Bottled Water

A informative presentation on Bottled Waters.

Please dont drink it!

Salikah: The Hikma of Hakim Archuletta

A good summary of Hakim Archuletta's talks last weekend posted by Salikah Bajee. Alhamdaulillah it was the first time I saw Sidi Hakim and it was definately worth listening to his words and also to reflect on them. May Allah give us tawfiq to act on his words.

Read details of the Sidi Hakim's wisdom filled words on Salikah bajee's blog:

Sidi Hakim began by saying "Alhamdulillah, Shukrulillah" -- and he said it with his entire being and mentioned that we cannot begin, but with those words of gratitude to the One without whose permission we could not have gathered together. READ ON

Third World Groundwater pollution

Groundwater pollution is the movement of contaminants through the subsurface soil and groundwater. Everywhere we go we have water flowing beneath our feet at a variety of depths and i a variety of strata.

Gdoundwater pollution is more dangerous because as wiki puts it well:

Groundwater pollution is much more difficult to abate than surface pollution because groundwater can move great distances through unseen aquifers. Non-porous aquifers such as clays partially purify water of bacteria by simple filtration (adsorption and absorption), dilution, and, in some cases, chemical reactions and biological activity: however, in some cases, the pollutants merely transform to soil contaminants. Groundwater that moves through cracks and caverns is not filtered and can be transported as easily as surface water. In fact, this can be aggravated by the human tendency to use natural sinkholes as dumps in areas of Karst topography.

Developed nations generally have good controls on controlling and investigating sources of groundwater pollution. However, for developing countries, these issues are not of top priority. For them, the top priority is typically economy. Some third world places with groundwater pollution do not realize they have groundwater pollution or if they do then they don't have the capicity or means to stop it at the source.

As a case study take a look at the sources of drinking water pollution in Pakistan ( all of them explained on the WWF website):

• Muncicpal wastewater
• Industrial
• Agricultural
• Landfill leechate

So as mentioned before the issues are the lack of will, means or sources for third world countries to provide clean drinking water to their population. One way to clean water is to provide clean water downstream by purifying contaminated water but depending on the level of contamination, that may not be possible specially given that the third world lacks techniques to purify water on a large scale and sometimes even on a small scale. However there is good work being done and some charities from the developed world provide downstream solutions. For example:

• Bottle filteration
• Biosand
• A handful of clay, yesterday’s coffee grounds and some cow manure
• and many more

However preventing the pollution at it;s source remains a challenge and sometimes multi national companies are responsible for huge catastrophic disasters in the third world. For example;

Oil companies in Nigeria
Chemical companies in India
and many more ...

Listed below are the 10 most polluted cities in the world in alphabetic order ( surprise surprise-most of these are in the third world):
Chernobyl (Ukraine) | Dzerzinsk (Russia) | Haina (Dominican Republic) | Kabwe (Zambia) | La Oroya (Peru) | Linfen (China) | Mailuu-Suu (Kyrgyzstan) | Norilsk (Russia) | Ranipet (India) | Rudnaya Pristan (Russia)

Lot of work and awareness needs to be spread in the third world about groundwater pollution. however as with other issues political will, resources, technical skills, etc are issues that need to be tackled as well.

You can help by spreading awareness, donating money and writing letters to your local leaders to help reduce pollution in the third world.

LIsted on this page are some useful charities.

Nigeria: Impact of Electronic Pollution

This is very Sad:

Africa is recognised as a dumping ground for toxic, chemical and electronic waste from the developed nations of the world.

As much as 80% of the world's high-tech trash ends up in Asia and Africa. Out of this proportion of detritus called e-waste, about 65% flows to China and 35% comes to Nigeria.

TVs, computers and monitors, GSM handsets and wireless devices form the chunk of e-waste in Nigeria today. The computers, with monitors and keyboards, sitting on desks, television sets in houses and offices, GSM handsets etc., are all laced with toxins and deadly chemicals. They are all classified as post-consumer hazardous waste which makes un-suspected users vulnerable to health risks.

This free trade in hazardous waste will end up leaving the indigent peoples of the world with untenable choice between poverty and poison; but while other security-minded developing countries stoutly legislated against the trend, it has the rule rather than exception in Nigeria. READ ON

Food that traves well

Food That Travels Well - New York Times

It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit

. READ ON

IRIN ASIA PAKISTAN: Contaminated water a threat to millions in Punjab

LAHORE, 12 July 2007 (IRIN) - Urban water quality in Pakistan has deteriorated dangerously over the past decade and the country’s most heavily populated province, the Punjab, is at risk, say specialists.

In Lahore, capital of the Punjab, east Pakistan, leaking sewage pipes are allowing dirty water to seep into drinking water pipes, causing an increase in water-borne diseases.

Each day Shakila Aslam steps outside her Lahore home, she must tread carefully. Treacherously slippery, sewage-soaked mud greets her. Broken sewage lines leave huge pools of filthy water on the road and a stench lingers across the area. READ ON

MSN: A Breath of Fresh Air: MDI Makes World's First Air Powered Car

Air powered car!
Exciting stuff!

Short of hydrogen-powered, fuel cell or pure electric vehicles, there aren’t very many ways of obtaining zero emissions status. Admittedly, there’s still plenty of research left to do on fuel cell vehicles before they hit the road, not to mention the hydrogen refueling infrastructure that needs to be built, and while there’s been progress on electric cars such as the Tesla roadster, cost is always an issue. Now, French automaker MDI has come up with a clever solution that’s affordable and produces zero emissions to boot. How did they do it? The car is powered by air! READ ON

BBC: India refineries told to clean up

Finally....I am sure the refinaries arent the only one doing this in india or that this is happening in only India. It is a HUGE problem in the developing world.

India refineries told to clean up


Authorities in India's north-eastern state of Assam have threatened local oil refineries with closure unless they stopped polluting local rivers.

Assam's Pollution Control Board has given five refineries a year to stop discharging effluents into rivers.

It says the refineries were dumping effluents at levels much higher than acceptable federal limits. READ ON

PAKISTAN: Toxins from tanneries endanger Kasur's residents

Oshawa, my current place of residence used to have lots of tannerires and that fact is still considered something to be aware of when conducting environmental investigations. In Kasur the tanneries are up and running as this artcle elaborates:

KASUR, 1 May 2007 (IRIN) - For most of his adult life, Muhammad Rauf, 38, has worked at a hide-tanning factory in the Pakistani border town of Kasur. He applies large quantities of water and chemicals to raw animal skins as part of the laborious process that turns them into finished leather.

"I know my work well. It supports my family and two years ago I was made a supervisor," Rauf told IRIN in Kasur.

But at the same time, he is increasingly worried about the acute pollution problems caused by tannery waste, which has badly polluted ground water, impacted on the health of local residents and has also affected crops grown in the area. READ ON

Electronic Lebonan: Environmentalists urge quicker clean-up as oil-spill again threatens sea

Oil contamination is the worst kind of contamination there is. It can stay in the ground forever if it goos untreated..... 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of oil sends shiver down my spine:

Black slime coats beaches and oozes into rock pools in northern Lebanon, nine months after an oil spill led to international pledges to clean that stretch of coast. Oil clings to beach after beach north of Byblos, an ancient fishing port that is one of Lebanon's main tourist attractions.

Israel bombed an oil refinery in Jiyyeh, south of Lebanon's capital, Beirut, during its conflict with the armed wing of Lebanese political party Hezbollah last July. The bombing caused the refinery to spew an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea. It was Lebanon's worst environmental disaster, say environmentalists. Read on

Naturally Unnatural

As an Environmental Engineering student one of the things that really struck me about the Hurricane Katrina was the failure of levees and the enormity of the flood......

I took a Hydraulics course last term with Dr. Annable, one of the top stream restoration Engineers in North America. His solution to a lot of stream/waterway problems is to restore the streams along with the flood plains in the most natural way possible-which means you dont have concrete lined streams; you allow the streams to flood once in a while rather than have a HUGE flood after many years;you have natural vegetation along the stream shoreline, etc etc......

I found this article by NYT on the Hurricane which agrees with Professor Annable's line of thinking :

'....When most transport was by water, people would of course settle along the Mississippi River, and of course they would build a port city near its mouth. In the 20th century, when oil and gas fields were developed in the gulf, of course people added petrochemical refineries and factories to the river mix, convenient to both drillers and shippers. To protect it all, they built an elaborate system of levees, dams, spillways and other installations.

As one 19th-century traveler put it, according to Ari Kelman, an environmental historian at the University of California, Davis, "New Orleans is surprising evidence of what men will endure, when cheered by the hopes of an ever-flowing tide of dollars and cents."

In the last few decades, more and more people have realized what a terrible bargain the region made when it embraced - unwittingly, perhaps - environmental degradation in exchange for economic gains.

Abby Sallenger, a scientist with the United States Geological Survey who has studied the Louisiana landscape for years, sees the results of this bargain when he makes his regular flights over the Gulf Coast or goes by boat to one of the string of sandy barrier islands that line the state's coast.

The islands are the region's first line of defense against hurricane waves and storm surges. Marshes, which can normally absorb storm water, are its second.

But, starved of sediment, the islands have shrunk significantly in recent decades. And though the rate of the marshes' loss has slowed somewhat, they are still disappearing, "almost changing before your eyes," as Dr. Sallenger put it in a telephone interview from his office in St. Petersburg, Fla. "Grassland turns into open water, ponds turn into lakes."

Without the fine sediment that nourishes marshes and the coarser sediment that feeds eroding barrier islands, "the entire delta region is sinking," he said. In effect, he said, it is suffering a rise in sea level of about a centimeter - about a third of an inch - a year, 10 times the average rate globally................................."

Another relevant article from the BBC website :

".......The levee system meant that the Mississippi, a vast river that drains the whole of the eastern US, was tamed by man.

Without regular river floods to feed the swampy delta with precious silt and nutrients, vast swathes of Louisiana's coastal wetlands have disappeared in the past 75 years.

Sprawling coastal wetlands can bear the brunt of a hurricane better than the concrete passageways of a modern city.

The US Geological Survey calls the wetlands a "natural buffer" in a high-risk area. Plans to stop further erosion have run aground in Congress.

Erosion meant that instead of falling on the delta, Katrina's rains swelled the Mississippi and filled Lake Pontchartrain.............."