麻豆传媒

High-tech filters to remove arsenic from contaminated water supplies are too expensive for most of the 20 million people affected worldwide. Now there鈥檚 a more affordable alternative: a tube filled with volcanic rock. Akira Ohki at Kagoshima University in Japan packed a vertical tube with lumps of volcanic rock called shirasu, abundant in the Kyushu region of Japan. Then he poured contaminated water through it. After a single pass, 85 per cent of the arsenic had been removed. Ohki says the arsenic ions in the solution bind to aluminium hydroxide in the surface of the rock. Shirasu is a plentiful and unused resource in Japan, which could make it an effective contender for purifying water, Ohki says. 鈥淭he cost for shirasu is considerably lower than ordinary commercial adsorbents.鈥�