Dental Fluorosis is a defect of the tooth that results in yellow or brown discolouration caused by high levels of fluoride intake in water or food over a prolonged period of time.
To end this, the Naivasha Water and Sanitation Company embarked on research and finding lasting solutions. According to Engineer Nahashon Wahome, who is the Managing Director of the company, Naivasha residents entirely rely on groundwater, which was found to contain high levels of fluoride.
“We supply water from boreholes. Currently, we have 17 production sites and each and every production site has a number of boreholes that we supply water from,” Wahome said while appearing on Citizen TV.
He said that between 2010 and 2020 residents consumed high fluoride water, and this was discovered after the effects started showing.
The company embarked on research and came up with a water treatment method that involved the use of bone char.
“Bone char is basically superheated bones and they are crushed. The challenge with bone char is that it can only treat water in small scale. So what we would do is put the treatment systems on water kiosks or communal water points, and we still needed to get better treatment systems,” Wahome added.
To establish the extent of the fluoride in water, the company collaborated with the Water Resources Authority (WRA) where they did mapping of the different water resources within Naivasha.
Through this, Wahome says they established the different aquifers with different levels of fluoride.
With this challenge, the Naivasha Water and Sanitation Company went into further research and came across a more effective water treatment method used in Germany.
They borrowed this method and up to date, it is helping to treat water on large scale, hence ending the problem of fluoride in water.
“The technology involves synthetic bone char which is more efficient and effective than the bone char we were using. We can be able to use it in large scale and it is cheaper and much better,” Wahome further said.
He concluded that the Naivasha Water and Sanitation Company is doing more research to be able to treat water even better and ensure residents drink clean water.
Original article online at: https://www.citizen.digital/news/brown-teeth-how-nakuru-solved-high-levels-of-fluoride-in-water-n339907