So addicted to technology, we have forgotten that nature has an answer to just about everything – including water purification. Douglas Schauer, a PhD has shown that cilantro – a leafy herb used in Middle East cooking – can clear toxins from contaminated water.
Eschewing the current activated carbon method of water purification, Schauer from Ivy Tech Community College has been working with what he calls biosorbents to clean contaminated water.
Less costly than typical water purification methods, biosorbents are low-cost alternatives such as microbes and plants that are readily available in nature.
While presenting his findings at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society that closed yesterday, Schauer said that cilantro, which is also known as coriander, Chinese or Thai parsley, can remove toxic heavy metals with ease.
“Cilantro may seem too pricey for use in decontaminating large amounts of water for drinking and cooking,” Schauer said.
“However, cilantro grows wild in vast amounts in countries that have problems with heavy-metal water pollution. It is readily available, inexpensive and shows promise in removing certain metals, such as lead, copper and mercury, that can be harmful to human health.”
The structure of the other walls of Cilantro’s microscopic cells have the ideal architecture to absorb heavy metals, Physorg reports. Parsley and culantro have similar properties.
Schauer proposes to pack the cilantro into packets that are similar to tea-bags, or the herb can be packed into water filter cartridges.
With so many people without clean drinking water throughout the Middle East, a dedicated awareness campaign could go a long way to informing them of natural methods of purifying one of our planet’s most necessary and increasingly precious resources.
:: Physorg
Image of cilantro, Shutterstock
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
The picture shown above is not cilantro but is actually flat leaf parsley…
It is a great findings for natural water purification in Southeast asian and middle-east where available grown in wild, in previous research we got some plants, actives to reduces heavy metal and purify from it but heavy metal absorption character of Cilantro Hailed is a new window to naturally water purification……we are waiting for more findings as Cilantro Hailed plant.