What is the human race without the availability of fresh drinking water? Raising awareness among masses, the drinking water crisis takes another leap in areas of Michigan, Flint, Vermont and many other states in New York. Contamination of safe drinking water has been pointed as one of the eminent causes of water crisis.
Joe O’Connell reports that Ameet Pinto, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Northeastern University, is working upon making drinking water safer and cleaner to consume. He arrived at the University with a curiosity to unravel the truth behind how the microbes still persist to live even after being treated. To acquire knowledge about the genomes he devised a method of using DNA sequencing. His goal is to moderate a kind of treatment that will ensure that the contamination is completely removed.
Pinto explains that there are about 1 million to 100 million microbial cells present in just a litre of drinking water. Even if these bacteria are smaller than the ones present in your food, they have not been studied with particular importance.
He suggests and proposes the question : “One application that can come from this is if the organisms are already there, can we benefit from them in some way and are there sustainable processes we can implement to exploit the already-present biology?”
Pinto was inspired by a class that spoke about pollution taking over our environment, while he was pursuing chemical engineering. He thought of putting his engineering background to use and use it for the betterment of the environment. After studying management of wastewater, he noticed that the bacteria present in water can be used.
Biology played one of the main roles in the way water contamination was treated. He brought about a vast difference in the thinking of people. Pinto’s background as a lecturer in University of Glasgow helped him achieve the goals that he had chalked out. In the future, he plans to collaborate with other researchers who wish to add to his studies.
Subarna Basu