Scientists are warning that drinking water supplies in parts of rural West Africa are being contaminated by lead-containing materials used in community handpumps and public taps.
Universal WASH Gains Traction Even as Hand Pumps Lose Ground: Troubled Water Supply Systems in Africa Spur Demand for New Technology
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and is the third in the series, “WASH Within Reach: 50 years, $400 billion, and a global pandemic later – water, sanitation and hygiene define a moment in human history,” produced through a collaboration between Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center.
With their blocky stamped metal heads and long arms, the India Mark II and Afridev hand water pumps are hardly aesthetically appealing. What matters is their design. That is, how well do they work?
Introduced in the 1980s, manufactured by the millions, and installed in communities across Africa and Asia, the two hand pumps are the most popular tools for lifting water to the surface from rural underground reserves. In that capacity, the two pumps occupy prominent space in the WASH sector’s long-running and formative debate over whether the global campaign
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Scientists are warning that drinking water supplies in parts of rural West Africa are being contaminated by lead-containing materials used in small community water systems such as boreholes with handpumps and public taps.
They analysed scrapings taken from the plumbing of 61 community water supply systems in Ghana, Mali and Niger. Eighty percent of the tested systems had at least one component that contained lead in excess of international guidance.
Lead is released into the water when the components corrode.
The study, by a research team from the University of Leeds, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Boston University, also took samples of the water from those 61 water distribution systems, and from a further 200 taps and boreholes with handpumps.
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