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'Miracle' tree could bring cleaner drinking water to millions
By Greenbang on Wednesday, 3rd March 2010
A highly beneficial tree native to northwest India could help provide
cleaner drinking water to millions of people across the developing
world.
The Moringa oleifera tree is already recognised as having great
potential in a world facing climate change, rising population and
growing desertification. It's fast-growing, drought-tolerant and
extremely nutritious, with edible seedpods, flowers and leaves. Its
bark, roots and gum also have numerous medicinal properties.
Now, new research shows that the tree's seeds could provide a low-
cost means of water purification that could drastically reduce water-
borne diseases in the developing world.
Michael Lea, a researcher at Clearinghouse, a Canadian organisation
dedicated to investigating and implementing low-cost water
purification technologies, says the Moringa-based water treatment
technique can produce a 90 to 99.99 per cent reduction in bacteria in
previously untreated water. He outlines the procedure at the site
Current Protocols (see scientific article attached) as part of John
Wiley & Sons' Corporate Citizenship Initiative.
"Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa,
Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East
Asia," Lea said. "It could be considered to be one of the
world's most useful trees. Not only is it drought resistant, it also
yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertiliser, as well as highly
nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers.
Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking
water at virtually no cost."
When crushed into a powder, Moringa seeds can be used to remove
pathogens from turbid surface water, Lea said. The treatment also
technique reduces cloudiness, making water not only more fit for
drinking but more aesthetically appealing as well.
Despite its live-saving potential, the technique is still not widely
known, even in areas where the Moringa is routinely cultivated. Lea
said he hopes that, by publishing the technique in a freely available
protocol format for the first time, it will become easier to
disseminate the procedure to communities that need it.
"This technique does not represent a total solution to the threat of
waterborne disease," Lea said. "However, given that the
cultivation and use of the Moringa tree can bring benefits in the
shape of nutrition and income as well as of far purer water, there is
the possibility that thousands of 21st century families could find
themselves liberated from what should now be universally seen as19th
century causes of death and disease. This is an amazing prospect, and
one in which a huge amount of human potential could be released. This
is particularly mind-boggling when you think it might all come down
to one incredibly useful tree."
Currently, some one billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin
America rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily
drinking and cooking needs. An estimated two million people — most
of them children under the age of five — die from water-borne
diseases every year.
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