What if we are thirsty and the only water available is dirty?
Some 4,000 years ago, citizens of ancient India were instructed to heat foul water by boiling and exposing it to sunlight, then dipping a piece of hot copper into it seven times. Finally, they were told to filter and cool the liquid in an earthen vessel. Other ancient civilizations also discovered the benefit of filtering water, but most of their purifying practices disappeared during the Middle Ages, opening the door to plague and pestilence.
Over the years, various scientists and inventors tried their hand at water filtration, but none quite so seriously as Sir Francis Bacon, the British philosopher and scientist. In 1627, a year after his death, Bacon’s final work was published (A Natural History in Ten Centuries) detailing thousands of experiments, many of which dealt with water purification methods, including percolation, filtration, boiling, distillation, and coagulation.
Little by little, drip by drop, water filtration became more sophisticated, as scientists learned more about the links between polluted water and disease. Town and city filtration systems using sand emerged in the early 1800s in Scotland. Other communities began to adopt similar methods and evidence supporting water filtration grew. Towns and portions of cities that were fortunate enough to use filtration for water purification had fewer outbreaks of waterborne disease than communities that did not filter water.
According to the World Health Organization, water-related disease causes more than half the world’s hospitalizations, and millions of deaths. Children are the most frequent victims of diarrhea deaths, thousands dying each day in places like Africa and Asia. Contaminated water can cause disease when used for bathing, drinking or cooking, and can poison the food supply when the polluted water is used for the watering of crops.
Low-cost solutions can provide safe water and decrease diarrheal disease. Communities that do not have facilities to disinfect and filter their water can use point-of-use water treatment. This simply means treating the water right where it is drunk, either at the source, or in the home. The purpose of a point-of-use water filter is to capture contaminants and prevent filter users from ingesting them. The effectiveness of the water filter is determined by what is known as the pore-size efficiency. This is the measurement of the size of the openings in the water filter membrane; the smaller the pore-size, the purer the water. These measurements are microscopic.
So, if you are thirsty, and your water is dirty – use a filter! Learn how to make one, and see first-hand how water filtration has saved millions and millions of lives.
