Bug Filtering Book

Bug-killing book pages are proven to be effective in cleaning murky drinking water.

20:12 17 August 2015

A book that contains pages that can be used to filter drinking water has passed its first field trials. Combining treated paper with printed information on how and why water should be filtered, it kills bacteria in the water as it passes through. It was tested at 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana, and Bangladesh and the paper successfully removed more than 99per of bacteria.

 

Dr Teri Dankovich, a postdoctoral researcher who developed and tested the technology, said: "It's directed towards communities in developing countries.”

 

"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 etc and out comes clean water - and dead bacteria as well," 

 

Based on her tests, one page can clean up to 100 litres of water while a whole book can be used to filter one person’s water supply for four years.

 

"Greater than 90% of the samples had basically no viable bacteria in them, after we filtered the water through the paper," Dr Dankovich said.

 

"It's really exciting to see that not only can this paper work in lab models, but it also has shown success with real water sources that people are using."