One of the biggest health hazards faced by millions of people worldwide is impure and contaminated water. Water is a requirement for all living things, and yet in many parts of the world, especially poor rural areas, clean water is just not available -- and the technology to clean what water is there costs far too much for the poor to afford.
But a solution to that problem might now be available. Tata Industries, an Indian company, says it has invented a water filter (shown above) that can not only clean water, but also purify it of bacteria and other microorganisms. They say the filter is the result of a ten-year research effort.
The filter mechanism, which only stands about two foot tall, is called the Swach purifier. According to the BBC, "The Swach uses ash from rice milling to filter out bacteria, and also uses tiny silver particles to kill harmful germs that can lead to diarrhea, cholera and typhoid."
The selling price is what's amazing, if the device works. Tata plans to sell it for under 1,000 rupees ($21.50). This could be a huge breakthrough for world health.
The cheapest water purification technology is a transparent plastic soda or water bottle, the 16oz variant. Fill it up with water, place on a dark surface in direct sunlight for four to six hours, come back, and any bacteria or viral material will be dead, having died of being a) irradiated with UV radiation, and b) the temperature change from the water being heated up by the sunlight going through the transparent bottle (i.e., the greenhouse effect). These soda bottles are available for free along most roadsides and require only rinsing out to be useful for this purpose (no sterilization needed, since that is the whole point of this exercise!). This is a WHO-recommended water purification technique and has been thoroughly tested by Swiss researchers to validate that it does not put any harmful chemicals into the sterilized water (though it does not remove any already-existing harmful chemicals -- but then, neither does Tata's overgrown coffee filter method). But of course, there is no profit for Tata in such a simple water sterilization method so...
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Water Purification Penguin
(I know more ways to purify water than you know to drink it, probably).