And doesn’t require any chemicals. Brilliant. Get the word out. Kids’ lives are at stake.
w.
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Greens will pan this whole idea because it will save lives (they’ll have some other reason for it, rather than admit the truth). Their goal is to do something about what they consider a surplus population of six billion. So, they won’t be interested in this. Nothing to see, move along.
Dan J says:
May 16, 2011 at 2:24 pm
No, Ray said that plastic might block UV rays, but I doubt that very much.
w.
[edited to add] I see DJ Hawkins beat me to it …
Willis, you sure do generate interesting discussions.
Some stray thoughts this discussion has sparked in my head:
Plastic bottles have gotten much thinner. Glass can’t get so thin. I’ll bet the thinness of plastic allows more UV through.
(Someone mentioned plastic bottles have been made more “biodegradable.” I wonder if “biodegradable” was some Mad Ave way of selling thinner bottles, and the word “biodregradable” is just a long way of saying “thin.”) (Very cynical of me, I know.)
No one has mentioned how valuable a cheap microscope and a classroom would be, in rural Africa.
As a small boy I used to drink water from places I shouldn’t have. I simply didn’t see any reason not to. Then I was told there were “germs” in the water, but remained slightly dubious, for elders also attempted to scare me into behaving by warning me that bogey men would get me if I misbehaved, and I knew bogey men were fictitious. It was only when I looked through a microscope and saw the “wigglers” in the water that I dropped my boyish skepticism, and became a believer.
Education allows people to make the right choices on their own. I imagine an African boy, seeing “wigglers” through a microscope for the first time, would be every bit as excited and awed as I was. It was a revelation, and changed my behavior.
Of course, a microscope is scientific, and seen-observations are reletively objective. When education moves into subjects involving morality, (IE: Liberal Arts,) it becomes more subjective, and prone to hypocrisy: In French Africa the French spent a century trying to “educate” African woman to wear tops, despite the heat. Just when the African women began to act educated, French women decided that going topless on the beach was the fashion, and if you didn’t do it you were a prude, and were uneducated. African women must have rolled their eyes.
Climate Science seems to me, at times, a bit like Social Science, and thus not truely a science, but more like “Liberal Arts.”
A posting like this, Willis, brings us back down to earth, and back to simple, basic science.
Hotrod(LarryL) gives transmission of UV through plastics, glass. Thank you, I was about to do similar.
Some have wrongly interpreted a previous post of mine. I’m all in favour of the idea as a wonderful low cost “no regrets” approach, but it does have to be scientifically supportable. The drop-off of intensity of UV approximately follows the Beer-Lambert law (for simple geometry). The water itself is also an absorber, so the thinner and the cleaner, the better.
Having studied the effect of the introduction of tea to Europe, I arrive at the same conclusion as Peter Haydon in his book “An Inebriated History of Britain”. One review starts …
“In 361 AD the Emperor Julian described the Teutonic northern European races as ‘sons of malt’. Big drinkers they all were, but none so much as the English. As this book shows, the English have spent much of the last 2000 years semi-permanently drunk”.
That includes children. Sun-cleaned water sounds a better way.
Thanks all above for the info on UV transparency. I had discounted this idea earlier on, but in this case I’m very happy to be proven wrong.
Caleb http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/15/sodis-roolz/#comment-661953 No one has mentioned how valuable a cheap microscope and a classroom would be, in rural Africa.
Good comment.
In Australia in the 70s microscopes were provided and local health workers in very remote areas were able to diagnose common diseases. And treat locally. Using a categorical box of medicines, similar to that provided by the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS). http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/About-Us/Our-History/ Source: http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/
We attempted the same, providing the same health workers 20 years later with proper instruments. But were called to task with a Territorial Ministerial that accused us of fraudulent use of training funds.
Due to policies couhed as ‘self determination’ etc there was 20 years lost of primary and secondary education to these people, the children and grandchildren of these health workers. And now only city health workers (professionals) and career academics seem to hold the key for the regional/remote peoples. Wrong as it may seem.
End of story.
Doug Jones
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/15/sodis-roolz/#comment-661690
And one has to ask why the testing and results of local water sources is not available more publicly. And why testing parameters have changed.
Apologies (Jessie)
Due to policies couhed as ‘self determination’
Should be ‘couched’.
aka As express something in the language of a specific lifestyle.
As in the lack of science utilised in premising, developing AND evaluating the policies, such as ‘self determination’ for eg.
There is no reason to worry about BPA from the plastic. This is another alarmist scam originating from the BS section of a Master’s Thesis discussion section in which the student was BS’ing about why his results were what they were. Real world research has not found there to be a problem with BPA. This is another political/environmentalist boondoggle-screw-up, just like so many other issues.
Also, they assume that the users of this strategy will apply it properly. Leave the water-filled bottles on the solar heater for several days and algae will grow quite nicely, which may not be all that nutritious or tasty.
Years ago a do-gooder group tried to introduce formula bottle-feeding to Africa. They left the mothers with a supply of bottles and formula. The results were disastrous.
First, bottle-feeding costs more than 4 times the cost of the food needed for breast-feeding, so the women could not afford more formula, that is if they knew to do so.
Second, when the do-gooders returned a year later they found babies dying of malnutrition. They were being bottle-fed but the bottle contents were just water. The women thought that the nipples of the bottles had magical properties and did not know that the formula was the source of nutrition for the babies.
The law of unintended consequences proven once again. In this case, it derives from ignorance of the do-gooders, not understanding or knowing the women very well
Willis:
If you wouldn’t mind I would like to correspond with you regarding this water purification issue.
Would one of the moderators send Willis my email address?
Larry
The Moringa tree can do the trick in 0ne hour…. and with a lots of other benefits.
http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa
Clarification through flocculation helps treat water, but in and of itself does not remove biological hazards although it “might” mechanically reduce the total counts the water although clear is still not necessarily safe to drink.
It should be thought of as and adjunct pre-treatment to raw turbid water to help filtration systems remove the gross contamination, but I can see no mention that the flocculation treatment has any bactericidal action in this study, let alone viruses and other undesirable critters that cause disease.
http://www.deutsch-aethiopischer-verein.de/Gate_Moringa.pdf
This second study does show that it has some bactericidal properties but unlike broad spectrum sterilization by heat, UV, Ozone or Chlorine and Iodine, I think it is only a partial solution. It is also not clear if the flocculation process also accomplishes the bactericidal action or if it has to be carried out as a second step. Last in an environment where the country side is stripped of burnable trees to provide firewood it would be difficult to cultivate the tree as a crop unless you had significant local support for the project, where SODIS can be carried out by a single individual independent of the community attitude toward it.
http://www.wef.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=5813
I personally prefer a more broad spectrum solution like SODIS than a chemical treatment process that requires the locals to perform a process like flocculation which involves preparation of the seeds and the flocculation agent, then proper mixing and settling of the mixture.
Larry