HEALTH TIP - WATER IN BRASS VESSEL

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Drinking water stored in brass vessels good for health

Press Trust of India

New York, April 11, 2005|12:07 IST

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1315393,00040010.htm Ancient Indian

wisdom that drinking water should be stored in brass vessels for good health

has now been proved scientifically by researchers.

 

Microbiologists say that water stored in brass containers could help combat many

water-borne diseases and should be used in developing countries rather than

their cheaper alternatives, plastic containers, researchers said.

 

Water-borne diseases remain a serious threat in many poor regions of the world,

with around 2 million children dying each year from diarrhoea. Efforts to

provide safe drinking water have had difficulty reaching remote areas.

 

Even in places with basic water-purification systems, people often opt for

riskier wells under trees because the water is cooler, Rob Reed, who led the

brass study, was quoted by Nature magazine as saying.

 

It said on a recent trip to India, Reed, a microbiologist at Northumbria

University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, witnessed villagers doing exactly this.

 

But he also heard an interesting piece of local wisdom: people believe that

traditional brass water containers offer some protection against sickness. The

idea, Nature added, intrigued Reed, who was in Asia investigating the

anti-bacterial effects of sunlight on water.

 

He has now found that bacteria are indeed less likely to thrive in brass water

pots than in earthenware or plastic ones. "It's one of the traditional ideas of

water treatment and we were able to find a microbiological basis for it," he was

quoted as saying.

 

Reed, with his colleagues Puja Tandon and Sanjay Chhibber, carried out two

series of experiments, Nature reported.

 

In Britain, the researchers filled brass and earthenware vessels with a diluted

culture of Escherichia coli bacteria, which can cause illnesses such as

dysentery. They then counted the surviving bacteria after 6, 24 and 48 hours. A

similar test was carried out in India using naturally contaminated water.

 

The amount of live E Coli in the brass vessels dropped dramatically over time,

and after 48 hours they fell to undetectable levels, Reed told the Society for

General Microbiology's meeting this week in Edinburgh, UK.

 

The key to the result is copper, which can disrupt biological systems, Reed

explains. The element acts by interfering with the membranes and enzymes of

cells; for bacteria, this can mean death.

 

Pots made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, shed copper particles into the

water they contain. The amounts that circulate into the brass water vessels

could not harm humans, Reed added.

 

Even a person drinking 10 litres of such water in a single day would take in

less than the daily recommended dose of copper or zinc, Nature quoted

researchers as saying.

 

Brass water pots also easily outperformed plastic ones, the researchers

discovered. Plastic, Reed was quoted as saying, did not inactivate the

bacteria. But many people in developing nations use plastic drinking vessels,

because they view them as more modern.

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