Appropriate Technology: The LifeStraw
One of the most critical aspects of disaster relief is the need to import sufficient fresh drinking water to those affected. I know this first hand from supporting my buddies the Knights (www.KBI.org). Often natural disasters will severely damage if not completely destroy a community’s water infrastructure.
The LifeStraw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeStraw) can help purify unsafe water for drinking until relief workers can reach an affected area. The straw is a plastic tube that is 25 centimeters long. Used like a normal drinking straw (http://www.lifestraw.com/en/high/maincont2.asp), the water is drawn through a series of tiny mesh fibers, passes between a series of iodine beads and finally through active carbon, a common water filter used in home purification systems.
The LifeStraw costs only about $2.00 USD and has been proven effective against typhoid, salmonella, E-coli and cholera. It cannot guard against Giardia lamblia (Nasty little buggers - trust me), whose microbes are too small for the mesh filters and cannot be killed using iodine.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Please note that this posting was created on Monday 2/5/07 but we were not able to upload it until Tuesday 2/6/07. Our apologies.