Million-dollar challenge

The US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is to award a $1 million prize for a practical technology that can remove arsenic from drinking water.

Arsenic-contaminated drinking water affects tens of millions of people, especially in developing countries where existing treatment technologies are too expensive for widespread use. The so-called Grainger Challenge Prize will be awarded for the development of a small-scale, inexpensive technique for reducing arsenic levels in drinking water.

Treating drinking water with high levels of arsenic is not a major problem in the US because many communities have the resources for expensive, centralised, and well-maintained water treatment facilities.

But a quarter of the population of Bangladesh drinks water from tube wells - a cheap, low-tech way of accessing groundwater. Many of the country's estimated 10 million tube wells were built with international aid to provide an alternative to bacteria-tainted surface water. Unfortunately, these wells frequently tap into aquifers contaminated by arsenic from natural sources.

The goal of the Grainger Challenge Prize is to encourage the development of a household- or community-scale water treatment system to remove arsenic from the contaminated groundwater. The system must have a low life-cycle cost and must be robust, reliable, easily maintainable, socially acceptable, and affordable. As a sustainable technology, the system must also be within the manufacturing capabilities of a developing country and must not degrade other water quality characteristics or introduce pathogens.

The Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability is made possible through the support of The Grainger Foundation. The prize is administered and managed by the National Academy of Engineering, a private, nonprofit institution that provides technology advice under a US congressional charter.

More information about the Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability is available at <link>here=http://www.graingerchallenge.org</link>.