Tangents
Pani <i>Purification </i>
Sabera and her filter with Sajida Foundation members. Photo: Ihtisham Kabir
In 2011 Sabera Talukder, an American of Bangladeshi origin, visited her ancestral land for the first time. At the time, she was fourteen and had lived her entire life in the US where people drink water directly from the tap and its purity is taken for granted. Sabera was puzzled by difficulties faced – particularly by poor people - in obtaining clean water. “Why can't people here have easier access to clean drinking water?†she asked. Why not indeed? To answer that question she collected water samples from twenty eight different locations in and around Dhaka and requested the laboratories at ICDDR,B and Incepta Pharmaceuticals to analyze these samples. The results showed high levels of both inorganic and organic impurities. Based on detailed data about the impurities, she set about designing a water filter. Returning home to Silicon Valley, California armed with the data, she spent the next eighteen months pursuing her project. Her parents Shah and Darlene Talukder, and her schoolteachers helped her. Sabera had simple but utilitarian goals: the filter should be easy to build, use, and maintain; critical components should cost less than US $25; and any power requirement must be met using solar power. Eventually she decided to compete in a science competition for high school students in Silicon Valley. She won the First Prize in the Engineering category as well as three other awards in the Synopsis Science Fair. Then came the Google Science Fair, an annual science competition. In 2012, 7000 projects competed from all over the world. Among them was “Pani Purification,†Sabera's project. When judging was over, she had won a spot among the top fifteen finalists from the 7000 projects and named one of the best five from her age group (http://goo.gl/ftGtd). How does Sabera's water purification system work? It has three stages. First, sand is used to remove the larger impurities, both organic and inorganic. Second, Ultraviolet-C light kills bacteria. Finally, a charcoal filter removes smaller inorganic impurities. The filter can be run on solar power or regular electricity. Sabera was recently in Dhaka to continue work on her project. She has installed two prototype filters at locations of Sajida Foundation, a local NGO, which is cooperating with her. Gathering water from these systems, she tested them at the ICDDR,B laboratories to test and tweak her filter. This water is not used for drinking until the all-clear from Sabera. “There is still a lot more testing and fine-tuning before we are ready,†she said. What is her ultimate goal? “There are about fifty waterborne diseases. If my system can help eliminate the causes of many of them – if not all – and provide clean drinking water to people who need it most, I will have achieved my goal,†she said. I asked Sabera about her career goals. “I want to be a neurosurgeon,†she said. Sabera publishes all her experimental information on her website, so that anyone working on water filtration anywhere can benefit from her work. We wish Sabera and those working with her speedy success in this endeavour.
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