A professor who developed an inexpensive, easy-to-make system for filtering
arsenic from well water has won a $1 million engineering prize -- and he plans
to use most of the money to distribute the filters to needy communities around
the world.
The National Academy of Engineering announced Thursday that the 2007 Grainger
Challenge Prize for Sustainability would go to Abul Hussam, a chemistry
professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. Hussam's invention is already
in use today, preventing serious health problems in residents of the professor's
native Bangladesh.
After moving to the United States in 1978, Hussam got his citizenship and
received a doctorate in analytical chemistry. The Centreville, Va., resident has
spent much of this career trying to devise a solution to the arsenic problem,
which was accidentally caused by international aid agencies that had funded a
campaign to dig wells in Eastern India and Bangladesh. ...