'Drinkable Book' Has Pages that Destroy Bugs in Drinking Water (VIDEO)

First Posted: Aug 17, 2015 09:01 AM EDT

Imagine a book that can actually clean contaminated water. Sounds like science fiction, right? Scientists have created a book with treated paper pages that can be torn out and used to kill bacteria in water.

The "drinkable book" is both a water filter and an instruction manual for how and why to clean drinking water. The filter works when you pour the water through a thick, sturdy sheet of paper embedded with silver nanoparticles. The filters themselves can last a couple of weeks, so books can provide the tools to filter clean water for about a year.

Researchers actually conducted trials with the new paper. After being used on 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper removed more than 99 percent of bacteria from these water sources.

"One day, while we were filtering lightly contaminated water from an irrigation canal, nearby workers directed us to a ditch next to an elementary school, where raw sewage had been dumped," said Theresa Dankovich, one of the researchers, according to the Business Standard. "We found millions of bacteria; it was a challenging sample. But even with highly contaminated water sources like that one, we can achieve 99.9 percent purity with our silver- and copper-nanoparticle paper, bringing bacteria levels comparable to those of U.S. drinking water."

The new book could be used to help purify drinking water in areas where standard filtration isn't possible. All that you need to do is tear out the paper, put it in a simple filter holder, and pour water into it.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.