Books remove more than 99% of bacteria in dirty water

A book with pages that could be torn off to filter drinking water has yielded positive results in preliminary tests.

Filter bacteria in dirty water with books

The book called " drinkable book" includes pages that are treated with silver or copper nanoparticles , which can kill bacteria when immersed in water. In testing with 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the book pages successfully removed more than 99% of the bacteria.

The next step is to test the book to a greater extent.(Photo: Kristine Bender.)

Professor Teri Dankovich at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA has developed and tested this technology over the past few years and has just published results at the 250th national conference of the American Chemical Society.

The user guide is printed on the book page in English and in the local language.(Photo: BBC.)

According to Professor Dankovich, products aimed at the community in developing countries in the context of 663 million people worldwide do not have clean water.

"All you need to do is tear up a page, place it in the filter bottle and pour in river water, spring water or well water. The result is clean water is out of bacteria," Dankovich shared with BBC News.

The bacteria in the water are destroyed after absorbing silver or copper ions that spread through the page. The experiment showed that a book page could clean 100 liters of water. A book can filter the water supply for users for 4 years.

Professor Dankovich has tried lab products with artificial sewage and continued fieldwork for more than two years. " An area with very high levels of bacteria by untreated sewage flows straight into the stream. But we are really impressed with the effectiveness of the page. It can kill almost completely the bacteria in water sample, "said Professor Dankovich.

Professor Daniele Lantagne, an environmental engineer at Tufts University, USA, commented that the test data was very positive but did not show the possibility of removing other pathogenic microorganisms such as protozoa and virus. Lantagne stressed: "The team has made an important step but still has a long way to go."