About four years ago, a group of researchers from IIT-Madras developed a simple kit to help people test whether their drinking water had traces of mercury, or similar toxic heavy transition metal ions like cadmium or lead. The water, when tested with this kit, takes on a colour if contaminated. Their work appeared in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.  While the kit was very useful, the researchers soon realised that they needed to go a step further and find a way to pu...

The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Calcutta has come up with a kit for easy and accurate detection of arsenic in potable water and its removal. The Arsenic Sensing and Arsenic Removal kit developed by IISER scientists will be able to detect and remove even 0.02mg arsenic in a litre of drinking water. The permissible limit of arsenic in groundwater is 0.01mg per litre, according to the World Health Organisation. In India, the permissible limit, though, is 0.05mg becaus...

Researchers at IIT-Kharagpur and University of Oxford have developed a low-cost technology to treat water contaminated with arsenic. In this new method, water is chemically treated by activating naturally available laterite that acts as an adsorbent to filter arsenic. The department of science & technology as well as the West Bengal public health engineering department and West Bengal arsenic task force have already accepted the technology. Arsenic contamination of ground water is a major he...

A concerted effort on demand management combined with new technology and innovations could reduce average water consumption per head by two-thirds over the next 50 years, a report by Ofwat has suggested. With climate change and a growing population likely to place ever greater strains on our vital water resources, the regulator is exploring the kind of things that could help to cut demand for water over the next 50 years - from fixing leaky loos to investing in major new innovations.  A re...

  The world’s freshwater resources are in short supply. According to the UN, water scarcity affects an estimated 1.9 billion people and 2.1 billion people live with drinking water services that are not safely managed. The critical point of water scarcity has led scientists to look for new and efficient ways to make the most of nontraditional sources, including sea water, brackish water and wastewater. Polymer membranes, which act as a filter to desalinate and selectively remove conta...