Ron Rivera (public health)

Ronald "Ron" Rivera (22 August 1948 – 3 September 2008) was a U.S. activist best known for developing an inexpensive ceramic water filter used to treat gray water in impoverished communities and for establishing community-based factories to produce the filters around the world.

Life and career

Born in the Bronx of Puerto Rican parents and raised in New York City and Puerto Rico, Rivera graduated from The World University in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He also studied at the School for International Training. Rivera worked with the Peace Corps in Panama and Ecuador, and with Catholic Relief Services in Bolivia. He founded the local consultancy office for the Inter American Foundation in Ecuador where he worked until 1988, when he moved to Nicaragua.

Rivera first became passionate about ceramics in the early 1970s when he studied with Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich in Cuernavaca, Mexico. From these teachers, he learned that human beings had lost their connection with the earth. He then went to live with an experienced potter and learned the art of ceramics, one of the great passions of his life.

Rivera worked for over two decades in Nicaragua with potters from rural communities, helping them to enhance their production methods, including the implementation of a more fuel-efficient kiln developed by Manny Hernandez, a professor at Northern Illinois University. He also worked with potters around the country to develop new designs and to connect to new markets.

He first learned of ceramic pot filters from Guatemalan chemist Fernando Mazariegos. The filters are made with a mix of local terra-cotta clay and sawdust or other combustible materials, such as rice husks. The combustible ingredient, which has been milled and screened, burns out in the firing, leaving a network of fine pores. After firing, the filter is coated with colloidal silver. This combination of fine pore size and the bactericidal properties of colloidal silver produce an effective filter, killing over 98 percent of the contaminants that cause diarrhea, thus dramatically reducing public health problems in the communities that use them to purify potable water.

The Family Foundation of the Americas, a Guatemalan organization, conducted a one year follow-up study on the initial Mazariegos-led filter project, concluding that this filter helped to reduce the incidence of diarrhea in participating households by as much as 50 percent. Laboratory testing and field studies have been performed on the filter by various institutions, including MIT, Tulane University, University of Colorado and University of North Carolina.

Rivera began manufacturing the pots through Potters for Peace in Nicaragua, eventually helping to establish an independent enterprise to produce the filters. Beginning in 1998, he traveled throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia to establish 30 filter microenterprises in Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, El Salvador, the Darfur region of Sudan, Myanmar and other countries. These factories have produced over 300,000 filters, and the filters are used by about 1.5 million people to date. An additional 13 filter workshops are scheduled to begin operating by the end of next year.

The filter has been cited by the United Nations’ Appropriate Technology Handbook, and tens of thousands of filters have been distributed worldwide by organizations such as International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Plan International, Project Concern International, Oxfam and USAID.

Rivera’s filters were included in an exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum called "Design for the Other 90 Percent."

Rivera died in Managua, Nicaragua, after contracting falciparum malaria while working in Nigeria.Grimes, William (September 14, 2008). [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/health/14rivera.html Ron Rivera, Potter Devoted to Clean Water, Dies at 60.] "New York Times"]

ee also

*List of famous Puerto Ricans
*Puerto Rican scientists and inventors

References

External links

* [http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/user/15390/view Ron Rivera profile] via Changemakers
* [http://video.cooperhewitt.org/design-for-the-other-90-ron-rivera-coordinator-of-ceramic-water-filter-and-international-projects-potters-for-peace Design for the other 90%: Ron Rivera Coordinator of Ceramic Water Filter and International Projects, Potters for Peace]
* [http://www.pottersforpeace.org Potters for Peace (U.S.)]
* [http://www.potterswithoutborders.com Potters without Borders(Canada)]