A team of scientists who designed a book with pages that are meant to be torn out and used as water filters recently detailed a successful trial in 25 areas with contaminated water.
According to BBC News, the "drinkable book" delivers information on the importance of clean water and on how to use the pages' filters. The pages are coated with either copper or silver nanoparticles that were observed to kill 99 percent of bacteria in the trial period.
The researchers tested the books with contaminated water sources in countries including South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, BBC News reported. The researchers discussed their findings at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Boston, Mass.
"It's directed towards communities in developing countries," Teri Dankovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who developed the "drinkable book," told BBC News. "All you need to do is tear out a paper, put it in a simple filter holder and pour water into it from rivers, streams, wells et cetera and out comes clean water - and dead bacteria as well.
"Ions come off the surface of the nanoparticles, and those are absorbed by the microbes."
She also cited data that estimated some 663 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water, which American citizens expect every time they turn on a faucet. Dankovich said the paper was even successful when filtering water with "raw sewage being dumped into the stream," she told BBC News.
"There's a lot of interest in developing new products for point-of-use water treatment," Daniele Lantagne, an environmental engineer at Tufts University, told BBC News. "I would want to see results for protozoa and viruses.
"This is promising but it's not going to save the world tomorrow. They've completed an important step and there are more to go through."
