While the pages of any book offer the potential to entertain, educate and inspire the unique properties of the innovative role in Drinking book literally can save lives. Created by Dr. Teri Dankovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, The Book Potable has pages embedded with nanoparticles of silver or copper. In 25 trials drinking contaminated sites in Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper was effective in removing 99 percent of the bacteria.
A dream of clean water
"There was a place where there was literally sewage discharged into the stream, which had very high levels of bacteria," Dankovich told the BBC. "But we were very impressed with the performance of the paper, I was able to kill bacteria almost completely in the samples and were pretty disgusting to begin with, so we thought - if you can do this, you can probably do a lot.".
With over 660 million people without access to clean drinking water using the pages of the book as a simple filter Potable could have an instant impact.
Dankovich estimated that each page can clean 100 liters of water, with an entire book capable of supporting a person for four years.
Working with charities Water is life and the IDE, the next step is to bring the production process, currently a manual operation performed by students in a laboratory, and gear up for large-scale distribution. In the coming months, the initiative will also test the book with local residents better understand how they could use the books in the field.
A dream of clean water
"There was a place where there was literally sewage discharged into the stream, which had very high levels of bacteria," Dankovich told the BBC. "But we were very impressed with the performance of the paper, I was able to kill bacteria almost completely in the samples and were pretty disgusting to begin with, so we thought - if you can do this, you can probably do a lot.".
With over 660 million people without access to clean drinking water using the pages of the book as a simple filter Potable could have an instant impact.
Dankovich estimated that each page can clean 100 liters of water, with an entire book capable of supporting a person for four years.
Working with charities Water is life and the IDE, the next step is to bring the production process, currently a manual operation performed by students in a laboratory, and gear up for large-scale distribution. In the coming months, the initiative will also test the book with local residents better understand how they could use the books in the field.
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