monahan - perception & interaction with environmental resources

Perception & Interaction with Environmental Resources

What is clean?

Kyle Monahan, Tufts University

Green Exchange | 4-15-2015

One River’s Story – Thames

Green Exchange | Harvard Extension School | 4-15-2015

• Humanity relies on rivers• Drinking water

• Transport

• Waste removal

• Ecosystem services

• Floodplains Agri etc.Karr et al 2000

• River Thames is no

different• Largest river in England

• Transport (ship & travel)

• Waste removal

View From Charing Cross, 1800

River Thames, 2008



• Humans have used rivers for waste

disposal and drinking water• Preferably not concurrently

• Pre-automobile

• Pre-industrial

• Populations?

• Dilution originally was protective• For people, drastic biological Δ

• Trash and sewage water inputs into

rivers are still a problem globally• But the Thames was especially bad

Manila, Philippines, 2009



• 1851 – The Great Exhibition

• Water closets (for the wealthy)

• Population rise (+2M people in 1851)

• 100 additional gallons of waste/household(Halliday, 2013)

• Industrial processes • Tanneries, butcheries

• Paper mills

• Overall – influx of waste

where to River Thames 1876

“The Great Stink”




“Sir I traversed this day, by steam boat, the space

between London and Hungerford Bridge, between

half past one and two o’clock; it was low water and

I think the tide must have been near the turn… The

whole of the river was an opaque, pale brown

fluid…near the bridges, the feculence rolled up in

clouds so dense that they were visible as the surface,

even in water of this kind.” ~ Michael Faraday,

1855 (Halliday, 2010)


Old Father Thames

receiving a card

from Sir Faraday

& a drop of “London

water”


• 1858, summer - Thought about

moving Parliament! (Law, 2010)

• Sir Joe Bazalgette – Thames

Embankment “Main Drain”


1865

“From inhaling the

odour of beef the

butcher's wife obtains

her obesity.”

~Professor H

Booth, Builder, July

1844


• Smell and taste were used as methods

to detect extreme water impurities &

pollution

• Reigning belief at the time was in

miasma theory • Gr:Μίασμα; for pollution

• Especially for cholera in London• Interesting to note the Chinese theory of 瘴氣

(Zhàngqì) is similar, but much older

• Sensory information has always been

important for water quality assessments

Why do we care about this?


• Eventually the “The Great Stink”

forced Parliament to implement

changes

• Proper waste disposal (for the time)• decrease in cholera cases

• John Snow; public health intervention

• Final large outbreak in 1866 – in non-

served area – “proven” (Halliday, 2001)

• Eventually replaced by germ theory

Why do we care about this?


How do you define clean water?


How do we perceive clean water?

Objective Subjective

ChemicalBiological

/Physical

EconomicCultural

Knowledge

& History

Removal

Methods Among other influences, see the social

learning theory for interpersonal

impacts (Bandura, 1997)


Objectively “clean”

• Actually fairly important

• 2010 - UN Right to [Clean] Water

(link)

• Clean means free from “micro-

organisms, chemical substances and

radiological hazards that constitute a

threat to a person's health.”

• Must also have “acceptable

colour, odour and taste for each

personal or domestic use”…

• Unclean water & sanitation still 2nd

largest global mortality in children

Of 783 Million…

http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/human_right_to_water.shtml


Subjectively “clean”

• Actually clean water only matters to

scientists and doctors, it’s perception

that drives action

• We don’t (all) have access to labs with

MS and GC machines

• People use their eyes, nose and taste

buds as approximate sensing tools

• f(education, SES, access to tools)


Subjectively “clean”

• In fact, our tongues can detect

chemicals through taste

• e.g. NaCl makes water taste

somewhat “salty” or “bitter”

• Flavors are actually

chemicals• E.g. capsaicin “spicy”

• Water can modify “taste” through

altered H ion channels (Bartoshuk, 2012)

• Summary: water is a great solvent

and can carry many tastes


Side note – Perception Matters

• Some people (water scientists) might

be annoyed that I’m downplaying the

role of objectivity

• The role of perception and social

conformity influences action more than

we might like to believe

• Unless we’re psycho(logists)

• See the Asch Line Conformity study

(1951)

Movie Break – Asch Conformity


• How to model perception: Decision models – called binary probit

– multimodel regression that predicts the outcome (Y/N)

How to we define clean?

• This model

predicts

water use

decisions

in rural

Kenya

• How far

from the

water?


• Practical &

interpersonal comm.

impact decisions

• Viral fear “going

viral”

• E.g. ebola in US

(risk low, media

high)

• Dihydrogen

monoxide poisoning

is a real risk!

How to we define clean?


Can we create both safe &

acceptable water?

• Currently +35 operational ceramic filter factories worldwide (CDC, 2011).

– POU water filter for unimproved water supplies

• Ceramic filters are one option for objectively clean water

– SODIS, slow sand filters, chlorination

– All have benefits and risks


• Pore size of a regular clay pot ~0.6 to 3.0 microns

• Provides too slow flow rates

– Humans need 2-4 L/day (Rayner, 2009)

• Fix: adding “burn out material”

– E.g. sawdust, rice husk, soybean husk

– Any organic material that will burn out, increasing porosity

Source for photo and info: (Hagan, 2011)Green Exchange | Harvard Extension School | 4-15-2015

• These filters have a long

lifespan (1 to 2 years) (Rayner,

2009)

• This provides a low-cost

“point of use” water filter (Brown and Sobsey, 2009)

• Full disclosure: this is what I do all

day at Tufts


• With this pore size, we can remove:– Macroscopic contaminants

– Helminth eggs (pluricellularworms which infect mammals)

– Bacteria (99.9% removal)

– Viruses

• This can provide clean water – If used at all; 32%

compliance (Clasen, 2015)

– If used correctly Green Exchange | Harvard Extension School | 4-15-2015


But what is clean water for

people living here?

[Kumi, Uganda]


• What defines “clean” generally?

• Taste

• Color

• Odor

• Source

• “Age” Storage

• Not all variables matter to all people survey

at the personal level (perception is at individual

level) “cup of water for your child”

Case Study: Ceramic Water Filter


• Ceramic filters can both remove

and induce production of

organoleptics

• “sensory information from

taste, odor, color and

turbidity” Doria et al, 2010

• Ceramic filters can remove

bacteria and viruses, but they

may leave a “clay taste”

• How do we perceive clean?


organoleptics

French organoleptique, from organ- + Greek lēptikos disposed to take


• On the social level, many

engineers and scientists don’t

think about one thing:

marketing!

• Especially in POU

• Need household-level buy in

• Marketing can be word of

mouth, or traditional

• E.g. PUR and other companies



THE FIVE “P”s (Heierli, 2008):

1. Products must be well designed

2. The pricing of POUs is must be

attractive for the buyer and for the

seller

3. Must find a place to sell them

(beyond factory)

4. Must promote the product AND

correct behavior

5. People: Must convince people the

product is good OR choose another

technology plus sustainable?


$10 USD on soda $10 USD on filter


• China has the sixth greatest

water resources

• Per capita water access in

China is in lowest third

• Uneven distribution of

water resources • North China has 20% of

water resources but 64% of

area (Blanke et al, 2007)

• Led to water shortages & need

for behavior change

Case Study: Water Use in China


• First from geologists, cartographers & farmers – making maps!



• Adoption is highly dependent on

local identity and social value

orientation (SVO) (Bonaituo et al,

2008), increased cooperation

• Traditional technologies were

consistent with village leaders

uses since 1980’s. • Though they have helped reduce

water use (Du et al, 2013).

• Household (personal behavior

changes) increased in 1990’s with

scarcity. plastic sheeting



• Increased community involvement (China

case) & allowing for personal choice

(CWF case) CLTS

• CLTS was a great idea:

• Subsidy to reduce cost of building a

toilet (Robinson et al, 2006)

• Installation of toilet

• Social “shaming” of open defecation

• But use is still very low?

• Why? • scale of the problems

• community input w/o buy in

Similarities – Community Led

Total Sanitation (CLTS)

Human Impacts

ENVR | E-147 | International Environmental Governance


• Impacts are hard to cognitively “grapple with”• Temporal scale

• easier with remote sensing & GIS

• Spatial scale

• do I care if it’s not my water

• Impersonal nature of mechanisms

• But this psychology isn’t all bad – cooperation actually

dominates over conflicts over water (link)• Though conflicts over resources have occurred historically

(Gleick et al, 2015) and there is active debate

• May be because war in general is less common

But it’s not all bad …

http://www.iwaponline.com/wp/00501/wp005010029.htm

Movies – Coke on the Border


• This lighthearted (profit-driven) commercial highlights

capacity for cooperation

• Understanding perception of risks and water

safety is important for providing access to clean

water resources

• No health implementation will be successful

without assessing the sociology/psychology of the

technology and culture. Plus practical context!

Conclusions


• Similarly, to change any

behavior, we need to

understand the motivations

behind it • These are social problems

w/engineering components

• Only a short review – please

feel free to contact me for

more literature on the topic!

Conclusions


Thanks & Questions

Discussion Questions

• What about developing world vs developed world

definitions of clean? Is water ever really clean?

• Is there bias in assuming that everyone perceives

water resources similarly? Can we make such wide-

reaching claims?

• Are there ethical implications from assuming that

objective clean is less imporant than subjective

clean? E.g. childhood mortality rates

Movies – How to make CWF

Movies – Risk Perception Along the Border

(US-Mexico)

Movies – TU Delft CWF

Sources

• Halliday, Stephen. The great stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the cleansing of the Victorian metropolis. The

History Press, 2013.

• Karr, James R., and Ellen W. Chu. Introduction: Sustaining living rivers. Springer Netherlands, 2000.

• Law, Jules David. The Social Life of Fluids: Blood, Milk, and Water in the Victorian Novel. Cornell University Press,

2010.

• Onjala, Joseph, Simon Wagura Ndiritu, and Jesper Stage. "Risk perception, choice of drinking water and water

treatment: evidence from Kenyan towns." Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development 4.2 (2014): 268-

280.

• Bartoshuk, Linda M. "History of taste research." HANDBOOK OF PERCEPTION VOL 6A (2012): 1.

• Cain, William S. "History of research on smell." In Handbook of perception 6 (2012): 197-229.

• Blanke, Amelia, et al. "Water saving technology and saving water in China." Agricultural Water Management 87.2

(2007): 139-150.

• DU, Tai-sheng, et al. "Alternate furrow irrigation: A practical way to improve grape quality and water use efficiency in arid northwest China." Journal of Integrative Agriculture 12.3 (2013): 509-519.

• Robinson, Andy. "Community-led total sanitation." British Travel Health Association Journal 7 (2006): 18.

• Kar, Kamal, and Robert Chambers. Handbook on community-led total sanitation. London: Plan UK, 2008.

• Also see within slide notes for websites & other sources

• Contact kyle.monahan(at)fas.harvard.edu with questions or kyle.monahan (at) tufts.edu

monahan - perception & interaction with environmental resources

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