The Pun Pun Farm community in northern Thailand is featured in the web documentary program tngnt (”tangent”). Pun Pun Farm is one of Aqueous Solutions’ primary field sites, where various techniques for sustainable and self-reliant drinking water purification are under development and display. Watch the trailer above, or directly from the tngnt website. The full-length program will be available soon!
The U.S. EPA announced Thursday July 24th that it will act to ban the pesticide carbofuran from food in the United States before next year’s growing season. The pesticide is known to cause nausea, dizziness, confusion, and, at high exposures, respiratory paralysis and death. The pesticide has also killed millions of birds and other wildlife. Carbofuran is not widely used in the US, but farmers in developing countries such as Thailand and India often use it on bananas, coffee, corn, rice, sugar cane, and other crops, so the ban could have a significant impact worldwide.
“It’s one of the most widely used pesticides in the world,” said Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy. EPA’s James Gulliford said, “While there is little exposure today [to carbofuran], we don’t think there’s a need, a reason for any exposure.” The EPA had indicated earlier this year that the ban would only apply to domestically grown food, but the agency changed course Thursday, saying the ban would also apply to imports.
Aqueous Solutions is seeking the leadership of a dynamic individual who can move the brilliant innovations of our scientists and engineers into the global arena, transforming the lives of millions around the globe by helping communities to secure their access to safe drinking water in a sustainable and self-reliant manner.
Our organization is dedicated to the development and implementation of simple, robust, inexpensive, folk-technology systems to provide households and communities with safe drinking water in a sustainable and self-reliant manner. We currently have ongoing projects and collaborations serving communities in the US, Asia (Thailand and India), and Latin America (Nicaragua and Bolivia).
Our work has both laboratory and field aspects. With colleagues at major universities in the US and Thailand, our researchers are conducting experiments to address the principal scientific questions implied in the use of low-cost filtration media such as charcoals/biochars to remove hazardous synthetic chemicals such as pesticides from drinking water. In the field, our engineers are developing, deploying and monitoring prototype water treatment systems in situ. Read the rest of this entry »
Aqueous Solutions is seeking a research assistant to work with Aqueous staff at the North Carolina State University environmental engineering department.
Charcoal and biochar materials can be produced from renewable biomass feedstocks and agricultural and forestry waste materials by pyrolysis (heating in reduced oxygen conditions). These carbonized materials resemble activated carbon at the molecular scale. Activated carbon has been shown to be very effective for removing pesticides and other harmful organic contaminants from drinking water. Since charcoal and biochar materials are easily produced, inexpensive, and widely available in many countries around the world, their use as water filtration media may prove an effective option for providing safe drinking water to low income, especially rural communities throughout the developing world. Read the rest of this entry »
A personal anecdote from Aqueous Solutions’ director on the occasion of the first anniversary.
I’m hopelessly addicted to distance running. As addictions go, however, it’s not such a bad one. Most people who run, run for the benefits to the body. I run for the mind, as a kind of meditation. As I settle into the rhythm of the pace, my mind cartwheels away across the far reaches of the universe, and, as often as not, reels off the screenplay of one wild fantasy or another. I’ve had entire conversations with friends, family, romantic partners, US Presidents – to name only a few – during the course of a sixty-minute run. I’ve written deeply inspired philosophical treatises on a multitude of topics. I’ve planned trips to exotic locales in vivid detail. And I’ve hatched all manner of crazy schemes for activism, muckraking, and general good-natured chicanery.
Most of the time, when I finish the run, stretch, shower, and grab a bite to eat, my wild imaginings begin to seem a little outlandish, and I reckon I won’t really have that conversation with that person, at least not in the ostentatious way it unfolded in my head; I’ll probably put off writing that particular philosophical treatise – surely the world isn’t ready for it anyway. And all those crazy schemes? Well, to be honest, after more reasoned reflection they begin to seem, well, a little embarrassing and perhaps a bit ill conceived.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if I’ve hit on something that might just be the slightest bit legitimately brilliant. The idea for Aqueous Solutions (dorky name and all) came to me one evening in June 2007 while running on the fire trail that climbs steeply out of Claremont Canyon into the eucalyptus covered hills that make up the border of Berkeley and Oakland, California. I’d spent plenty of hours crisscrossing those rugged dirt tracks over the years of my tenure as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and they have provided the verdant backdrop for countless wild musings, those both acted upon and not. The run last June was a nostalgia-soaked homecoming, as I’d just returned from a ten-month stint in “experiential learning,” tramping around the US and Asia getting a big dose of hands-on education in “sustainability science.” Read the rest of this entry »
Aqueous Solutions has partnered with the North Carolina State University Chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Save the Children-Canada to develop and implement various techniques for potable water systems in the highlands of Bolivia in the villages of Alto Beniand Asanquiri.
The village of Asanquiri is a high Andean community in the Potosi region of Bolivia. The region is one of the poorest in Bolivia, where large portion of the population in the area does not have basic services such as water, electricity, sanitary services or telecommunications. Nutrition is often poor, and clothing is sometimes insufficient for the cold weather in the area.
Getting to the Alto Beni is an adventure in itself. The drive from the city of La Paz ascends a 14,000 ft pass on a windy and precarious road that drops down into a majestic sea of clouds making the bright green peaks look like islands in the sky. Eight hours and several passes later, one arrives in a lush tropical valley known as the Alto Beni. Since the 1960´s this area has provided hope for poor families fleeing the harsh conditions and unstable economy of the Altiplano, a high plane on the dry eastern side of the Andes.
A recent article in Grist Magazine linked pesticides in drinking water to lower sperm counts in Midwest states. Check it out.
“Surrounded by agriculture powerhouses Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois, Missouri sits at the southern edge of the heartland.
“Are the region’s titanic annual lashings of agrichemicals — synthetic and mined fertilizers, as well as poisons designed to kill bugs, weeds, and mold — leaching into drinking water and doing creepy things to the state’s citizens? And what about manure from the stunning concentration of concentrated-animal feedlot operations (CAFOs) that have sprung up in Iowa, et al, over the past 15 years? ”
A transcript with slides of Aqueous Solutions’ recent presentation to the Lindbergh Foundation Board of Directors is now online and available for download from the Resources page.
Polluters dump about 240 million pounds of toxins into our waterways each year, and the long-term effects on human health and the environment could be disastrous. Thirty five years after the Clean Water Act became law, ANP explores why our fish are changing sex and our water contains rocket fuel, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals.
Aqueous Solutions has partnered with the North Carolina State University Chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Save the Children-Canada to develop and implement various techniques for potable water systems in the highlands of Bolivia in the villages of Alto Beni and Asanquiri.