Water and Food Toxin Problem Is Not Hopeless Anymore

SAN DIEGO - Feb. 13, 2014 - PRLog -- It seems everywhere you read there is a concern with toxins. They are in the drinking water and the food. Some are natural like those found in uncooked beans or green potatoes and some are man made like the radiation and the mercury in the drinking water. Every day it seems toxins are found as new technology is developed to find them.

But the toxin problem is not hopeless says the small family R&D team of Allen and Peter Schuh (www.algae-water-food-patents.com) who have worked on solutions for the past seven years and have United States issued patents on the problem.

Water borne toxins threaten the health of everyone. The toxins may be inhaled, ingested, contact the epidermis, or be in the food eaten. The problem of securing uncontaminated drinking water has been recognized since the dawn of civilization. The magnitude of the toxin contamination has only been appreciated during the last few decades because of the technological advances in detection, such as by high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) which is a technique in analytic chemistry used to separate the components in a mixture, to identify each component, and to quantify each component. The development of better analytical methods, such as HPLC, and more recently enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) which is a test that uses antibodies and color change to identify a substance, and for microcystins and nodularins also the protein phosphatase assay has made the quantification of total and individual toxins possible.

Some toxins cause physical symptoms of poisoning almost immediately. The cumulative effect of some toxins may shorten life from the irreversible damage to the DNA. Unfortunately, still today the toxins cannot be avoided entirely in the drinking water, as some are not removed by screens, activated carbon or silver water filters, or chlorine treatment, and some are even made more toxic by boiling. Cooking does not neutralize all toxins in contaminated fish. Nevertheless, there are methods to mitigate the dangers to human health while in your home.

Families find themselves in many environmental settings but the common denominator is often to be close to water. You need it to drink if nothing else. The elses may include cooking, bathing, washing, and even recreation for family members. Any water source is potentially deadly from unseen water toxins. In ancient times the history reports that the toxins in water killed many because the theory as to what made water suitable for consumption had not yet been invented. There is the world of microbiology before and after Pasteur.

For many thousands of years the only way people had to make water safe to drink was to ferment the cereal grains into beer or fruits into wine. They did not know the chemistry but they knew it was safe to drink and the water from the originating source was probably not. Today we realize it is the very low pH from the ethanol production that kills off the microorganisms but still does not necessarily remove all the toxins. The calories from the beverage were also needed in populations with food problems but the main concern was getting safe water. In many parts of the world today drinking water is still a problem.

In that water are chemicals such as Nitrogen and Phosphorous from agricultural runoff, microorganisms feeding on pollution that can cause disease, heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic that have implications to human health as students of autism are aware and toxins caused by algae. The consumer does not cause this situation. It is the reality of living on a planet with a lot of people who are doing a lot of things to make a living.

The presence of toxins in Cyanobacteria (a.k.a. blue-green algae Cyanophyceae) microorganisms assists them in disease prevention and predatory defense. Evidence for adverse human health effects from cyanotoxins derives from three principal sources including: human poisonings, animal poisonings, and toxicological studies.

The algae (a.k.a. cyanobacteria), may have lived in that water source since the water source originated maybe for a million years. The exact chemical conditions of the water including its nutrients and pH, UV exposure to direct sunlight and temperature, will determine which of the over 100,000 species is present, and which of those is dominant at the particular time of year. Cyanobacterial populations may be dominated by a single species or be composed of a variety of species some of which may not be toxic. Measurements of samples taken at the same time from different parts of a lake may show wide divergence in cyanotoxin content with considerable variation in toxin concentrations among the lakes studied both within and between years even though the lakes maybe located within the same climatic region. In any year or season individual water bodies have their own populations of cyanobacteria the dominance of which is dependent not only on the weather but on the specific geochemical conditions of the lake. If there are no major changes in these conditions toxic blooms are likely to recur annually in those lakes that have a history of toxic blooms.

The puzzle for the consumer is whether the water is potable. The problem is that you cannot tell by looking even with magnification. Toxic and non-toxic strains from the same cyanobacterial species cannot be separated by microscopic identification. There are no adequate methods of testing for the cyanotoxins in the field setting. You assume there will be some microorganism life present in the water but you cannot tell if it is toxic.

Typically, the consumer will draw the water from where it is clearest in appearance then filter the draw with a common fine screen silver or carbon filter and finally for the very cautious, boil it to be sure it is fit to drink. Unfortunately, those procedures still do not guarantee pure drinking water. Some toxins get by all of those screens and are actually made stronger by boiling.

The problem with most toxins is that they accumulate in the organs of the body such as the liver. The effects can be immediate and dramatic but they may be subtle and long term.

The toxin problem has a solution. Inventors Allen J. Schuh, Ph.D. and Peter A. Schuh are offering their seven water treatment and algae related patents for sale. These patents are well known to researchers who have followed the intellectual property literature in water treatment and alternative energy over the past five years.

United States Pat. No. 8,354,030 Purification System For Cyanotoxic-Contaminated Water is a system for removing cyanotoxins and excess ions from contaminated water. Contaminated water passes from a storage tank, through a sand filter, through a reaction chamber, and finally through a carbon filter. The sand filter removes particulates and bacteria. The reaction chamber first destroys cyanotoxins, algae, and bacteria through the use of high voltage shocks applied between two groups of electrodes then the voltage on the electrodes is lowered and electrolysis is used to sequester free ions in the water in the region near the electrodes. Partially treated water is removed from the upper portion of the reaction chamber and passed through a carbon filter to remove radiation, and improve taste and smell. The water is then potable. The water remaining in the reaction chamber is discarded into a reservoir. The patent is a purification apparatus for contaminated water employing high-voltage DC pulse and subsequent low-voltage DC field described in the patent. These improved treatment techniques purify water containing contaminants of cyanotoxins, bacteria, viruses, parasites, positively charged ions, negatively charged ions, and radiation.

Algae is water borne, easy to grow, and sidesteps the food versus fuel debate as few people eat algae.

Eventually, five separate points of focus evolved that defined the field. (1) Algae, a smelly plant prevalent in many water sources and courses, had to be recovered from its environment. Dredging was the obvious method, but there were problems. Dredge heads clog, which causes delays in production and additional financial costs of employing swimmers to unclog the plugs. So, the Schuhs patented a dredge head that will not clog. (2) Then, the oil needs to be separated from the algae. Algae come in all sizes. The smallest algae cannot be processed as one would a large feedstock such as corn. The larger algae had its own problems in oil recovery. They ended up acquiring two separate patents for processing both sizes of algae. That under 15 microns is processed by adding a high pressure, but the larger is processed by taking away pressure. (3) Once separated, the oil and oil-less mash needed to be converted to their respective fuel by a piece of processing equipment, which has many features. The oil-less mash can be converted to ethanol or methane. The feedstock is the same, but the treatments are different. There is the use of many biologicals here including fungus, yeasts, and bacteria of several sorts. They acquired the patent rights to those also. A unit of feedstock can even be treated sequentially to recover the oil, then the ethanol, and then the methane. An outcome of the ethanol distillation is recovery of drinking water, which in some cases is worth more than the ethanol. (4) Separately, the algae can be detoxified in the eventually that the producer chooses to use it as feed for livestock, or even human consumption. If the equipment is robust, as Schuhs is, the same equipment can used to process jatropha, and other toxic feedstock to render it suitable even for human consumption. (5) In a later stage of processing, phosphorous can be retrieved, which is a critical fertilizer component, from the plants and water source. The elimination of toxins from the water to make it suitable for drinking as described in United States Pat. No. 8,354,030 is the final (6th) step.


Peter A. Schuh

(760) 579-9885