Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions Debuts with Focus on Drinking ...

Tag : clean drinking water

He discusses the topic in The Crisis in Clean Water: WaterPurification, the inaugural episode of Global Challenges/ChemistrySolutions. That series of podcasts focuses on daunting globalproblems and how new discoveries from the labs of chemists andother scientists offer solutions. The topics include coping withclimate change, combating disease, providing safe food, developingnew fuels, preserving the environment, assuring personal safety andnational security, and promoting public health.

Each podcast will be available without charge for listening oncomputers and downloading to portable audio devices at iTunes(requires iTunes software) and other podcasting sites. They alsocan be accessed on ACSs Global Challenges web site. The siteprovides audio links and full transcripts of each podcast.Additional resources on each Global Challenges topic also areavailable, on the site, including information for consumers,students, and educators.

Debut of the first podcast coincides with publication of a specialedition of Environmental Science & Technology, one of ACS 36peer-reviewed scientific journals. It is devoted to global waterissues. Key articles from the journal can be viewed without chargeat [http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/toc.page?incoden=esthag].

The podcast describes an increasingly serious global shortage ofclean drinking water, which claims a huge toll in illness and deathin developing countries. It presents examples of scientificresearch that are reducing that toll today, and promise to havefurther impact in the future. Global Challenges describes one, forinstance, as The Miracle Packet. These pennies-a-piece packetswork like a municipal water purification facility to kill germs,remove harmful substances, and make dirty water fit to drink.

Edwards emphasizes that people in the United States generally enjoytap water of very good overall quality. One exception involvesrelatively small numbers of children exposed to high levels of leadin their drinking water, he said.

Edwards describes newly emerging concerns, including tap watersafety for individuals with weakened immune systems, home plumbingcorrosion caused by water purification plants switching tochloramine disinfectant, and water stagnating in household pipes.

With consumers using less for flushing of toilets and showering,water sits in household pipes for longer periods, said Edwards, whois with Virginia Tech. Substances formed as chloramine breaks downcan corrode plumbing, and have more time to do so when waterstagnates.

Edwards indicated that stale water also can loose the disinfectantadded at municipal water purification facilities, allowing bacteriato multiply. So just like milk can go bad if it stays around toolong, so too can potable water go bad, and we are discovering thisis a downside of water conservation, he said.

The next Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast, due inJuly, deals with advances in water desalination technology thatpromise to provide a drought-proof supply of fresh water from thesea.

The American Chemical Society  the worlds largest scientificsociety  is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S.Congress and a global leader in providing access tochemistry-related research through its multiple databases,peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main officesare in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
Charmayne Marsh | Source: newswise
Further information: www.acs.org