Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist
14 July 2002
Filed under:Positive uses of technology at11:31 am

The story of Bangladesh’s poisoned wells is a long sad one, but it looks as if at last there may be a happy ending. Aid agencies found that Bangladeshis didn’t have easy access to clean drinking water, so they helped them to drill wells. Unfortunately, they later found that many of these wells were polluted by arsenic and slowly poisoned the people drinking from them. A variety of alternatives have been sought, but at last I read that a Bangladeshi professor has invented a simple, inexpensive (£3/$5) water filter that should extract arsenic, lead and iron from drinking water. The UN is organizing a campaign to put the filter in all of the wells in the country.

4 Comments

  1. i want to know more

    Comment by mamun — 29 March 2004 @ 10:49 am

  2. I want to know more too. Eg. How many that filters used in Bangaladesh now? What’s the elements of it? Thank you!

    Comment by Jane — 5 April 2004 @ 1:44 pm

  3. I wish I could help – I suggest you look at the original BBC article and use a search engine to find out more about it Professor Fakhrul Islam. I found a little more info here for example:
    http://www.ideorg.org/html/gallery/arsenic.html

    Comment by David Brake — 5 April 2004 @ 8:49 pm

  4. I think the best low cost filter is sono filter developed by Dr. Abul Barkat & others. He has tons of publications in professional journals and tested by many organizations. Before we talk about filters for drinking water we should look at the data.

    If you call true innovation; Sono Filter is one.

    Comment by md azam — 21 April 2004 @ 10:49 pm

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