Human rabies in rural Bangladesh.

Rabies is a major public health problem in Bangladesh, where most of the population live in rural areas. However, there is little epidemiological information on rabies in rural Bangladesh. This study was conducted in 30 upazilas (subdistricts) covering all six divisions of the country, to determine the levels of rabies and animal bites in Bangladesh. The total population of these upazilas was 6 992 302. A pretested questionnaire was used and data were collected by interviewing the adult members of families. We estimated that in Bangladesh, 166 590 [95% confidence interval (CI) 163 350-170 550] people per year are bitten by an animal. The annual incidence of rabies deaths in Bangladesh was estimated to be 1·40 (95% CI 1·05-1·78)/100 000 population. By extrapolating this, we estimated that 2100 (95% CI 1575-2670) people die annually from rabies in Bangladesh. More than three-quarters of rabies patients died at home. This community-based study provides new information on rabies epidemiology in Bangladesh.

Performance of a modified multi-stage bubble column reactor for lead(II) and biological oxygen demand removal from wastewater using activated rice husk.

The excessive release of wastewater into the environment is a major concern worldwide. Adsorption is the one of the most effective technique for treatment of wastewater. In this work activated carbon prepared from rice husk has been used as an adsorbent. In the present investigation a three phase modified multi-stage bubble column reactor (MMBCR) has been designed to remove lead and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) from wastewater by means of its adsorption onto the surface of activated rice husk. The multi-staging has been achieved by hydrodynamically induced continuous bubble generation, breakup and regeneration. Under optimum conditions, maximum lead and BOD reduction achieved using activated rice husk was 77.15% and 19.05%, respectively. Results showed MMBCR offered appreciated potential benefits for lead removal from wastewater and BOD removal, even this extent of removal is encouraging and the MMBCR can be used a pretreatment unit before subjecting the wastewater to biological treatment.

Removal of methylene blue from wastewater using fly ash as an adsorbent by hydrocyclone.

The excessive release of color into the environment is a major concern worldwide. Adsorption process is among the most effective techniques for color removal from wastewater and fly ash has been widely used as an adsorbent. Therefore, this study was carried out to understand the adsorption behavior of methylene blue from aqueous systems onto fly ash using the continuous mode. Continuous mode sorption experiments were carried out to remove methylene blue from its aqueous solutions in hydrocyclone equipment. The experiments were performed at constant temperature and dimensions of hydrocyclone with variation of flows through the equipment, concentrations of methylene blue solutions and fly ash concentration, respectively. A maximum removal of 58.24% was observed at adsorbent dosage of 900 mg/l at pH 6.75 for an initial methylene blue concentration of 65 mg/l.