No water woes

With the monsoon knocking on the door, flood preparedness seems to be on in full swing, at least among researchers at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nagpur. Getting safe, potable water during floods will not be a problem any more. The Nagpur scientists have developed a portable water purification system which not only eliminates germs to a safe level, but also drastically lessens the turbidity of flood water. A typical unit, which requires no electricity, can give around 20 to 30 litres of treated water per hour and hence can serve up to 20 to 30 people if operated for 10 hours. Safe, potable water is available for use within half an hour.

The device reduces turbidity to less than 3 nephelolometric turbidity units (NTU) from the 100 to 300 NTU of raw water. The US Environment Protection Agency considers a turbidity level of up to 5 NTU of potable quality. Besides, during testing, the system reduced the total coli form and Escherichia coli counts considerably. In other words, the bacterial load in the water gets reduced by 90 to 99 per cent. High levels of coli form and E. Coli are often associated with flood waters, making those who drink it vulnerable to several water-borne diseases including cholera and diarrhoea.

Coffee cuts cancer risk

Researchers at Calcutta University have found that prolonged consumption of coffee checks the growth of tumours in the sex organs. Their studies, reported in the April issue of the Indian Journal of Experimental Biology, showed that when mice were administered caffeine — the key ingredient of coffee — for a period of almost a month, there was a substantial reduction in the growth of Ehrlich ascites carcinoma cells, known as “precursor cancer cells”. Coffee’s positive influence on lung, breast and ovarian cancers is already known.