THINK SMALL
The much-publicized plight of the northern Ontario community of Kashechewan, one of about 100 native reserves under a boilwater advisory, is the latest example highlighting the importance of safe drinking water. The same lesson became apparent in the aftermath of Pakistan’s earthquake and last year’s tsunamis in South Asia.
Less-publicized examples abound as well. In Bangladesh, for instance, arsenic in drinking water affects 50 million people. All told, about one billion people lack access to safe drinking water around the world, and two million children die each year from water-related diseases, such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid.
Tragic as these facts are, they represent an opportunity for Canada to use its strength in science to help save lives. Just as Canada responded to the threat of SARS by sequencing the DNA of the SARS virus, we can respond to the challenge of safe drinking water using our expertise in the emerging field of nanotechnology.
Last year, the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health, based at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, surveyed 63 scientists from 26 countries about the applications of nanotechnology with the greatest potential to assist the developing world. Water treatment and remediation was the third top answer (after energy and agriculture).
Nanotechnology is the study, design, creation, synthesis and manipulation of matter at the nanometer scale — that is, at a billionth of a meter. When matter is manipulated at the level of atoms and molecules, it exhibits novel properties. Scientists are harnessing these properties to create new, inexpensive materials and devices.
To understand the potential of nanotechnology, visualize a membrane used to filter water, with pores so small they can block bacteria (like the E. coli in the water at Kashechewan) or toxins (like the arsenic in the water in Bangladesh). Such “nanomembranes” would be inexpensive, portable and easily cleaned.
In the wake of the tsunamis, the Pakistan earthquake and the crisis in Kashechewan, Canada responded the same way — by sending 10-tonne water desalination tanks to the affected region. These tanks had to be airlifted in enormous military airplanes. Imagine if instead we were able to send bottle-sized, portable water filtration systems able to decontaminate and desalinize an even higher volume of water.
Of course, nanotechnology is not a “silver bullet” that will solve all of the complex issues surrounding water purity. Longer term solutions using cuttingedge science need to be balanced with immediate interventions using existing technologies. (Moreover, no technology can address the socio-economic problems that typically underlie such crises as the one in Kashechewan.)
Despite the promise of nanotechnology in relation to global water problems, there is a shortage of effort to realize this promise. I suspect part of the reluctance stems from the idea that the problem of water quality affects only faraway lands. Sadly, Kashechewan illustrates how domestic and global challenges connect. Bangladesh’s problem is our problem.
One model for how to stimulate action is the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the foundation for the U. S. National Institutes of Health. This initiative has defined 14 “ Grand Challenges” — those critical scientific bottlenecks blocking needed advances in global health. Recently, it provided 43 innovative projects with a total of US$437-million.
Canada should build on this model and announce a Canadian Grand Challenges initiative — beginning with a Grand Challenge on the use of nanotechnology to address bacterial and toxic contamination of water.
Canada is a perfect country to lead this effort. Up to 20% of the world’s fresh water is in Canada. We host the UN University International Network on Water, Environment and Health. Furthermore, the National Research Council of Canada and the University of Alberta have recently opened a National Institute of Nanotechnology in Edmonton.
Compared to the $1.8-billion that has been targeted for meeting safe drinking water needs in aboriginal communities using existing technologies, an additional $30-million to finance a Grand Challenge to apply new technologies, as the first step in a broader Canadian Grand Challenges initiative, would be a tiny investment — and one that, in the long run, could do far more good.
Last year, the Prime Minister pledged to devote no less than 5% of our researchinvestment to address developing world challenges, especially in relation to health, education and the environment.
This commitment has yet to be enacted in a budget. In the wake of the Kashechewan crisis, now would be the perfect time.
Peter A. Singer is director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, professor of medicine at University of Toronto, and a Distinguished Investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.