Access to clean drinking water is one of the major concerns of the least developed countries of the world. Millions of lives are lost due to either drinking contaminated water, or abstaining from doing so, which leads to dehydration.
Dr. Theresa Dankovich is a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is aiming to one day mass-produce her invention, called the pAge Drinking Paper. pAge literally represents the pages of a book written on which are instructions on why and how to drink clean, purified water. But that’s not all. Each page of a book is actually a water filter made out of silver and copper particles. A pAge can be ripped from a book, mounted on to a holding device, and then it can filter approximately 100 liters of water. A whole book could presumably last a person up to four years.
It has been tested in 25 different areas, with different levels of contamination. Results showed 99.9% effectiveness. Silver and copper particles do tend to fall through from time to time, but they do not represent a threat.
„There was one site where there was literally raw sewage being dumped into the stream, which had very high levels of bacteria. But we were really impressed with the performance of the paper; it was able to kill the bacteria almost completely in those samples. And they were pretty gross to start with, so we thought – if it can do this, it can probably do a lot.” declared Mrs. Dankovich for BBC News.
Dr. Theresa and her team have been granted permission to mass-produce pAge Drinking Paper. They are currently doing so by hand, but are looking to start a more advanced factory.
Cătuşanu Octavian
Sursa foto: pagedrinkingpaper.com