Humphrey Blackburn of Blackburn and Associates, USA, sends the following reaction to a previous Readers React item on Procter & Gamble's PuR Purifier of Water technology [1]:

Dear Sirs:

"First, I want to thank you for your excellent emails. I learn so much about efforts and problems worldwide.

I work with appropriate technology solutions to water treatment issues. Mostly we work with advanced design slow sand filters, iron filters, and roughing filters. Our philosophy is that technologies for developing countries should be sustainable, affordable, involve the end-users in all levels.

I am increasingly alarmed at the momentum building around Proctor and Gambles PuR product. I think it has merit in emergency situations where immediate need for safe water is important. But increasingly I see it marketed as water treatment. This is not sustainable or in the interests of people in rural areas. It becomes a product that has to be purchased on a regular basis from a foreign country. I think the analogy to the scandalous infant formula problems of a couple of decades ago should be kept in mind where people were encouraged to abandon breast feeding in favor of a foreign infant formula. Getting people “hooked” on a product that will require as much as 10% of their income instead of trying to develop sustainable solutions that don’t have recurrent cost and that the villagers have control over is exploitive in the worst of ways".

[1] Household treatment: PuR Purifier of Water, Source, 9 Jul 2004, http://www.irc.nl/page/10467

Contact: Humphrey Blackburn, Blackburn and Associates, USA, hb@slowsandfilter.com, http://slowsandfilter.com/

Tags: water quality