Namma Neeru

So finally, here is the edited video that I took forever to upload! Any feedback and comments are most welcome!

Namma Neeru (Our Water) from Aajwanthi on Vimeo.

A fluoride mitigation course taught by a fine teacher

I could possibly kill myself for not having found this earlier. Arghyam's India water portal has a comprehensive fluoride mitigation multimedia kit where a sweet old man comes and tells you about the basics of fluoride, fluorosis, solutions and projects are dealing with this. Perfect to show in the rural context or for beginners. What is even better is that it is available in Kannada! It would have been ideal for me to show the kids this. I will take it to them the next time I visit to say hi!

http://www.indiawaterportal.org/node/736#

A lesson on fluoride in groundwater

The villagers responding to the facilitator's questions

The amount of fluoride some food items contain is shown in this chart

Them as teachers

Them as teachers

Aim: To empower the students and make them share the knowledge they have gained

Closing the loop

Trying to make them retain more of what they have learnt

I went to talk to Arzu about my project a few weeks ago and she told me about this three tyre system. A Political Visionary (One who is in charge of the larger politics and functioning- could be in the NGO or funders in this case), a Conceptual visionary (One who conceptualises the vision which could be me, in this case) and a Practical visionary (which was also me because I was conducting all the workshops and making it happen). Instead, she said, why don’t you empower the children to be practical visionaries? I thought this was a great idea because I saw for myself that I learnt most when I had to teach and work with these kids. This would just empower them some more and make them feel confident about what they have learnt and share it with their schoolmates too. So, I told the 9^th standard students to prepare an afternoon session for the 8^th standard kids. I told them to write down what they would ask them or say to them. Beginning from the basics of what fluoride is, what it is present in and what its harmful effects were and what they needed to do about it. I gave them all the visual aid I had and told them that I was going to be a student and they should take the class and not ask me what to do. We set up chairs outside and they went out to start their lesson. Boy, were they awesome! Better than me any day! They make the little ones jump up with joy and test their respective village’s water that they were carrying in their bottles and stamped them as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ water. The standard 8 kids were so excited that they wanted to test their school rainwater for fluoride and found that it had zero fluoride. They loved it. They also told them about rainwater and how to maintain a rainwater tank by cleaning the top of the roof up 10 minutes before they feel it is going to rain. They told them that they have to help each other maintain the tank that is going to provide them with fluoride free water.

Some of them gave up after some time and went back to class while a few stayed back to finish the lesson. This made me figure how many of them understood what I was talking about! I was surprised to find out that even though they were all in the same campus and the 8^th std. Kids have been watching what I do with the 9^th, they had no idea about what it was all about. Fluoride and rainwater was as new to them as when I started off with standard 9. It was great that they were able to share what they had learnt, though they told me at the end that they were a much better class. ‘These 8^th standard kids are still small and irresponsible” they said!

Visiting a scientist

I am waiting to get access to some fluoride testing kits so that I can visit C.K Pura again. I have been trying to find the chemicals needed for that, but in vain. Am still contacting people who might have them. I think I might just have found one!

Meanwhile, Mr.Vishwanath calmed me down by suggesting that I visit Professor Kesava Rao at IISc. He teaches in the Chemical Engineering department and works with treatment of drinking water, focusing on de-fluoridation. He was very kind and agreed to meet me right away. I spoke to him about what I was doing and asked him a few questions on effects of fluoride, de-fluoridation techniques and kits and he gave me a tour of his lab to look at projects that his students and himself have been working on.

Professor Kesava Rao

The first one was an M.E students thesis where he has built a device using a simple lunch box and a photo diode. A set of reagents are used to calibrate the resistance it offers which is then plotted on a graph to find out how much fluoride the sample contains. It is work in progress but it works! Something like this is easy to build as well as cost effective. Each box costs about Rs.250 (of course the chemicals and the gadgets apart) but would still work out lesser than testing the sample in a lab where they charge 1500-2000 rupees is what I was told. Here is a video of the professor explaining it to me.

Solar Still

This is another neat device that I was shown. It is a low-tech way of distilling water, powered by the heat of the sun. In a solar still, impure water is contained outside the collector, where it is evaporated by sunlight shining through the glass. The pure water vapor (and any other included volatile solvent) condenses on the cool inside surface and drips down off of the weighted low point, where it is collected in a bottle and removed. It distils and most impurities, I was told, including arsenic and fluorine. Volatile impurities also escape while it is heated up by the sun. It costs around Rs.850 to make a 0.5 sq ft/mt solar still. It has its advantages and disadvantages of course. The sun needs to be bright and out for this to work. It could also, at times be used to harvest rainwater and thus could even be a good idea to have in these villages since it requires low maintenance and cost. Here is a short clip of the one set up in the department terrace. They are soon going to take it to a fluoride affected area to test it and get some field data.

The last method was using activated Alumina (Aluminium Oxide)

The water is passed through a tube filled with activated alumina which absorbs the fluoride in the water to give out pure water. This powder though, gets saturated after a while and needs to be desaturated with some chemicals (which in turn become highly acidic). Thus it requires quite a bit of monitoring and maintenance once in a while. They are trying to reduce the costs so that this can be implemented. The water is stored in a plastic drum as seen in the first image and flows through the pipe, through the activated alumina (the powder in the second image) and comes out through the nozzle.

Sorry for the bad image quality! I wasn't aware that one could take videos inside the lab! Next time I'll make sure I take a better camera, these were shot on my cell phone.

This is a small part of a chart they have put up outside their lab on fluoride and flurosis and various methods of distillation that they are working on.