Designer Dr. Theresa Dankovitch from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States has designed a book containing pull-out pages that can filter "real contaminated water" into a safe tap water just like in the United States. Each page of the "Drinkable Book" contains bacteria-killing silver and copper nanoparticles.
The Drinkable Book is both a water filter and an instruction manual on how and why to clean drinking water. It works to produce a clean drinking water by pouring dirty water through a thick, sturdy sheet of paper embedded with silver nanoparticles which are lethal for microbes. These filters have passed the US EPA guidelines for bacterial removal to produce drinking water.
In tests conducted in Africa, it turned the water contaminated with raw sewage as safe as the tap water in the United States. They have intentionally used contaminated water and not water purposely contaminated in a laboratory.
Dr. Dankovitch narrated further, "One day, while we were filtering lightly contaminated water from an irrigation canal, nearby workers directed us to a ditch next to an elementary school, where raw sewage had been dumped. We found millions of bacteria; it was a challenging sample."
Startlingly, they were able to get 99.9% purity with the silver and copper nanoparticles paper considering it was highly contaminated. The result was a water comparable to those in the United States. Dr. Dankovitch added, "Some silver and copper will leach from the nanoparticle-coated paper, but the amount lost into the water is within minimal values and well below Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organisation drinking water limits for metals."
In collaboration with WATERisLIFE , she formed a non-profit organization last spring of 2014 called "pAges Drinking Paper". The pAge is actually the sheet of paper found in the Drinkable Book. A page of the book can filter up to 26 gallons of drinking water. One book can filter one person's drinking water for four years. Dr. Dankovitch is now taking the technology further to producing commercial nanoparticle for household water treatment.
