Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Lifestraw



According to Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen,
Chief Executive Officer, "Mobilising LifeStraw® offers relief from waterborne diseases of major public concern such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhoea. As a personal and mobile water purification tool, LifeStraw® is designed to turn most of the surface water into drinking water, thus providing access to safe water wherever you are."

It sounds like a great idea, but like all great ideas their are critics. A good example is the following(Source Wikipedia),

"LifeStraw has generally been praised for its effective and instant method of bacteria removal. However, the device is ineffective at killing Giardia lamblia, an organism that is both resistant to iodine and smaller than 5 micrometers.[5] The device also causes higher-than-normal iodine levels in the drinkers' water, although this is countered by the iodine deficiency problem that exists in the third world. Paul Hetherington, of the charity WaterAid, has also criticised the LifeStraw for being too expensive and not solving the problem. He says that the price is expensive to those who would need it, and that it does not alleviate other problems in third world countries."

What do you think of Life Straw?

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