Back in June I wrote about efforts being made to provide clean drinking water around the globe. A United Nations/Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 study says that 11 percent of the global population does not have access to an improved source of drinking water. These sources include household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collections. Over 40 percent of all people without improved drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nanotechnology has been employed to help combat this serious issue. The recipient of the inaugural Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation earned this award by developing a sand-based water filtration system which absorbs the contaminants that are present in the sample. The University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology palladium nanoparticles to clean up drinking water.
Here’s another to add to the list:
The Drinkable Book, developed by a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, provides people with information about the importance of clean drinking water. And then the book itself becomes a tool for the task. The book’s pages are treated with silver or copper nanoparticles, used to kill bacteria and some viruses in water as it is filtered through the paper.
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Dr. Teri Dankovich conducted field investigations in South Africa, Ghana, Haiti, and Kenya. The purpose of the field tests was to experiment on actual water supplies, rather than water than had been purposely contaminated in a laboratory. A testing specimen included water from a ditch near an elementary school, where raw sewage had been dumped.
“But even with highly contaminated water sources like that one, we can achieve 99.9 percent purity with our silver- and copper-nanoparticle paper, bringing bacteria levels comparable to those of U.S. drinking water,” Dankovich commented.
She presented her results at the 250th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston yesterday.
There’s still much to be done. The paper in the books is made by hand, which is an arduous process. Trials need to be done to ensure that the recipients of the books are able to use the filters themselves. The research team is exploring ways to incorporate the filters into the traditional water receptacles used by different cultures. It’s currently unknown as to whether or not the filters can defeat disease-causing micro-organisms such as protozoa.
It’s imperative that projects such as this get off the ground, because The Drinkable Book is cheap, simple to use, and portable. Those most in need of clean drinking water require a device that’s quick and easy to use.
