University ENGINEERING FOR PUBLIC HEALTH
Partnership brings safer drinking water to Madagascar USF COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Professor James Mihelcic was visiting Tamatave on the east coast of Madagascar to see the work some of his former graduate students were doing on water sanitation and hygiene. That’s where he stumbled upon local artisans building hand pumps used to access shallow groundwater. “Right in front of us, one of these artisans melted down old lead car batteries over a charcoal fire,” he says. “He poured some molten lead into a small depression in the ground he’d made from a soda pop top. Then, bingo. He had a piece for the two check valves you find in a suction pump.”
Troubled Waters Just watching the demonstration was enough to tell Mihelcic and his colleagues that lead in the drinking water probably exceeded the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended amounts, but they tested samples anyway. Some of them came back at 100 micrograms per liter, 10 times what the WHO says is acceptable. Lead in drinking water is neither a new problem nor one unique to developing countries like Madagascar. Consider the public health crises surrounding drinking
water in places such as Flint, Mich., Newark, N.J., and Jackson, Miss. Lead is a toxic chemical pervasive in the environment. How long and how significant one’s exposure determine the severity of the health problems it causes, but overall lead exposure can damage the brain, kidneys and nervous system and slow physical and intellectual development in children.
Pumping Iron With the help of funding from a variety of sources, including Water Charities, Pure Earth, a USF Strategic Investment Pool award and his own personal savings, Mihelcic and his team developed a training program for local manufacturers of hand pumps that would teach them how to replace lead components with locally manufactured iron ones. The team consists of Assistant Professor Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, PhD ’16, from USF’s College of Public Health, Professor Jeffrey Cunningham and Assistant Professor Katherine Alfredo from the College of Engineering, and some dedicated graduate students. They’re partnering with Ranontsika, a Malagasy non-governmental organization whose aim is to improve public health by promoting access to high-quality drinking water. Local health clinics are also involved in testing the blood levels of children in the community and educating their parents about the health problems associated with lead exposure. “After our intervention of retrofitting hand pumps with iron valve components, lead water concentrations were
Above: An inside look at the pump.
Photos: LUKE BARRETT
Right: The project did a preliminary pump adaption at this woman’s house. Here, she is using the pump after adaption.
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UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
