Guanajuato, Gto., February 5, 2016. With the purpose to guarantee that the water that is consumed in the communities is fluorine free, Norma Alicia Dominguez Stevens, a student of the Master in Sciences of Water degree from the University of Guanajuato, created a filter using beef bone charcoal, a device that is cheap so the own habitants from the communities can fabricate.

Norma Alicia presented her proposal two years ago in the "Expo Agua", where she managed to get support so her idea be implemented in "Valencianita", a community close to the city of Irapuato. Seeing the results in the housing where they used the filter, the extension of its use to other communities in the state is being analyzed.

Polluted water with fluorine –explains the student from Campus Guanajuato—creates many health problems such as teeth damage (manifested with brown color stains) and the bones become fragile and brittle.

Besides, "almost always when you find fluorine, you find arsenic. So is water highly contaminated, the idea –with this filter—is to begin eliminating fluorine and continue with other pollutants", explains Lic. Norma Dominguez.

The next step will be installing the filter in the school of Valencianita to guarantee that the water the children drink from the fountains is pollution-free, since they have detected health problems among the habitants derived from the fluorine consumption.

The device created by UG's student, represents a very economical alternative, since commercial filters are six times more expensive. The habitants from the community only cover the installation cost, and after they can fabricate it themselves, because it needs to be changed every six months.

With this project denominated "Método y Dispositivo utilizando carbon de hueso de res para la remoción de fluór en agua para consumo humano" (Method and device using beef bone charcoal to remove fluorine from water for human consumption), Norma Alicia Dominguez obtained the third place in the category "Invención Posgrado" (Postgraduate invention) in the 2015 edition of the "Concurso de Creatividad e Innovación", organized by UG. She was also awarded by IMPI (Mexican Institute of Industrial Property), an organism that gave her a medal this February 3rd to recognize her talent.