Out of Crisis Comes a Clean Water Solution

For many of us, access to clean water isn't a problem. But according to a 2008 study (PDF) by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 884 million people, or approximately one in eight people in the world, lacked access to safe water supplies as of 2006.

Residents of New Orleans became well aware of that lack of access following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which gave the rest of the United States an eye-opening look into the problem. And it was after watching the responses to both Katrina and the Asian tsunami of 2004, and how long it took for people to get the water they needed, that a man named Michael Pritchard took action. Pritchard, an inventor and CEO of LIFESAVER systems, came up with the LIFESAVER bottle (at right).

The bottle he developed has a nano-filtration system without chemicals that's designed to filter out the smallest bacteria or viruses, providing drinkable water in seconds from sources that would normally make people ill.

During Pritchard's talk at one of the TED Conferences (video below), he pointed out that this bottle also can potentially limit the number of people getting sick following situations like Katrina. That's because the normal response to these types of disasters is to send water to camps, meaning people need to congregate at these camps to get the water, thus heightening the risk of people in close quarters spreading diseases to one another.

What may get in the way of this idea spreading as far as Pritchard would like is the cost of a bottle ($149.99 for up to 4,000 liters of water, $179.99 for up to 6,000 liters), but it's certainly a step in the right direction. You can find out more about the company and the the bottle here.

Photo courtesy of LIFESAVER systems