The following article was written by Claire Wang, a field researcher at Sherwood Institute and a senior at Columbia University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, on her recent work with Engineers Without Borders during the summer of 2010.

“Pure water!  Pure water!” As we inch slowly along the bumpy road amidst an awful traffic jam, women and children walk up and down by the cars, finding drivers and passengers to buy cold plastic sachets of “pure water” from them. Cold, five hundred-milliliter bags of water sit in a basin on their head as they peek through the windows for thirsty customers.

The plastic bagged water is Ghana’s version of a cold water fountain or a bottle of water—quick, cheap and refreshing.  Without the infrastructure to conveniently fill up your own bottle with clean water, nor the money to purchase a bottle of water, people purchase these water sachets when in need of a cold drink.  One bag, containing 500 mL, costs less than five cents—so what’s not to like about it? The problem is that the so-called “pure water” is not actually as pure as it sounds.

A study conducted by the University of Ghana over 27 different brands of sachet water showed that 77% contained pathogenic parasitic organisms.  This is very unfortunate, especially because sachet water was introduced in order to provide clean and cheap instant drinking water to people in Ghana.  Possible reasons for the contamination are sited in the study as “improper processing and purification procedures, unhygienic handling after production, the small size of the pathogens which enable them to escape filtration and the resistance of these pathogens to physical water treatment agents and disinfectants”.  Though I had known vaguely about the substandard quality of Ghanaian sachet water, I did not understand its severity until it was compared to water from a borehole in rural Ghana.

The purpose of my trip to Ghana this past summer was to work with the village of Obodan through Columbia University’s Engineers Without Borders.  One of our projects currently in progress is a water distribution system, which will be sourced from an Artesian well approximately thirty meters deep.   We expected this water to be contaminated, not only because the general rule of thumb for travelers on drinking water in developing countries is never to drink from wells, but also because research showed that water in the city of Kumasi was contaminated by traces of human waste due to poor waste management.  Thus, our impression on Ghanaian groundwater was that it was unsanitary, and we thought that sachet water would be cleaner than borehole water.

We were careful with the water we used—ensuring that we only drank from sachets or bottles, and used only that water if there was any  chance of ingesting it—for dish-washing, brushing teeth, washing fruit and vegetables, and cooking.  We used borehole water for everything else—bathing, rinsing dishes (the primary rinse before actually washing), washing clothes.  Sachet water could be purchased cheaply and borehole water was free, but fetching borehole water involved a few minutes’ walk to the source and then a good workout carrying the water back.  We saw water in a completely different way than we usually did.  It became something we had to work for, even though it was still a basic human need.  On days with heavy rain, we’d harvest the rainwater from our roof to use for dish-washing and bathing, saving us a good number of trips to the borehole.

When we conducted our own field tests, they qualitatively showed the presence of bacteria in sachet water, like the study by the University of Ghana.  What surprised us more was that the borehole water proved to have little to no bacteria, according to both our own field test and analysis by the Water Research Institute of Ghana.   Although we did not have sachet water quantitatively analyzed against our borehole water, the photo shows the difference in coliform levels between the two types of water.

The reason for the relatively good quality of Obodan’s borehole water may be that it is under a confined aquifer, which not all villages are lucky to have.  Some have dysfunctional boreholes or no boreholes at all, and must fetch their water from a stream instead.  Having such clean water means that treatment for the distribution system will not need to be elaborate and therefore will be much cheaper.

Our borehole water…was cleaner than the sachet water? Was our water purer than “pure water”?!  Was cooking with sachet water actually a mistake?  We actually started to wash our dishes with only borehole water, but continued to drink sachet water, though I did take a few sips from the borehole on my last day.   Perhaps the sachet water isn’t so pure, but there is something that we could call close to pure.

Tags: Engineers Without Borders, Ghana, Water Sachets
Posted in BLOG, Water Resources | 4 Comments »

4 Responses to “An analysis of water quality of Ghana’s water sachets”

1. kwame francis says:

   March 20, 2011 at 2:39 pm

   my name is francis kwame, a level 3OO student of Regent University ghana, studying computer science.
   Currently im workin on a business idea to not only make money but paramountly produce bottled and sachet water stored in paper bottles and sachets in order to reduce the amount of waste traditional plastics that are not biodegradable are causing to be heaaped all around the country….In my research i chanced upon your article and i believe we could work together to produce eco friendly ways of serving ghanains with really purified drinking water in paper bottles and sachets

   Reply
2. Stephen Padget says:

   March 24, 2011 at 1:31 pm

   Hi,

   Very interesting article.

   Please could I enquire about permission to re-use some of it and in particular- use the picture of the water bags?

   Kindest Regards

   Stephen Padget

   Reply
   • Theodore Lim says:

     June 7, 2011 at 6:37 am

     Hi,
     Sure, you may use the pictures with attribution to this site.
     Best,
     Theo

     Reply
3. Nathaniel K. Somuah says:

   August 22, 2011 at 11:23 pm

   I am an Msc. Hydrogeology (Groundwater Resources Development) student at the University of Ghana.
   I am left with my thesis to complete my course this december 2011. After reading your article, i am very happy that you are enlightening people of the importance of groundwater. Majority of Ghanaians are il-informed about the benefits of groundwater. We would continue to spread the good news far so that we reduce water related diseases.
   Once again, thanks for your article and your good work.
   Cheers.

   Reply