Each page is impregnated with bacteria-killing metal nanoparticles. The “drinkable book”, developed by Carnegie Mellon University postdoctoral researcher Dr. Teri Dankovich, uses treated pages that contain nanoparticles of silver or copper, which kill bacteria in water as it filters through.
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The Drinkable Book has filters that could significantly reduce the level of water-borne contamination in an accessible and effective way.
While studying the material properties of paper as a graduate student, Theresa Dankovich, developed an low-priced, simple and easily transportable nanotechnology-based method to purify drinking water.
“In Africa, we needed to see if the filters would work on ‘actual water, ‘ not water purposely contaminated within the lab”, she stated.
Dr Dankovitch spoke about The Drinkable Book at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting in Boston.
“One day, whereas we have been filtering flippantly contaminated water from an irrigation canal, close by staff directed us to a ditch subsequent to an elementary faculty, the place uncooked sewage had been dumped”.
In collaboration with the nonprofit WATERisLIFE organization and Brian Gartside, a designer formerly with DDB New York and now with Deutsch, her company developed a unique product that is essentially a book comprised of pages embedded with silver nanoparticles. “We found millions of bacteria; it was a challenging sample”, Dankovich noted.
Scientists have already carried out trials at 25 contaminated sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh where it has successfully cleaned out and removed 99 percent of dirt and bacteria.
It seems some silver and copper particles were dissolved in water during the process, however the amount lost was minimum, she explained.
Dankovich formed a nonprofit company named pAge Drinking Paper past year.
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The sheets of thick paper contain instructions about water safety in English and in the language of the people from the above mentioned countries who could actually make use of this special book. One page can purify up to 100 liters (about 26 gallons) of water and one book can supply one person’s drinking water needs for about four years, the researchers said. Protozoa are highly specialized unicellular organisms that can enter the human body through drinking water, among many other means and can cause significant damage.
