Blog #11: Research and such.

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Blog #11

I’ll talk mostly about my research here. Well, we (we being myself and my advisors and a PhD student at USF who is very involved with Madagascar for his research) decided that it would be worthwhile to investigate the possibility of lead leaching significantly into the water drawn from Pitcher pumps. Lead can pose a serious problem for everyone, and is implicated in illnesses including neurological development issues, cardiovascular diseases, impaired renal function, hypertension, reproductive effects, and suspected carcinogenicity (WHO 2011^a,b). The risk is especially urgent for children under 5. Even the most stringent regulations to date have been recently linked to significant health impacts (WHO 2011^b).

These particular pumps are pretty simple suction pumps that are hammered into the ground after a sort of sludging method is used to remove the first few meters of sandy soil. It has been used to supply household level water for over 50 years in Madagascar with no subsidies. There are over 50 independent pump manufacturers just in the Tamatave area. This is really impressive for a self-supply market, and is the subject of some extensive research done by Mike MacCarthy at USF.

Anyway, Meghan Wahlstrom and I started our research in December to see what the water quality was like when varied across several factors: Meghan looked at microbial quality; I looked at quality with respect to heavy metals (lead).

Lead can leach from the solder and the well-screen, which contain different percentages of lead in the alloys. We still have the same problem in the US, but centralized water providers to prevent high lead levels by controlling water characteristics (Triantafyllido & Edwards 2012). The other place lead comes from is the check valves in the pump head, which is pure (more or less) lead harvested from old car batteries.

To keep things brief, I’ll say that lead leaching is significant in the pumps. We’d like to be able to suggest affordable ways for people to mitigate this threat. One proposed solution, for example, is to flush a certain amount of water from the pump before drawing for consumption. Another potential solution is to replace the lead check valves in the pump head with iron.

Mike and Meghan determining well depth with a local manufacturer and USF's research assistant Onnie.

Me looking at water quality with an instrument that totally looks like Ghostbusters.

Leaded components for the well screen.

Leaded components for the check valves. Molten lead is cooling in an indention in the sand to the left.

Substitute for the lead valve weights is iron.

The portable instrument that lets me see lead content using Anodic Stripping Voltammetry.

Actually running a sample.

Meghan getting her "just desserts" after a day of research. I credit PCV Sam Irwin with the terrible pun.

At this point, I’ve completed 2 trips to the east coast for data collection. I will make another trip in July for a final round of data collection, and to begin sharing pertinent results with stakeholders in whatever ways are feasible for such a short time. I think that part of the requirements for the MI program is to get our final thesis translated into the language of the host country for PC service. That’s one way to further share results. Anyway, that’s where things stand at the moment with research. It has been going well and seems to be a worthwhile project.

I should also note here that in between my 2 research trips a lot happened, one of which being that I was able to go home and see friends and family for the first time in a year and a half for Christmas. That was pretty great, and now I’m counting down from like 4 months before I’ll see people again.

Triantafyllido, S. & Edwards, M. (2012). Lead (Pb) in tap water and blood: Implications for lead exposure in the United States. Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology. 42, 1297-1352

World Health Organization (WHO), (2011)^a. Drinking water quality guidelines, 3rd ed. Geneva: World Health Organization.

World Health Organization (WHO), (2011)^b. Lead in drinking-water: Background document for development of Guidelines for drinking-water quality Rev/1. Geneva: World Health Organization.