{"id":62307,"date":"2017-01-12T14:07:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T21:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=62307"},"modified":"2017-01-12T14:07:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T21:07:24","slug":"murunga-drumstick-moringa-oleifera-and-its-claimed-potential-for-water-purification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/01\/12\/murunga-drumstick-moringa-oleifera-and-its-claimed-potential-for-water-purification\/","title":{"rendered":"Murunga (\u201cDrumstick\u201d) (Moringa oleifera) and its claimed potential for water purification."},"content":{"rendered":"

Chandre Dharmawaradana [A shorter version appeared in the Island, 11-Jan-2016]<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Two writers,\u00a0 Dr. Pethiyagoda\u00a0 (9-01-2016, Island) and Dr. Weeraratne (11-01-2016 Island) have raised the question why Sri Lankan scientists and government authorities are not moving to Murunga seed (seeds of Moringa Oleifera, or drumsticks\u201d) to exploit\u00a0 its claimed efficiency for water purification- a green solution\u201d.\u00a0 The two writers argue that Murunga seeds can remove alleged toxins from the water in the North Central province (NCP) and alleviate a serious chronic kidney disease\u00a0 (CKD) found in the region. Dr. Weeraratne also refers to an international expert consultation (IEC) held in April 2016 regarding CKD, and says that 27 recommendations were made, and raises ire as to why they were not implemented.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0 the IEC made no mention of\u00a0 using\u00a0 Murunga seed for water purification in any\u00a0 of their recommendations. Since\u00a0 Murunga seed\u201d has been proposed every season by some writer, let us think through\u201d the use of\u00a0 Murunga to purify domestic water for the NCP.\u00a0 A\u00a0 family of five would need about 50 liters of water a day, allotting about three liters per person purely for drinking,\u00a0 while a common 35 liters is left for cooking and other needs where the water is ingested\/used\u00a0 in other forms. Usually one Murunga kernal is needed for the purification of one liter of water. Hence the family needs 50 kernals of Murunga per day. Seeds have to be prepared everyday for water purification as they go bad once removed from the drumstick. A drumstick may contain a dozen seeds of which several may be bad or discoloured. If we assume\u00a0 about 8 to 10 useful mature seeds per Mururnga drumstick,\u00a0 we need 6-8 drum sticks\u00a0 per day.\u00a0 Their\u00a0 current market cost is minimally Rs. 25 per day. Of course, if\u00a0 even a tenth of the one million people in the affected area begin to buy\u00a0 Murunga everyday the price will shoot sky high!<\/p>\n

But this is not all;\u00a0 the mature Murunga has to be processed before using\u00a0 for cleaning water. There is no\u00a0 ready-made product available in the Lankan market. The seeds have to be removed from the pods, shelled to get clean kernels, crushed\u00a0 in a grinder or wangediya\u201d and sieved to\u00a0 a\u00a0 fine powder (try this and see what a messy process it is!).\u00a0 A paste of the powder made with\u00a0 water is shaken vigorously\u00a0 to activate\u201d it. This paste\u00a0 is added to the 50 liters of water from the well (or other source), stirred thoroughly and allowed to sit for a few hours. During this time turbidity and toxins get absorbed into the murunga-powder in suspension. The water is filtered and used for cooking, drinking etc. One member of the family\u00a0 has to devote (at least) an hour for this daily ritual. At Rs. 800 a day (8-hour work day) typical of NCP labour, this adds Rs 100 to the cost of the 50 liters of water.\u00a0 If done by a junior we may cost it at Rs 50. Hence the total cost is now Rs 75 for 50 liters, i.e., at least Rs 1.50 per liter of water.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, what does the farmer do with the filtered sludge which now contains all the pollutants possibly causing kidney disease? He cannot put back the sludge into the soil to re-pollute the soil at a much higher concentration! The farmer may cut his costs by growing Murunga in his back yard. This will imply some labour, and a\u00a0 two-year wait before\u00a0 mature\u00a0 produce Murunga. But unfortunately,\u00a0 another danger looms over him \u2013 the threat of bio-accumulation of toxins in the Murunga plant.<\/p>\n

The rice plant, when planted in most soils even with\u00a0 less than 5 parts per billion of cadmium is known to concentrate such\u00a0 toxins in its seeds, leaves etc, as shown by the chemical analysis of Sri Lankan rice by Prof. Meharg of Scotland, and confirmed by\u00a0 recent detailed work by the team of Prof. Chandrajith at the geology department,\u00a0 Peradeniya University. This however does not mean that the Sri Lankan rice\u00a0 poses a health risk, because the plant has absorbed not only toxins like cadmium, but large amounts of mitigating substances like zinc and selenium, making it safe for consumption.\u00a0 In fact, the work of Meharg, and Chandrajith and collaborators show that the rice from the WET ZONE contains significantly more cadmium than dry-zone rice! But the wet-zone rice is also compensated by mitigating substances and may be regarded as posing no health risk. It should be noted that oysters and many kinds of fish sold in Europe have more cadmium than Sri Lankan rice, but they are legally marketed because there too, mitigating substances like zinc are present\u00a0 and suppress the effect of cadmium.<\/p>\n

Not only rice, many other grasses, plants and trees bio-accumulate\u201d toxic metals from the soil during its growth.\u00a0 The chemical analyses of the NCP soil and water by independent scientific organizations have shown the absence of\u00a0 significant amounts of metal toxins or residues of pesticides like glyphosate in the NCP. But glyphosate has been banned on the assumption that it is there, and causing chronic diseases! The problem lies in the capacity of plants like rice or murunga to bio-accumulate even from trace concentrations. The WHO-NSF study revealed that lotus root and kohila (Lasia spinosa) were rich in accumulated metal toxins, and recommended their avoidance.\u00a0 The murunga tree’s leaves, pods etc.,\u00a0 are likely to be rich in toxins. Does murunga have accumulations of mitigating ions in sufficient amounts? While this is likely, no analysis is available, unlike in the case of rice. Most of the murunga available in Indian groceries in Canada come from South India, and I hesitate to consume the product.<\/p>\n

Is there a strong reason to worry about vegetables and food stuffs imported from India? Indeed. The level of public hygiene and sanitation in India is certain much lower than Sri Lanka at present. In addition, India has a very large number of coal-powered power stations which spew out cadmium and other metal toxins. India has much more extensive mining and smelting activities, polluting industrial activities like dying and textiles\u00a0 that have serious consequences to the environment, especially in the absence of any effectively enforced\u00a0 environmental regulations. However, India is not as polluted as southern China which had embraced exponentially rapid growth with little regard to pollution.<\/p>\n

If the murunga kernals have accumulated toxins, adding powdered murunga-seed\u00a0 to water may pollute the water even more! All this shows that before we apply some magic remedy\u201d, or adopt some trick\u201d\u00a0 triumphantly broadcast by\u00a0 false internet gurus\u201d\u00a0 like Dr. Mercola, we need to follow the standard route of scientific investigations. These will include a chemical analysis of the murunga pods before use in the water, and a chemical analysis of the water as well as the filtered sludge, especially for Cd, As, Fluoride etc., at parts per billion accuracy before the method can be applied for public use. In Bangladesh, well-meaning international organizations installed free\u201d\u00a0 tube wells for providing water to rural people, without a chemical analysis of the water obtained from the tube wells. Unfortunately, the tube-well water contained high levels of arsenic, creating a human catastrophe which has gone on for decades. In Sri Lanka, an expensive high-tech water filtration process known as Reverse-Osmosis (RO), often used to purify sea water,\u00a0 was introduced\u00a0 at great cost for giving\u00a0 clean water\u201d to the residents in the NCP, when it was later found by a team of engineers of the National Water Board that the input water was already quite clean (i.e., no significant amounts of toxins) and did not need expensive RO installations! However, the people\u00a0 have become panicked by the propaganda about the presence of toxins (Vasha-Visha\u201d) and\u00a0 buy RO water at prices\u00a0 ranging\u00a0 from Rs 0.25
\nto Rs 1.0 per liter, compared to Colombo citizens who get potable piped water for a thuttuwa\u201d.\u00a0 As we see, even RO water is cheaper than water cleaned using Murunga-seed powder, costing Rs1.50 per liter of water!<\/p>\n

The cheapest and fastest way to provide clean water to the NCP is to harvest rain water, successfully used even in Uganda where the rainfall is a tenth of that in the NCP.\u00a0 A large (plastic) tank is needed and this\u00a0 initial cost (about Rs. 50,000-70,000 per family)\u00a0 can be amortized over 20-30 years. Then a liter of clean water costs less than one cent. Several organizations in Sri Lanka have experience in this, and are helping the NCP residents to harvest their rainwater, while leaving Murunga to the elite organic-food\u00a0 lobby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chandre Dharmawaradana [A shorter version appeared in the Island, 11-Jan-2016] Two writers,\u00a0 Dr. Pethiyagoda\u00a0 (9-01-2016, Island) and Dr. Weeraratne (11-01-2016 Island) have raised the question why Sri Lankan scientists and government authorities are not moving to Murunga seed (seeds of Moringa Oleifera, or drumsticks\u201d) to exploit\u00a0 its claimed efficiency for water purification- a green solution\u201d.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}