'Drinkable Book' Turns Bacteria Into Drinking Water

A "Drinkable Book" sounds like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, but it is indeed a real thing. This waterpurifying system is based on nanotechnology that's inexpensive to create and easily transportable.

Researchers just discussed the information for the product on Sunday at the 250th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. The book's technology was developed by Dr. Teri Dankovich, now a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. He finished the project while conducting researche at Canada's McGill University, with final completion in the University of Virginia.

While the pages inside the book talk about how important clean water is, along with the risks of water-borne illness, the thick filter pages are also soaked in metal particles that can effectively kill bacteria.

Researchers conducted field tests involving more than two dozen contaminated water sources in South Africa, Bangladesh and Ghana. Findings revealed that the book's pages were able to remove up to 99 percent of the samples' bacteria. Though some of the water-purifying heavy metals slipped through, all contaminants measured well below safe drinking levels. More specifically, a single page from the book can actually clean up to 26 gallons of water.

"These filters meet US EPA guidelines for bacteria removal to produce safe drinking water," researchers claim on the book's homepage. "The filters can last a couple of weeks, even up to a month, so the entire books could provide the tools to filter clean water for about a year."

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