"Lifesaver Bottle" Filters Viruses Out of Water

gihan_ripper writes "British inventor Michael Pritchard has developed a small self-contained filter system that instantly cleans water, removing all particles larger than 15nm. He said that he was inspired after seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004; people had to wait for many days to get fresh water and many died from drinking contaminated water. The filter is so effective that it can purify dirty river water and even fecal matter. His bottle will shortly be available for sale from Lifesaver Systems at an expected cost of £190 (approx. $385)."

SpaceSuits anyone?

[Creepy Crawler]

This sounds like what was in Dune... A rehydrator from excrement (sweat, fecal matter, urine).

If anything, along with rebreathers and this rehydrator, one could stay in horrendously inhospitable areas for a long while.

$385!?

[Loosifur]

Fantastic idea, except for the fact that anyone in the path of Katrina who could have afforded a $385 water bottle could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas.

Re:$385!?

[jabuzz]

As I understand it a lot of people could have afforded to get out. However they didn't think it was going to be that bad, it's just another huricane after all, and prefered to stick it out and make sure their stuff was not looted. However once it hit, and it turned out to be bad, getting out became a problem.

Re:$385!?

[AvitarX]

But I bet it is easier to get these to people after the fact that to get them as much water as it can produce.

Expensive

[eknagy]

Water purifier pills are way cheaper. Still, most people don't keep a box of them "just in case" in their backpack (right next to the dry rations, water-proof matches and raincoat).

Re:Pee

[damaki]

Pee is not toxic. So, unless you rather wait for a good tasting liquid than survive, there is no problem.

Re:$385!?

[usfGPM]

I think the initial idea is to let the first responders and shelters have a few of these in storage so that they can be distributed to the areas that need them in an emergency. After the are in wider use, the price will come down and it will start to be feasible for individuals to buy them.

Re:$385!?

[NeoTerra]

"...could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas"

Difficult to do when there is no bus drivers, or no electricity to pump gas or run the airport. You forget the largest problem in Katrina was getting to the people, and getting the people somewhere safe, among other local government problems.

Re:O rly?

[Nimey]

He can't just pull the raw materials and equipment to make these out of his butt, dipshit. Those have a non-zero cost, and for a superfine filter like he's making the cost of production must be non-trivial.

It it sees widespread production, the cost will go down (economies of scale) and advances in materials science and manufacturing techniques could also get the price down. Eventually.

Re:Pee

[arthurpaliden]

No, but a simple evaporator made from a piece of plastic sheeting, a container of some kind and a stone can.

Re:$385!?

[Mr. Underbridge]

Fantastic idea, except for the fact that anyone in the path of Katrina who could have afforded a $385 water bottle could have afforded a $90 plane ticket, $35 bus ride, or $27 tank of gas.

Easier to hand out one bottle per person than one gallon of water per person per day. You also fail to note that there were mile-long lines at the pumps, and flights and buses were full. This is in part due to infrastructure, part due to the realities of evacuating a large city, and partly because the evacuation order was given ridiculously late.

Re:$385!?

[Loosifur]

Those were all problems after the fact, however. Prior to landfall those options were open, and even moving from New Orleans to, say, a Motel 6 in East Texas would greatly improve your situation in that scenario, moving you out of the path of the eye. Besides which, once the storm hit, it would be as difficult to buy those bottles as it would be to get transportation. Buying the bottles beforehand presumes an attitude of preparedness that I don't think was there, or else you would have seen more evacuation prior to the storm making landfall, or going back even further strengthening of the levee system.

Re:$385!?

[darkmeridian]

You know how you never want to be the first to acquire new technology because of the high prices? Right now, the dude is targeting the military with this product at this price. He sold out his entire 1,000 bottle stock at a military trade show. Just like GPS, night vision, and sat phones, the prices will come down as the armed forces acquire these things. Eventually, these suckers will become commodities. I hike a lot. I would love to have one of these things because right now, you have to either carry lots of water, or plan routes that go by running water sources so you can boil the water or filter/iodine it.

Re:Great!

[Radon360]

Presumably it's disposable, and considering that it's probably the bulk of the cost, the whole bottle would be disposed/recycled at the end of its usefulness...which I might add is projected at 4,000 - 6,000 liters of filtered water, according TFA.

This is not new.. can get one for less than $50

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has ever been camping in the back country knows that there's been several products on the market like this for quite a while now... such as this http://www.campmor.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=37101015&memberId=12500226 [campmor.com] one.

4000 liters for $385? Not outrageous!

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

This makes economic sense under some conditions: Instead of cases of bottled water, you have one bottle and filter as needed.

If this can deliver 4,000 liters at under $1 a liter, and is shipped empty, it's cheaper than shipping pallets of bottled water for military and aid organizations. And when mass production hits, I can see this becoming popular with campers, tourists, business travellers and others.

Nothing new here

[Hans Lehmann]

Micron size water filters have been around for a long time, ask any outdoorsman or backpacker. They've always been rather expensive, though not usually as much as this one. Also, all those particles that are filtered out of your water are left behind in the filter, which rather quickly clogs up those micron sized pores, requiring the cartridges to be replaced. The throughput also isn't very great, unless you have a pump to force the water through filter.
How is this anything more then a press release for something that's not very new at all??

Re:Expensive

[Radon360]

Water purifier pills are way cheaper.

I wholeheartedly agree, but they don't remove suspended solids or do much to remove odor (other than to perhaps mask it).

Something tells me that the marketing point of view was taken to draw more attention to the product ("hey, look! this can save lives!") rather than selling it on where most of the buyers are going to be, the military and extreme outdoors recreationalist types.

Re:What about LifeStraw?

[Just Some Guy]

And on that subject, jackasses like this [bbc.co.uk] are why it's hard to help anyone:

However, a spokesman for UK charity WaterAid, which works to supply clean water and sanitation in 17 of the world's poorest countries, condemned the device as overly expensive, and said it was not a real solution.

The organisation's Paul Hetherington said that while he thought the LifeStraw is an 'amazing-sounding idea,' he did not ultimately think it would help.

"$3.50 sounds like very little to you and me - but most people in those countries earn less than one dollar a day, with which they have to feed their families," he said.

He added that he felt the problem is that many people live very far away from their water, often walking a total of 20km or more carrying a weight of 25 kilos.

"That's what takes it out of them - the long journey," he explained.

"The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent that long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink.

"They're not going to have the education, because they're not going to have the time. It's girls in particular who suffer, because it's women and girls who have to collect the water.

"It only costs a charity like WaterAid £15 per person to provide them with water, sanitation and hygiene education, which, provided there is decent water resource management in the country, will last them a lifetime.

"At that rate, $3.50 is expensive."

Of course, if "there is decent water resource management in the country" in the first place, none of this would be necessary. And never mind that if I'd have to make a trek for water anyway, I'd prefer it to be clean when I got there.

If the LifeStraw at $3.00 will actually hurt women and girls and not solve the rest of society's ills, I can only imagine what Mr. Hetherington would think about a model that cost 100x more.

Price gouging

[Kohath]

Someone could stock up on these at $385 each. Buy 1000 of them. Then go and sell them for, say $500 when the next major disaster hits.

People would get safe water that way.

But it would be price gouging, so it's illegal. Better people die from drinking polluted water than someone make a few dollars helping them. That's the rule of price-gouging laws.

Re:Nothing new here

[merlinokos]

Reading the article indicates a 4000-6000 liter capacity before swapping filters.
How does that compare to the existing products? And how does it fit in with your reflexive scorn of anything new?

Re:No Shit?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Old News. Or even "copycat" news. A thing called the LifeStraw [lifestraw.com] does much the same and is already on the market.

Re:Save a life today

[Oktober Sunset]

It's true abortion is such a waste. A few more months and I could have cooked and ate that baby.

Re:$385!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? I don't know how YOUR local news is, but mine? Whenever there is any storm, they blow it all out of proportion for ratings. You would think that every winter is going to be our last, the way they talk. How can one possible sift the bs from the truth?

Re:$385!?

[CogDissident]

Knock the price down? thats 400$ for 4000 liters of water. or 10 cents per liter. Thats extremely cheap for how much water you get, and they would make an excellent thing to airlift in. Even at 1$ per liter of water, they can be small and easy to transport, and light enough to be airlifted easily.

Even at the current price, I'd say these things are a steal.

Is it safe?

[SnarfQuest]

During something like Katrina, there is a lot more crap in the water than just bacteria.

What does this thing do with gasoline, pesticides, and other chemicals coming out of drowned cars, stores, homes, and factories? If it isn't removing these chemicals, then you can't be sure the processed water is safe to drink. You will probably see a lot of sick people who relied on this product, and got poisoned because of the false sense oc security.

Re:SpaceSuits anyone?

[Just Some Guy]

Totally off-topic:

I was thinking about Dune and stillsuits on warm day and realized that I must have missed something. How would those work in a hot environment anyway? Since we sweat to remain cool, how much heat could you give off without allowing any of that water to evaporate?

Re:Nothing new here

[jonnythan]

You do realize that 15nm is .015 microns, right?

This isn't a micron filter. A micron filter has pores a few orders of magnitude too large to filter out viruses.

This one, however, does filter viruses.

Re:SpaceSuits anyone?

[Just Some Guy]

The suits weren't skintight, they captured the moisture after evaporation.

Yes, but how would they offload the waste heat, since the warm moist air couldn't just blow away into the atmosphere?

For the last time....the problem was not katrina

[tacokill]

It wasn't the hurricane that was the problem. It was the levies. Had the levees not broken, we would not be talking about Katrina today.

Obviously, they are related because the levees would not have broken without the hurricane. But the point here is that the Hurricane did remarkably little damage on it's own. The levees, on the other hand, were responsible for almost all of the issues you read about today.

Just another example of the edges starting to fray with respect to our national infrastructure. Without the levee issues, Katrina isn't special. Powerful? yes. Scary? yes. Destructive? Not really, when compared to something like Andrew or Hugo.

...and don't even get me started on the emergency response.

Re:$385!?

[fastest fascist]

They're called water purification plants, and a centralized solution isn't so great for dealing with massive infrastructure failure.

Re:drinking pee is harder than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, how could you not find water in the Ozarks? It isn't like there aren't any creeks or rivers. It isn't the Sahara for Pete's sake!

Re:$385!?

[Phisbut]

My thoughts exactly. Nobody is going to shell out $300 for something they don't expect to ever use. So it's a great invention, but it won't be saving many lives after all.

You know what? You're right. Why should I buy a first-aid kit when I don't expect to get hurt. Why did I pay a little more for my car so it would have airbags when I don't expect to run into a wall. Why would I buy fire insurance when I don't expect my house to burst into flames? Heck, why even get life insurance as I don't expect to die anytime soon?

Re:What about LifeStraw?

[dylan_-]

Who says that they require short-term relief of this form? Maybe they can implement sanitary measures immediately once they have the money, without spending as much as 16 LifeStraws would cost. Or perhaps 16 LifeStraws per village would save a few lives in the first three villages, but leave no money left for any improvement at all to the fourth, ultimately resulting in more death and disease.

I don't know. But I'm betting that Mr Hetherington knows better than either of us since he works in that area, so I'll take his word for it that he has more cost-effective measures at his disposal. What makes you think that this is a more cost-effective solution than ones they already have in place? Do you know something about this area you haven't told me?

Re:Pee

[kcelery]

most of the area facing water problem also facing power outage problem.

Re:Day 5

[trolltalk.com]

"Day 5 after conception I doubt that you can think or feel at that point, but you are certainly a human being at that point by definition because you now have the full 23 pairs of chromosomes in your DNA "/i>

Pardonez-moi, but that line of thinking is totally f$cked up. You shed skin every day that has the foll 23 pairs of chromosomes. Is it a "human being"? No, its dead skin. What about when you bleed, or accidently chop off a finger - is that a human being? the finger has a full complement of human dna, and pain receptors, etc. Its NOT a human being.

Its not a person. There is NO brain, hence nobody home (similar situation with most bible thumpers). If you want to consider 5 days as a human, then God is the world's biggest abortionist - 20% of all pregnancies self-terminate before the woman is even aware she's pregnant.

Re:SpaceSuits anyone?

[posterlogo]

This filtration bottle will filter out anything larger than 15 nm particles. But it does not include any sort of distillation mechanism or activated-charcoal or ion-exchange column to filter out the salts, ions, and other small molecules, like toxins. It's nice that it will eliminate disease causing microorganisms, but this dude's bottle will still make your piss taste like piss.

£190 = a LOT of water

[JonTurner]

an expected cost of £190 (approx. $385)

I'm thinking that, for £190 one could buy many hundred liters of bottled water. Considering a person requires about 2 liters daily for drinking, cooking, and toilet use this is about a month's worth for a family.

Besides, if you're without clean water for longer than a month, it might be a clue that it's time to take your family and leave.