Young Scientist's Work on Bangladesh's Water Woes Wins Her Trip to Sweden
A 15-year-old Portland, Ore., student may have found a solution to Bangladeshs chronic arsenic problem with its drinking water. Kathryn VanderWeele, a freshman from Oregon Episcopal School, was recently named the U.S. winner of the Stockholm Junior Water Prize (SJWP) for her study, "Removal of Arsenic from Drinking Water by Water Hyacinths," sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Clean Water Association.
According to the World Health Organization, as many as 77 million of the people in Bangladesh are at risk from arsenic in drinking water. VanderWeele, who got interested in studying water quality issues after a mandatory seventh-grade science project, stumbled across the Bangladeshi drinking water problem.