Berkeley Lab projects bringing solutions to the developing world

The Darfur stoves project--reducing rape and producing hope

Since 2003, hundreds of thousands of African Sudanese have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan. This persecution has also driven another 2.2 million people, the majority of them women and children, into crowded camps that are scattered in arid areas with scarce fuel wood resources. Venturing outside the camps in search of fuel to cook their meals often ends in rape and other forms of violence. The Darfur Stoves Project, a collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley, Engineers Without Borders-USA and others, has developed a fuel-efficient stove that can reduce the need to venture outside the camps — reducing the risk of rape and other violence. The Berkeley Darfur Stove® is four times more efficient than traditional 3-stone fires and two times more efficient than clay stoves. The efficiency and design of the stove has many benefits including: less time outside of the camps collecting fuel wood, reducing the risk of exposure to rape and allowing women to pursue income generating opportunities; fully enclosed flames reducing the danger of the dense straw and stick shelters from burning down; and reduction of smoke production compared to other stoves, reducing smoke inhalation and lung disease.

A Cost Effective Method for Removing Arsenic from Water

Over 40 million people in Bangladesh drink groundwater contaminated with arsenic. Although the World Health Organization's recommended maximum limit for arsenic in drinking water is 10 ppb, the arsenic levels in Bangladesh, in some cases, exceed 1000 ppb. Forty thousand people in Bangladesh are already showing signs of arsenic poisoning, in what is rightly called the largest case of mass poisoning in history. Although there are numerous proposed solutions to this devastating problem, many of them are expensive and/or ineffective at decreasing arsenic in drinking water to acceptable levels. Scientists at Berkeley Lab have developed two methods to affordably and effectively remove arsenic from drinking water.

UV Waterworks--clean water to save lives

In the summer of 1993, a mutant strain of cholera (the "Bengal Cholera") hit India, killing tens of thousands of people. The standard vaccine was ineffective and most of the populace of India could not afford to boil their drinking water to protect themselves. Ashok Gadgil, a Berkeley Lab scientist, spurred to action by the tragedy, developed an affordable, effective and low-maintenance water disinfection system employing ultraviolet (UV) light. Cleaning water at four gallons/minute for pennies a gallon, his UVWaterworks devices are installed in over 10 countries around the world. By 2007 these systems were bringing clean water to over half a million people, and growing. Water-borne diseases, such as dysentery, are the largest environmental cause of child and infant mortality in the developing world, killing about 2 million children annually. UVWaterworks goes to the source of the problem by preventing the spread of these diseases, saving resources and lives.

Using synthetic biology to create a low-cost malaria drug

Malaria has become increasingly resistant to first-line drug therapies, but combination drugs containing artemisinin derivatives show nearly 100 percent effectiveness against the malaria parasite.5 Yet, at a price of approximately $2.20 per adult course,6 these drugs are still beyond the reach of the world's poorest people. Now, with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a partnership between the Institute for OneWorld Health, Amyris Biotechnologies, sanofi-aventis, and the University of California, Berkeley is using synthetic biology to help reduce the cost of artemisinin, making life-saving artemisinin combination therapies more accessible to people in the developing world.

Affordable, off-grid LED lighting for the developing world

Thomas Edison's seemingly forward-looking statement that "we will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles" was true enough for the industrialized world, but it did not anticipate the plight of 1.6 billion people—more than the world's population in Edison's time—who 100 years later still have no access to electricity. The Lumina Project began by identifying and quantifying the much-overlooked specter of fuel-based lighting in the developing world. Researchers found that those at the bottom of the economic pyramid spend about $40 billion each year on inefficient, ineffective, and polluting light from kerosene and other fuels. They then identified the potential of compact, rugged, and affordable light-emitting diode ("LED") systems to displace these fuels, while providing radically improved energy services. As NGOs and private companies engage in bringing solutions to the market, the Lumina Project evolves with them and continues to help accelerate technology innovation and the development of markets.