The device, called the LifeStraw, was invented by the Vestergaard Frandsen Group. It contains filters that make water teeming with typhoid, cholera and diarrhea-causing microorganisms drinkable.
The filters kill nearly 100 percent of bacteria and nearly 99 percent of the viruses that pass through LifeStraw.
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evaluation tested the device. The results indicated that LifeStraw filtered out all contaminants to levels where they don’t pose a health risk to someone drinking the water.
But LifeStraw does not filter heavy metals such as iron or fluoride, nor does it remove parasites like cryptosporidium or giardia, although the Switzerland-based company’s CEO, Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, says there is a version of LifeStraw available to relief groups in Bangladesh and India that can filter arsenic.
LifeStraw won the fifth Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas.
