A lot of fluoride in water, Wainaina notes, has been known to cause dental and skeletal fluorosis. Skeletal fluorosis is weakening of bones.
She explains that fluoride is one of the minerals found in water and is quite useful for hardening of bones and teeth in combination with calcium mineral.
“In our waters, we can have fluoride levels up to one per parts per million and this can go on to 1.2per part per million. Anything above that provides a high level of fluorosis,” Wainaina says.
The Nakuru Water Company is charged with providing clean and safe drinking water for Nakuru residents. We asked the Managing Director John Cheruiyot why the story seems different.
“Actually the fluoride is mainly found in ground water, you cannot find fluoride in surface water which is water in the rivers. So our aquifers have fairly low fluoride levels and what we do is that we blend the water we get from our boreholes with water from the rivers,” Cheruiyot says.
“We have two river sources, one coming from Dundori where at the moment we get about four million litres per day. The other water we get from river Malewa. It gets into our main treatment works so we do the blending,” he goes on to say.
He says that this brings the fluoride levels of the water to between 1.5 per part per million and 2 per part per million which he terms as acceptable.
But according to Wainaina, this fluoride level is still too high for consumption.
Business people in Nakuru have taken advantage of the situation and signs of dental cleaning are common in the town.
The Nakuru deflouridation company under the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru is trying to end this problem by encouraging Nakuru residents to defluoridate their drinking and cooking water through a technology known as bonechar.
“Bonechar comes from the word charred bones and we buy raw bones of cows, sheep and goats. We char them at temperatures of 500 for 10 to 12 days then we crush them. We then clean them and then they are dried by natural sun. Then that is what we call bone char,” Explains Esther Wanja, a water engineer and also the Sales and Marketing Manager at the defluoridation company.
“What we do is once we get the bonechar ready, we design filters in a way that we pour the bonechar inside and the water will pass through the bonechar which will attract the fluoride and allow water to flow out of the tap fluoride free,” says Wanja.
The church started engaging in water defluoridation after the realisation that the water in Nakuru was causing more harm than good.
“When the diocese came in, in 1985, Kenya was hit by a drought. They came in to drill for water and as they were drilling they found out that yes they are giving the communities water but this water is poisonous because it has high levels of fluorides,” she explains how the deflouridation company came to be.
The reason for using bones in deflouridation, Wanja says, is because they are rich in calcium and phosphorous. This, she explains, makes the bones attract the fluoride and capture it so that the water flows out without fluoride.
“What we do is once we get the bonechar ready, we design filters in a way that we pour the bonechar inside and the water will pass through the bonechar which will attract the fluoride and allow water to flow out of the tap fluoride free,” says Wanja.
“But the clients are encouraged to keep monitoring their water by taking their samples to labs to analyse after every six months so that we can know when the water passes the 1.5 mark and then they can change the filter material,” she explains.
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