Imagine being stuck on the beach with your favorite book, enjoying the sun and relaxing. When suddenly you realized that you forgot your water bottle. Oh no! The sun begins to scorch you and your mouth becomes parched. Well, what if you were able to drink your book?
An amazing release into the scientific world was the creation of the “Drinkable Book” in 2015, a book that’s pages were made from nanoparticles. Meaning they could be used to filter water, clean out the dirt and sludge. In fact, it can even kill bacteria. Okay, you can’t literally drink the pages of your book, but it is still pretty cool, no?
A group of researchers made it a real possibility working with a non-profit organization in the hopes of giving everyone in the world access to clean drinkable water. One page from the “drinkable book” would be able to filter up to 100 liters of drinking water. This could be an amazing tool for communities that have sanitization problems in their local area.
Diseases that thrive in the water like typhoid and diarrhoeal illnesses still kill about one and half million people globally every year. Inadequate treatment facilities are normally the key culprit in these scenarios, the filters provided by this book’s nano pages solve that problem.
The way it works is by the use of silver particles in the pages, silver is a great antimicrobial. The page made out of cellulose is imprinted with silver nanoparticles. So when dirty water runs through it, the dirt and other junk are caught up in the silver filter. The amazing thing is this is not just another theory, they have been testing this book in South Africa since 2013. And the results have been incredible, even in areas where raw sewage was being dumped into the water.
Hopefully, the company behind this endeavor WATERisLIFE will be able to increase their production and help bring clean water to more communities around the world.
