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Sustainable Water Filter Offers Help With Water Access Challenge

The Hydraid BioSand Filter from Grand Rapids-based Triple Quest has been validated in a new survey of Honduran households.

The new research, conducted in August by members of Hydraid's field implementation team, confirmed a prior study conducted by University of North Carolina researchers, which found that the filter is the most sustainable means for cleaning water in developing countries.

The research involved 100 households in multiple locations across Honduras. The results confirm the filter provides the opportunity to help address the United Nations' ambitious Millennium Goal for access to safe water.  The U.N. has called for halving, by 2015, the proportion of the global population without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

"We visited and surveyed 21 communities in eight municipalities, and in each location, 100 percent of the respondents felt their health improved directly from use of the Hydraid BioSand Filter," said Rony Meza, regional manager for Triple Quest, the international distributor of Hydraid BioSand Filters, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. "We also found that the filter is easy for households to use and can last 10 or more years, making it a truly sustainable product." 

The survey supports the findings of UNC's 2008 study, conducted by researchers from the University's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering. That study ranked a number of technologies on multiple aspects of sustainability and awarded the Hydraid BioSand Filter technology the top score, citing its useful life of more than eight years and very low rates of breakage and disuse. UNC's researchers compared the Hydraid BioSand Filter technology to other technologies such as ceramic filters, which broke or fell into disuse after only six months. In addition to highlighting the Hydraid BioSand filter's potential for sustained use, it noted the filter's ability to improve water quality and reduce waterborne disease, which each year results in the death of more than 2.2 million people worldwide.

"We remain driven by the urgent need to not only get clean water into more developing countries, but to provide a solution that will be sustainable," said Christina Keller of Triple Quest. "While skepticism has grown about the attainability of the UN's Millennium Goals, including access to safe water, we are confident that Hydraid can help close the gap. We have demonstrated the sustainability of our product, and we have the production capacity to help meet the Millennium objective. Our focus is now on engaging additional partners -- from non-profits and faith-based organizations to corporations -- who want to help save lives and can offer the resources and distribution capabilities necessary to see this vital effort through."

Triple Quest has teamed with non-profit and corporate partners such as Rotary International, Safe Water Team, Thirsting to Serve, Amway International and many others to bring the filter into needy homes across the developing world. The filter is currently in use in Honduras, Ghana, Dominican Republic and Haiti.  While significant strides have been made in the Hydraid distribution effort, there is a great need to expand into other countries and more remote areas of the countries currently being served.

Triple Quest would like to hear from organizations regarding getting more filters to the families who need them. To donate and learn more about the Hydraid BioSand Water Filter, visit www.hydraid.org or contact Deb Walsh at (616) 854-4222 or deb.walsh@triplequest.com. To watch the latest video, please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vV0qYWbK0E

(c) 2010, WWJ Newsradio 950. All rights reserved.

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