Water & Air – Filter Systems News

Oysters are filter feeders that filter water naturally as they feed.

Yes, you read that right. According to a recent study of oyster habitats around the world, these mollusks are disappearing, and 85 percent of their reefs have been lost due to over-harvesting and disease. Most of the remaining oysters in the world can be found in five locations in North America.

The study involved an international team of researchers led by Michael Beck of the Nature Conservancy and the University of California, Santa Cruz. They examined the condition of oyster reefs in 40 ecoregions and found that they are at less than 10 percent of their prior abundance in most places.

While they are not officially extinct, the researchers claim that they are “functionally extinct”, meaning they lack any significant ecosystem role. What does that mean for us? Well, besides the fact that they provide food and employment to people living in coastal areas, oysters are important to ecosystems because they are some of nature’s best water filters. Known as “filter feeders”, they consume harmful pollutants while feeding. As we have mentioned before, an adult oyster can filter up to 60 gallons of water a day, which is more than most reverse osmosis filters can do. In addition to the mollusks, themselves, oyster reefs are also constructed to naturally purify contaminated waters.

In order to avoid complete extinction, any reefs with less than 10 percent of former abundance should close to further harvesting until the numbers rise again.

We’ve written quite a few posts on natural water filters. Here are two more of nature’s best water filtration methods, more recently implemented by researchers:

Seaweed Water Purification

Stamford professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, Charles Yarish, believes that seaweed could be the next revolutionary trend in water purification technology. His method, termed ‘extractive aquaculture’ or ‘bioextraction’, uses seaweed as its main component, and may effectively clean up pollution in waterways from both natural waste and human sources. How does it work? The same way that shellfish do: by extracting organic and inorganic nutrients from from seawater. Although nutrients are generally regarded as beneficial to organisms, too many of them may contribute to the growth of harmful algal blooms, which deplete oxygen in water. Although bioextraction itself  is not new (it has been used before by ancient cultures in Egypt and China) Yarish’s method of bringing together plants and animals on different levels of the food chain into one place, in order to achieve purification in specific areas, is quite innovative, and will allow aquaculture to function more like a natural ecosystem.

Banana Peels Filter Water

All this time, we thought banana peels were useless… well except in the game of Mario Kart. Not anymore, thanks to the discovery of Milena Boniolo, a chemist from the Federal University of Sao Carlos, near Sao Paulo, Brazil. When dried and ground into a powder, banana peels have the ability to decontaminate polluted water by at least 60 percent. The process may be repeated until the water is purified almost completely. Banana peels are rich in negatively-charged molecules, which attract the heavy, positively-charged metals present in contaminated water. Considering that restaurants alone may discard tons of banana peels on a daily basis, this natural method could introduce a much-less expensive alternative to current water filtration technologies.

Put these two methods together, and what do you end up with? Banana Sushi – an edible solution to dirty water.

Over the course of one year alone, we have discovered quite a few natural ways to purify water. I’m sure there will be more to come, so stay tuned, and bookmark this tag in your browser for updates.

Alyson Bell is one of four people chosen for this year’s Manning Young Canadian Innovation Award.  This high school student’s ability to turn her curiosity into a creative solution at the Canada-wide science fair, has won her this award among others, including a $500 Manning Innovation Achievement Award – given to eight people each year – along with university entrance scholarships and $40,000 worth of prizes for her science fair project.

The project is a natural water filter that uses oregano to filter bacteria from water.  Bell figured out the secret to clean water from her grandfather’s oregano-dense spaghetti sauce recipe.  Wondering how the sauce was able to last over three weeks in the refrigerator without spoiling, Bell tested her hypothesis, that oregano keeps bacteria from growing, in a petri dish.  Finding her hypothesis to be correct, she turned these results into an innovative water filter made with fresh oregano layered between sandy gravel and charcoal.  Contaminated water that passed through the filter was disease-free.

But are Bell’s results really that innovative?  It has long been known that oregano has numerous health benefits.  Wild oil of oregano is often used as a holistic alternative to traditional medicine, to boost immunity and prevent disease.  It has antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti-parasitic properties, so it’s no surprise that it would work as a filter for contaminated water.  According to a recent article announcing Bell’s achievement, the oregano-filtered water “came out clean and potable.”  But, the question remains:

Did it taste like grandfather’s spaghetti?

Yes, you read that correctly.  We have run across a new kind of filter, folks.  This one doesn’t quite match up to the “human” variety, but it comes close…

Thousands of hair salons nationwide have donated hair clippings to Matter of Trust – an environmental organization that is involved in a project that collects hair and nylon stockings to make oil booms and mats.

Each strand of hair has scales on it that attract and collect oil, which explains why most of us shampoo our hair daily.  However, this basic fact has not just been applied by shampoo companies.  The oil booms and mats made from salon hair clippings is now effectively being used to clean up the damage left by the recent Gulf spill.  Hair is stuffed into nylon stockings that are dragged along the coast, sopping up oil which sticks to the scales, while the water filters out.

Oil spills can do great damage to marine life, including the sea monkeys, oysters and other creatures that act as natural water filters.  Such an emergency requires a better remedy than bottled water.  Here, we have yet another example of how water filtration is important to our lives as well as to the health of our environment.

Prahlad Jani brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, “reduce, reuse, recycle.” This 83-year-old holy man’s body is his recycling bin, according to a recent news article. Claiming to have lived the past seven decades without food or water, Jani was taken in for observation by Indian doctors on April 22, and since then has had no food or water and has not passed urine or stool.  His body has remained in perfect health since then, showing no signs of dehydration, hunger or fatigue.  He is still active enough to climb stairs and several tests on his brain reveal that it resembles that of a 25-year-old.

Jani claims to be a “breatharian,” a person who can live on “spiritual life force,” since receiving a blessing from a goddess at the age of eight.  He says that drops of water, or for him, drops of a magic elixir from the goddess, filter through a hole in his palate, sustaining him.  In addition, he is able to produce urine in his bladder as well as reabsorb it back into his body, at will.  Ordinarily, a person cannot survive without urinating, but it appears that Jani is able to filter and re-circulate the water that makes up 90 percent of his body at any time.

Here we have waste reduction and recycling in its simplest form.  Or maybe it isn’t so simple.  Scientists, of course, are baffled by this mystery, and as of yet, have no scientific explanation for it.  The “spiritual life force” that sustains him didn’t stop at the blessing of the goddess.  At age 83, Jani continues to receive energy through spiritual meditation, adding a fourth “r” – “rethink” – to the famous phrase, “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

Jani is undergoing a series of medical tests over a period of fifteen days as scientists are hoping to find solutions for people in emergency situations who must go without food or water for long periods.  Last week we gave suggestions for how to survive the apocalypse with six of our best emergency filters.  Can we add Jani, the human filter, to our list?  Only time will tell, so stay tuned for an update.  In the meantime, while you wait for a miracle blessing from a goddess, those six filters still come highly recommended.  For Jani and his fellow “breatharians,” we recommend the 3M N95 Respirator Mask in case of emergencies; since meditation involves breathing, they’ll want to make sure they aren’t inhaling air pollutants.

About a year ago, I wrote about the benefits of four natural water filters – plants, sand, oysters and coconut. Well, it seems you can throw the prickly cactus in there as one of nature’s water filters as well, according to Norma A. Alcantar, an assistant professor in the University of South Florida chemical and biomedical engineering program. 

Alcantar first learned about the thick, gooey mucilage from her grandmother. Now, she and her team are using the gummy goo to provide clean drinking water to residents of rural Mexico. Apparently using the mucilage of a cactus to filter water is nothing new, but it’s now been scientifically-validated.

So how do you filter water with a cactus? Just extract the cactus mucilage from the cactus and put it in the water, where it binds to dirt, particles, bacteria and even arsenic. The mucilage and other contaminants bound to it can then be removed. Alcantar and her team are still researching to see if the cactus mucilage will remove other heavy metals.

With filter media like Manganese Greensand, KDF 55 and granular activated charcoal, it’s easy to think of water filtration as consisting entirely of strange, manmade materials, plastics and polymers that purify your water using space age technology. These filter medias are then connected to other technological devices, such as kitchen sinks, refrigerators, pools, spas and showers. Water filtration, the hallmark of 21st century scientific achievement.
Of course, this is hardly the case. Water filtration is a natural and integral part of life, and it’s a process aided by a variety of animals and natural materials. The Earth has many natural methods of water filtration, and humankind has also used natural materials to purify water for thousands of years.
Now I present to you, without further ado, “Nature’s Four Favorite Filters“:
Plants: Especially in Wetland areas, plants naturally filter the water in which they exist. Such plants move carbon dioxide through the water while also adding oxygen. In addition, many rid ponds and bogs of toxic metals and allow for the growth of beneficial bacteria. Water lettuce and water hyacinth are both particularly absorptive plants, and have even been used as pre-filters to waste water treatment systems.
Sand: More than 2,000 years ago, the Greeks and Romans used sand to filter the water of their bathhouses and pools. This technique is still used today to capture dirt and larger sediment, as it filters particles between 25-50 microns in size.
Oysters: Oysters are filter feeders that consume many harmful pollutants while feeding. An adult oyster can filter as much as 60 gallons of water a day. That’s more than most reverse osmosis systems. In many contaminated waters, oyster reefs are constructed to purify the water in a natural way.
Coconut: When a coconut ripens, the water inside hardens into the white flesh that we all know as coconut. In the months before this happens, however, water is purified in the unripe coconut as it is passed between many fibers and kept sterile inside the nut. The result? A liquid brimming with electrolytes and second only to water itself in terms of purity. There is a reason many of today’s water filters employ a coconut carbon block.
While water purification is indeed a natural occurrence, many contaminants found in water can hardly be described as such. The problem, of course, is that all the plants, sand, oysters and coconuts in the world could not rid the world of some of the chemicals found in your water. But by using modern filters that use some of nature’s best filters, like sand and coconut, we can restore water to a more pure and natural state.