5/31/2005: Lifestraw

[Undertoad]

This is one of those images that's pretty unremarkable at first...

It turns out that a ton of the third world drinks from the kind of water you see there - dirty, unfiltered water, often terribly contaminated. In fact, lack of clean drinking water is the number one cause of death in the entire world.

The straw this woman is using is a simple solution. It's called "Lifestraw". This website gives us the detail:

So far the product is not marketed yet, but after intensive laboratory tests we are now conducting field tests to observe where the filter could be improved for users. Users or consumers are defined as most people in the 3rd world, and they will benefit by having the possibility of clean water with this pipe filter. The worlds greatest killer is diarrhoeal diseases from bacteria like typhoid, cholera, e. coli, salmonella etc. With LifeStraw, which lasts for one persons annual needs of clean water, nobody needs to die from these diseases. This design is made with special emphasize on avoiding any moving parts, to disregard spare parts, and to avoid the use of electricity, which does not exist in many areas in the 3rd world. But as you need force to implement the filtering, we have chosen to use the natural source of sucking, that even babies are able to perform. We have managed to produce this product at a price that people in this business find hard to believe, but we have found it essential to be able to present a price to the consumer in the 3rd world that they find affordable. When fully used in the 3rd world this will indeed be a LifeSaver.