In the United States and other developed countries, fluoride is often added to drinking water and toothpaste to help strengthen teeth. But too much naturally occurring fluoride can have exactly the opposite effect.
Large amounts of fluoride can lead to dental fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis.
“Dental fluorosis is a darkening or mottling of the teeth, and you can tell very easily when people smile, because their teeth will be dark and discolored,” says Laura Brunson, environmental scientist at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman, Okla.
While dental fluorosis is not painful, it can have a dramatic effect on an individual’s ability to get a job or find a spouse.
“They may have a harder time finding some type of public service job. And there is sort of a social stigma attached to it, a poverty stigma,” says Brunson.
Skeletal fluorosis is much more debilitating.
“We saw some women in India who were physically unable to put their hands behind their heads. Some skeletal fluorosis can come with pain associated with it as well, and children sometimes end up with bowed legs or deformed knees or arms,” says Brunson.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Brunson is working on methods of removing fluoride from drinking water, using tools and raw materials readily available in local communities. Brunson and her team recently returned from a month of fieldwork in Ethiopia, where they tested filtering methods using charred bones and charred wood.
“We’d prefer to find filtration materials that don’t have to be shipped in from another country, and that are inexpensive,” says Brunson.
“We took materials, such as bone char and aluminum-coated bone char that we’ve worked with in the laboratory for quite a while, to Ethiopia and did continuous flow studies in that setting to see what would happen under more realistic conditions,” she explains.
Brunson says the need to understand and incorporate local cultural considerations is just as important as the technical tools needed to remove fluoride or other toxins like arsenic.
In some communities, she notes, using bone char is not an option because people are not willing, for religious reasons or cultural reasons, to use water that’s been filtered through bones. So then, more questions need to be asked. “‘What would be acceptable to you? Would wood char be acceptable as opposed to bone char because it’s not an animal product?’ Looking at those kinds of things,” says Brunson.
The team included OU anthropology professor Paul Spicer, OU Health Sciences Center graduate student Andrew Borgstrom, and experts from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
“We were able to do a couple of community surveys, trying to talk to people about, ‘What do you think of your water, how do you use water, where do you get it from, what do you think about the current treatment system, is there something you would prefer to have? And how could this treatment system be more convenient for you to use this water for drinking for your family,’ asking those types of questions,” says Brunson.
She is beginning a study of the use of plant waste material as a possible filter material, testing char made from the grain teff. Teff kernels are used in the production of injera, the staple bread of Ethiopia.
Brunson says many water projects in Africa that were started by well-meaning organizations are, unfortunately, not showing long-term success.
“Reports estimate there are nearly 200,000 wells across Africa that have been dug and implemented by well intentioned organizations. They raise money, they go to Africa, they drill a well; the community has water. That’s great. And then they leave and then six months later, two years later, for whatever reason, the well breaks. It runs dry, there’s a tiny part that breaks and no one knows how to repair it. It doesn’t work anymore, and people are back to drinking contaminated water out of a river or a lake,” she says.
As an instructor at the Price College of Business at OU, Brunson also brings a business and marketing aspect to her clean water research. She’s trying to find ways to make clean water solutions sustainable and locally controlled.
“For example, if it’s someone’s livelihood to sell those bone char filters, it’s doing two things. It’s getting bone char filters to people that need to have water that’s treated for fluoride. So it’s great for those people, but then, it’s also growing the local community economy and helping the person who’s running that business make a living. Then, that person has the motivation to keep charring the bones, to keep talking to the community members about why it’s important for them to treat their water and to keep purchasing the bone char so that their children and their families have treated drinking water,” says Brunson.
She also sees excitement from her students in developing long-term answers.
“I have them write journals to reflect on some of the things they’re learning in class, and I ask them, ‘If you were going to start a social entrepreneurial venture, what would you do?’ And I start getting some really interesting answers. They realize, I am really passionate about this, and I could really make a difference through this, while still being an entrepreneur,” says Brunson.
And, she says, clean water can have a much more dramatic impact than just eliminating disease. According to the United Nations, 884 million people around the world do not have access to clean and safe drinking water.
“If you can get people a water source that’s safe and much closer to home, you save so much time. Frequently, the burden of collecting fresh water for drinking and cooking falls on girls and women. So, with a clean and close water supply, then girls are able to spend more time going to school. Women are able to spend more time doing family improvement activities,” says Brunson.
There is also a big health improvement, if people are not suffering from diseases caused by arsenic, fluoride, or parasites.
“Kids are able to go to school and learn much better if they don’t have worms and diarrheal disease. Parents are able to go to work more often. So, there are huge economic and education benefits,” says Brunson.
The University of Oklahoma’s College of Engineering is home to the WaTER Center (Water Technologies for Emerging Regions). In addition to research on the removal of toxins like fluoride and arsenic, the center studies techniques such as passive wetland treatments for improving water quality, and also how climate change and drought might impact water cleanup.
Science and social entrepreneurship: Coming together to make affordable, safe water available to millions.
President Obama has just delivered a state of the union address speech, in which he stressed the importance of good education and research with focus on renewable energy and sustainability. The President has also stressed the importance of creating new sustainable jobs in the construction industry. Without a doubt, renewable energy systems, and sustainable building practices can offer a great promise to help rebuild America.
Commercial modular construction offers a speedy and cost effective way to build single story and multistory buildings for educational, commercial, industrial and institutional construction projects with focus on sustainability, which can be measured by the US Green Building Council LEED accreditation points system.
Think Globally, Act Locally
The President has raised some very important points concerning good education and rebuilding of America. Modular building technology offers a cost effective and time-saving way to build permanent modular classrooms, and portable school buildings for organizations that require new classroom space to meet the growing demands for increased school enrollments.
Modular Classroom Advantages
Modular school buildings are indistinguishable from other school buildings, and can have any architectural design along with client’s specifications.
Portable classrooms provide an economical and sustainable way for public, private and charter schools to add new classroom space. Modular classrooms are custom-designed to meet the specific needs of the school and its students. The classrooms are fabricated at a manufacturer’s facility using strict quality control measures, and lean manufacturing methods. The manufacturing process is completed in just 6 to 8 weeks, which is just a fraction of the time it would take to build comparable school buildings using conventional construction methods. The construction site prep work takes place concurrent to modular building being constructed. The whole building can be delivered in as early as 90 days.
Portable Classroom Solutions
For schools that require an immediate classroom space increase, temporary classroom buildings can be delivered and deployed in just 24 hours.
The modular school buildings above are courtesy Triumph Modular Inc. providing custom green modular building services, and portable and temporary classroom solutions in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Maine and Vermont. The Sprout Space sustainable high-performance custom modular classroom systems designed by architects who focus on school design can be installed by Triumph Modular anywhere in the US.
References
http://www.triumphmodular.com/green-building.php
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To address the most pressing challenges facing ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources, the federal government today released a National Ocean Policy action plan.
The draft requests comments on actions the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies on the National Ocean Council will take to improve the health of the ocean, coasts and Great Lakes, which support tens of millions of jobs, contribute trillions of dollars a year to the national economy and are essential to public health and national security.
The draft action plan will ensure that the federal government targets its resources to more effectively and efficiently deliver results for Americans, including greater predictability for ocean users and better access to the latest science and information related to ocean health.
The actions reflect ideas and input from industry, conservation groups, local officials, the public and other stakeholders who provided critical feedback to the National Ocean Council through two public comment periods and 12 regional listening sessions.
Ocean and coastal resources are under pressure from growing and often competing uses, such as national security, recreation, shipping, energy production and commercial fishing, as well as from pollution, resource extraction and climate change.
The draft Implementation Plan focuses on public-private partnerships, promoting efficiency and collaboration across sectors, managing resources with an integrated approach and making available and using the best science and information on ocean health.
The draft plan outlines key milestones, identifies responsible federal agencies and indicates the expected timeframe for completion of Implementation Plan actions.
The plan makes it a priority to:
Under the plan, NSF will play a major role in supporting the priority objectives of the National Ocean Policy and its action plan.
Examples of NSF contributions include:
To read the draft Implementation Plan and to submit comments, please visit the National Ocean Council website.
The National Ocean Policy, established by Executive Order 13547 on July 19th, 2010, provides that federal agencies will “ensure the protection, maintenance, and restoration of the health of ocean, coastal and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources, enhance the sustainability of ocean and coastal economies, preserve our maritime heritage, support sustainable uses and access, provide for adaptive management to enhance our understanding of and capacity to respond to climate change and ocean acidification, and coordinate with our national security and foreign policy interests.”
It also called for the creation of an interagency National Ocean Council to oversee the policy’s implementation.
For more information about the National Ocean Council, please visit their website.
Don’t let vital wind energy tax credits expire, call your representative now and tell them not to allow them to expire. More info here.
An amazing and concise recap of the current state of climate science, and those who deny it. Very informative. By Michael Mann.
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