More than one billion people – over a sixth of the world’s population – are without access to a safe supply of water [1]. Around 6,000 children die each day from consuming contaminated water, which results in over 2 million deaths, mainly amongst children due to water borne diseases[2].
While these statistics mainly relate to people in the developing world, there have also been cases in the developed world where hundreds of people have lacked access to safe drinking water for days. One well-known event was Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans in 2005. With thousands of people’s homes having been destroyed, the Louisiana Superdome was turned into a camp, hosting over 26,000 people. These people had no access to any source of safe drinking water as the risk of contamination was high due to recent floods. What most people are not aware of is that it took five days for the people in the SuperDome to get fresh drinking water delivered. More recently, all drinking water in downtown Copenhagen became contaminated, which left residents rushing to their local supermarkets to stock up on bottled water. Some supermarkets owners reported that the equivalent of 3 lorries full of water bottles were bought in one afternoon.
One tool, which can aid in tackling the problem of access to safe drinking water, comes in the form of purification bottles and straws. The Vestergaard-Frandsen “LifeStraw” provides the much needed disease control and clean water solution to communities living in areas that are prone to having contaminated water that is unsuitable for drinking.
In very basic terms, the LifeStraw, is a straw that allows individuals to place the filter end of the straw in any water source and suck up water through it. The first filter is a mesh of 100 micrometer spaces, followed by a second mesh of 15 micrometer spaces. In order to put the sizes into perspective, one micrometer is equivalent to 1/1,000,000 of a metre, or put in another way, smaller than the width of a human hair. The water then passes through a chamber of iodine-coated beads where it subsequently travels through a chamber which contains active carbon.
The LifeStraw can filter up to 1600 litres [3] and filters at least 99.9999% of all bacteria, 99.99% of all viruses and 99.9% of all parasites, as well as working in turbid water. The LifeStraw protects, amongst others, against waterborne diseases such as typhoid, cholera, E. coli, salmonella, dysentery and diarrhoea.
Vestergaard-Frandsen recently produced the “LifeStraw Family” purifier, which can filter up to 18,000 litres of water. This amount is estimated to be enough to supply a family of five with clean drinking water for three years, thus removing the need for early replacement of the product. The “LifeStraw Family” purification system requires no electrical power batteries, running water or piped-in water supply.
A relatively small amount of “LifeStraw Family” systems would be needed in order to provide clean drinking water to people whose safe water supplies have recently been contaminated by natural disasters, such as flooding or leaking septic tanks. The “LifeStraw”, therefore, provides people in the developed world with a temporary access to safe drinking water and further eliminates the need to buy bottled water in bulk, and as a result lowers individuals’ carbon footprint. In addition, the raw materials used for manufacturing the “LifeStraw” products are US Food and Drug Administration compliant [4].
In January, 2010, Haiti was struck by a magnitude 7 earthquake and subsequently “Innovative Water Technologies” launched a portable solar powered water purification system. While this water purification system is able to generate 5,000 gallons of clean water a day at a price of $0,0013/gallon [5], the “LifeStraw”, unlike the portable solar powered water purification system, “does not need a source of electricity, as it relies on suction power by the user, and as such is more simple to use and to distribute to individuals or households. In addition, the “Innovative Water Technologies’” portable solar powered water purifier may need regular maintenance and have parts replaced, neither of which are needed with the “LifeStraw” products. Finally, the “LifeStraw” has an indicator which shows how much remaining filtration capacity it has and once this threshold has been reached, the product will automatically block any possibility of sucking up water.
One problem yet to be solved is how to dispose of the “LifeStraw”. The outer shell of the straw is made of “high impact polyesterene”, a commonly used thermoplastic that can be recycled. However, polyesterene is not biodegradable and is often found in the form of cups and plastic bags, lying on the streets in developed and developing countries alike. As the individual small LifeStraws currently only have a life-span of about a year, this is a serious short-coming of the product that Vestergaard-Frandsen must overcome. The straw does not have individual components that can be replaced, but a whole new straw must be provided to the user. The technology that Vestergaard-Frandsen provide should not deem the product to have failed, but there is obviously room for improvement. The straw needs to be made biodegradable or the company must ensure that the product can be returned to the manufacture at the end of its life-time to be replaced with a new one. Finally, a better solution would be to generate a market that allows vendors to sell replacement components, while ensuring that the old components are properly disposed off.
The LifeStraw has the potential to gives millions of people access to safe drinking water in developing countries and dramatically decrease the number of people that die from water-borne diseases. More consideration, however, must be given to proper disposal of the product at the end of its life-time, in order to avoid mass dumping of polyesterene bottles.
[1]http://www.gizmag.com/go/4418/
[3]http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw/lifestraw/longevity-and-efficacy
[4]http://www.vestergaard-frandsen.com/lifestraw/lifestraw-family/features
[5]http://www.innovativeh2o.com/_assets/_pdf/IWT_Healthymagination_Press-Release_FINAL-3.pdf
