Current solutions
Monash University researchers are hoping they've found a simple, low-cost way to clean arsenic-tainted water.
It is a frightening statistic. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates up to 100 million people around the world currently rely on drinking water tainted with potentially fatal levels of arsenic.
Nations such as India and Bangladesh currently draw drinking water from wells dug through naturally occurring arsenic-rich rocks.
Long-term exposure to high levels of arsenic in water supplies can cause cancer of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney; skin disorders including changing of the pigmentation and thickening; and severe diseases of blood vessels leading to gangrene.
Ironically, some of these tainted wells in Bangladesh and India were dug in the 1970s to provide a 'clean' alternative to traditional open wells that had been identified as a significant cause of the spread of diseases such as dysentery, typhoid and cholera.
This water was considered safe for drinking until the discovery of arsenic-related health problems among many people using the new supposedly safer water supplies in the 1990s.
Numerous treatment techniques have been trialed to remove the arsenic, but none have been able to reduce levels below the WHO's stated maximum concentration level of less than 10 mg/L.
However, researchers at Monash University's Chemical and Sustainable Process Engineering group (CSPE) at the Sunway campus are confident they have found the solution.
Led by Dr Balasubramaniam Srinivasan, the group is less than a year away from commercialising technology that promises not only to reduce arsenic content to safe levels but also poses no hazardous environmental side effects.
The technique relies on electrocoagulation, an electro-chemical process that removes heavy metals and other contaminants from water using electricity and sacrificial metal plates instead of expensive chemical agents.
The process uses little energy and once installed, needs only a fresh battery every three to five years.
"But for the arsenic, this water is good enough for drinking and if we can provide a cheap solution we could solve a number of problems," Dr Balasubramaniam said.
"There are obvious health benefits for the local people, but this simple technique could also free up the government to transfer the big spend on health into other areas of development.
"And the electrochemical process does not produce any of the side-effect pollution caused by using existing chemical processes - it's an environmentally sustainable solution to a grave problem."
It doesn't stop there. The Monash researchers' work could also be used to reduce pollution in Malaysia's booming palm oil industry.