Defining common parameters of evaluations for water filtration technologies in India

Abstract

Nearly 1 billion people in the world today do not have access to safe drinking water. With almost 3.5 million of those people dying each year, this is no longer an issue we can pretend is of little importance. Of the deaths that occur each year, 84% are those of children and 98% occur in developing countries. Many companies have created water filtration technologies targeted for the population most affected, that is, those living in developing nations. In order to inform the user as well as gather data, several groups have conducted various evaluations on these products. A problem with the current system is that there is no consistent evaluation procedure. With the lack of a standardized procedure, come results that are difficult for the user, and evaluation team, to compare due to the lack of common criteria. For example, to evaluate product A on criterion 1 and product B on criterion 2 makes it difficult to then compare the results. This paper qualitatively assessed three studies that evaluated various water filtration products in India. In order to help parse the information, matrices were created for the business, product, and monitoring and evaluation parameters of the studies. Some studies had parameters in common like testing contaminants removed; others suggested new parameters to consider such as ease of maintenance of the product. Each chapter explains the merits and disadvantages in their choice of test parameters. At the end there is a suggested method which hopefully future universities, laboratories, and groups conducting evaluations will consider following. It is made of parameters that the studies evaluated had in common as well as ones that were found to be useful though perhaps not common. In conforming to a standard evaluation procedure, hopefully the discussion between groups and products will be more useful thus leading to better user-compliance and an increase in safe water consumed around the world.