LifeStraw Water Filters: Providing the World with Safe Drinking Water

If you've never heard of LifeStraw water filters, you're not alone. LifeStraw water filters have received astonishingly sparse media coverage. It's so surprising simply because LifeStraw water filters have already begun to revolutionize travel, save millions of lives, and establish a proven solution to one of mankind's greatest ongoing plagues: little or no access to safe drinking water. No small claim. Indeed, thanks to LifeStraw water filters, now available from the Switzerland-based, Danish company the Vestergaard Frandsen Group, an end is in sight to the world's problems with accessing safe drinking water.

How dire is the lack of access to safe drinking water? Here are the key numbers (from the World Health Organization) that LifeStraw water filters are up against: an estimated 50% of the planet's poor, at any given moment, is afflicted by a disease caused by contaminated drinking water. 6,000 of these people--a disproportionate number of whom are young children--die every day from these ailments. That significantly surpasses two million annual deaths from water-borne diseases. Currently, there are 1.1 billion people without adequate access to safe drinking water.

Enter LifeStraw water filters.

LifeStraw water filters are very much what they sound like: portable tubes of polystyrene plastic, slightly less than a foot long and just over an inch wide, weighing 3.3 ounces. Water is sucked up and consumed through LifeStraw water filters, being purified in the process.

The description sounds simple. LifeStraw water filters even look rudimentary, and are, in contemporary technological terms, strikingly easy to use. All that is required to operate LifeStraw water filters is the ability to drink through a straw, though a bit more exertion than usual is necessary when using a LifeStraw. This is all deceptive, however; LifeStraw water filters are the result of exhaustive research, experimentation, and an ever-evolving line of prototypes. In fact, LifeStraw water filters are indisputably a pinnacle of modern scientific achievement, both in design and potential benefit to mankind with the fundamental feat of providing those in need with access to safe drinking water.

LifeStraw water filters contain a combination of seven different types of filters and purifiers. Textile mesh filters block parasites while purifying agents remove and/or kill a wide variety of bacteria and other dangerous micro-organisms. While LifeStraw water filters cannot provide protection from every risk of contaminated drinking water, they do stop what are by far the most common dangers all around the world, rendering potentially fatal supplies into safe drinking water.

On one level, LifeStraw water filters prevent the consumption of dangerous and deadly parasites, including what is probably the most infamous--the guinea worm. This little fella' is perfect for illustrating the gruesome problems of contaminated drinking water. The guinea worm is responsible for Dracunculiasis (or the more manageable, eponymous "Guinea Worm Disease"). Primarily found in Africa, though also in India and Yemen, the guinea worm is generally consumed by people (and other animals) in its larval state--not straight, but actually inside tiny infected water fleas that are swallowed. While the flea is quickly digested, the larvae survive and grow inside the body, as thin as a paper clip but reaching up to 3 feet in length. After about a year of living inside the host, guinea worms will break through the skin to exit the body, leaving behind a formidable blister and nasty infection, invariably untreatable in the destitute areas where guinea worms are found.

On an even more microscopic level, LifeStraw water filters kill the most common bacteria found in drinking supplies world-wide. These include salmonella, e. coli, Staphylococcus Aureus, shigella, enterrococus, and others. Hence LifeStraw water filters make safe drinking water out of a source that would otherwise cause diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and many other infectious diseases. Again, keep in mind that in third world countries and other extremely poor regions around the globe, what is often merely a minor treatable illness elsewhere can easily be deadly.

The main shortcoming of LifeStraw water filters--though it's hardly important when held up to all of the device's abilities--is that they do not filter any heavy metals, such as lead, arsenic, fluoride, iron, aluminum, or cadmium. While these do present significant health concerns in drinking water around the world, those concerns are far fewer than those that LifeStraw water filters do protect against.

LifeStraw water filters do have a shelf life. Unused and stored out of direct light and in moderate temperatures, the LifeStraw will maintain full capabilities for up to three years. In use, LifeStraw water filters will convert up to 185 gallons (700 liters) of contaminated water into safe drinking water at full efficacy. This gives LifeStraw water filters approximately a one-year shelf life in use, with optimal water consumption at around two liters daily.

So what does it cost to produce the miracle gadgets that are LifeStraw water filters? Amazingly, only about $2.00 per unit. The low cost of the LifeStraw (which will hopefully be reduced further), combined with outside donations and the philanthropic efforts of the manufacturer, has allowed for a LifeStraw distribution campaign all over Africa and, to a lesser extent, on other continents as well. Contributions to aid the humanitarian effort are welcomed at www.lifestraw.com. Also, LifeStraw water filters are available for sale to the public, and are a wise purchase for travelers headed to destinations with questionable supplies of drinking water.

LifeStraw water filters will have great impact. Access to safe drinking water is one of the most pressing issues facing an enormous part of the world. Safe drinking water is--no matter how much we take it for granted ourselves--a heretofore unobtainable luxury for much of the globe's indigent population. LifeStraw water filters have finally provided us with a real and practical solution to the problems of contaminated drinking water.

Sources:
lifestraw.com
dhpe.org/infect/guinea.html