University of Delaware researchers have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms, including viruses, from drinking water. UD’s patented technology incorporates highly reactive iron in the filtering process to deliver a chemical “knock-out punch” to a host of notorious pathogens, from E. coli to rotavirus.
“A serious challenge facing the water treatment industry is how to simultaneously control microbial pathogens, disinfectants such as chlorine, and toxic disinfection byproducts in our drinking water, and at an acceptable cost,” Chiu noted.
“By using elemental iron in the filtration process, we were able to remove viral agents from drinking water at very high efficiencies. Of a quarter of a million particles going in, only a few were going out,” Chiu noted.
The elemental or “zero-valent” iron used in the technology is widely available as a byproduct of iron and steel production, and it is inexpensive, currently costing less than 40 cents a pound. Viruses are either chemically inactivated by or irreversibly adsorbed to the iron, according to the scientists.
One-sixth of the world’s population lacks a safe water supply. Why is it so difficult for politicians to comprehend the respect our nation might acquire by offering technology for safe water — instead of Crusades for the New American Century? Do we have an excess of friends in the world?
Yep, a cup of fresh water is sure to change the beliefs of someone who believes in his heart that it is the will of Allah to kill you because you do not believe in Allah or the prophet.
Gee, why didn’t we think of this sooner?
This will sure give the Culligan Man a run for his money
I’d just like to clean up my bong water.
1/6 of the world?? New york, 1/2 of Europe, England…
what is more entertaining, is that HUMANS, for some reason Think that when you make something to HEAL…You should kill Everything..The good, the bad, and the virus…
We are trying to sterilize our environment.
Who remembers the post not long ago, about Strep virus in hospitals, and they cant get rid of it…
Serilizing the environment, kills THOSE things that Fight it as well as TRIES to kill the bad Virus…
I point out to people who kill ALL the insects in their yard…
You kill ALL of them, not just the BAD ones…Then you have an area that has no insects. Then ALL the insects in the neibhorhood SEE that there is room to spread out…Which come come over first, the good or the bad, and THEN your yard STILL has insects in it…
15 sec BUG…It took me longer then 15 sec to type this out…
#2 & #3 – You have a point and it’s certainly true that all the good will, good faith and good acts the U.S. could muster would not stop it from having enemies, some of them implacable and some very wealthy.
But here’s the thing. When we go over and kill them by the tens of thousands, we know – even the CIA says so – what we mainly do is recruit for our very worst enemies, like al-Qaeda (assuming it still exists as an actual organization, not just a symbol). All those youngsters willing to die because they have nothing to lose, or so they see it. At least now they’re using the U.S. more as a supply depot than the primary target, since they have an internal civil war to settle.
So what would happen if we started offering useful things like cheap water purification, instead of, hell, pick a war image? Back before that Viet Nam war industry party, the U.S. used to compete with the Russians to build roads and schools and such, and the Afghanis happily played one off against the other. Everybody was better off except the war industry.
It’s way too late to go back to that happy state of affairs, but if we at least stopped recruiting al-Qaeda who hate the U.S. with enough ungoverned passion to strap bombs to themselves… and started offering ways to make life better –
Sure we’d still have enemies. But we would at least stop making new ones and we would stop throwing gasoline on every fire we find.
It’s not about being safe in a dangerous world. It’s about being safer.
It’s inexpensive to them.
BUT, how much are they going to charge for licensing it?
#9 – You’re right. Not everyone will like you no matter how hard you try. But you don’t have to go out of your way to make enemies of them either.
The last actual Republican (as opposed to Republicrat) president the US had, Dwight Eisenhower, once sent troops into… pretty sure it was Lebanon, when let-wing revolutionaries threatened victory. When he was asked to send more troops, he declined with the statement: We’re holding the airport and the road for them. If they can’t hold their own countryside with that much help, we have no business putting our men on the line for them.
Eisenhower understood politics and military strategy, and had a good grasp of reality. Would that be nice to have in the White House now?
The US does focus on providing clean water to poor countries. It’s the environmental activists and their liberal friends that keep trying to move these global conferences towards fighting global warming or sustainable development(ie no development for poor countries). Under the Bush Administration, the other countries managed to get the US to stop talking aboto Kyoto for a while.