Water

Pilot and Demonstration Activities
Adaptation and Verification of Arsenic Mitigation Technology

Arsenic contamination has become a significant health threat in Cambodia, especially in rural areas where people highly rely on groundwater for their drinking water needs. An estimated 320,000 people in 1,600 villages in 7 central provinces bordering the Mekong and the Bassac rivers are at risk after 16,000 tube well water were tested positive for arsenic. Arsenic concentration as high as 1.3 milligrams per liter was measured in the Mekong delta south of Phnom Penh. Several health cases of skin diseases and cancers in Kandal province were later confirmed as cases of arsenicosis or arsenic poisoning.

While effective arsenic mitigation solutions are available and used by many affected countries in the world, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Viet Nam, Cambodia is still in search of an effective arsenic mitigation technology that is affordable to its rural population. This is where the Kanchan Arsenic Filter (KAF), developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), comes in as the technology that shows great promise for Cambodia’s rural communities.

Developed based on 7 years of extensive interdisciplinary laboratory and field studies in rural villages of Nepal, the KAF is a low-cost household-level technology that can be constructed using simple materials such as gravel and iron nails, and requires neither external energy nor material input for its operation and maintenance. The filter can effectively remove arsenic and microbial contamination, and is highly recommended for its ability to produce clear-looking and good-tasting water. The KAF is also currently being tested in Bangladesh.

Although the KAF was proven highly successful in Nepal, it is still important to confirm the KAF’s performance in Cambodia before widely introducing the filter to the general public. Consultations with key stakeholders including the Ministry of Rural Development (MRD) resulted in an agreement to begin a KAF performance verification process that consists of 3 phases—laboratory study, field technical research, and pilot demonstration.

The laboratory study phase has been successfully completed in 2006 by the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) with support from the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST) and MIT. The 8-week laboratory study showed that the KAF consistently removes over 90% arsenic, total coliforms, and E.coli from arsenic-contaminated groundwater near Phnom Penh. Another laboratory study found that the formation of red rust using small nails is crucial to the filter performance.

This PDA will support phases 2 and 3 of the KAF performance verification process. In particularly, it will provide financial support for the conduct of

• An 8-month field technical research to evaluate the technical performance and limitations of the KAF under field conditions of rural Cambodia
• A pilot demonstration project to determine the applicability, long-term acceptability, and actual impact of using KAF in rural Cambodian communities.

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This PDA aims to:

• Verify the performance and suitability of the Kanchan Arsenic Filter (KAF) as an arsenic mitigation option for Cambodia through field technical research and pilot demonstration
• Extract the lessons learned from the KAF verification process to establish a general technology verification procedure which may be used to evaluate other water treatment technologies in the future

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• Proposal (February 2008) [PDF]