The Flint water crisis was a revelation for many of us in the United States. After all, lack of sanitary water is not something that happens in the developed world. I am very careful about the kind of water that we use for cooking or drinking in my house. I use the best water filter available in the market. I regularly clean the filter and replace the cartridges. I even wash my vegetables and fruits with filtered water and carry bottled water in my car. Okay, I agree that I am anal about water! Post Flint, I read a number of stories about poor water quality in the US mainly due to industrial effluent. I was concerned – very concerned until I stumbled upon one of my friends’ research article.

While I was fretting and grumbling about minor things – living in a developed country with the entire luxuries one could dream of – my friend, Professor Himanshu Narayan, and his team were working hard in another, lesser known part of the world to ameliorate the polluted water problem. Professor Narayan and his colleague, Professor Alemu, at the National University of Lesotho have figured out a way to use sunlight to treat water polluted with a dye from a textile factory in Lesotho. Lesotho is an enclaved landlocked country in southern Africa surrounded by South Africa. I was amazed enough to reach out to Professor Narayan to know more about his research. Professor Narayan and his team synthesize nano-sized materials and add them to the polluted water. These materials are semi-conductors, which absorb sunlight to become activated to degrade the dye, which otherwise renders the water toxic for the environment. One only has to look at the picture above to see that their technology acts like magic to clean up the polluted water.

Professor Narayan is still working to synthesize the most suitable material that can absorb sunlight to degrade the toxic dye, and make the water safe for the environment and human consumption. When I grilled him about the future direction of his research, he said, “our objective is to develop a continuous process in which we input totally polluted water to a system, and get 100 percent clean, reusable water in a matter of minutes. Moreover, the use of sunlight and reusable catalysts makes it a low cost and affordable method, which is our ultimate goal.”

I am still concerned about water pollution, but Professor Narayan’s research offers a glimmer of hope for the future.