by KANIKA SEARVANCE
(Scientific American editor’s Note: Students from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering are working in Tanzania to help improve sanitation and energy technologies in local villages. This series chronicles work being done by the student-led group, known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), to design “rocket stoves” in the village of Mwamgongo and top-light updraft design (TLUD) gasification stoves in the village of Kalinzi. The goal is to create a healthier, more energy-efficient cooking apparatus that these villagers will accept and use. HELP students are filing these dispatches from the field during their trip. This blog post, their 13th for Scientific American, addresses water and sanitation systems.)
Along with the work I was doing with Zach and Wendy on the stove project in Mwamgongo, I also worked on the water and sanitation projects with Aaron and Mitch, two medical school students who were doing a close study of the water and tap systems in villages of Mwamgongo and Kalinzi.
The tap system in Mwamgongo is a gravity-fed system that originates at a protected spring high in the mountains that surround Mwamgongo. In contrast, the water system in Kalinzi is centered around the plethora of protected springs in the area. Earlier groups of HELP had determined that there was both fecal coliform and Escherichia coli (E.coli) contamination in both the springs and the tap system. Bacterial growth tests that we performed out in the field had also proved that both types of bacteria were able to survive and grow in temperatures exceeding 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This means that both types of bacteria found in the water were fully capable of growing within the human body.
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