Thirst Quencher

When you're thirsty, all you have to do is turn on a faucet to get a drink of water. But for more than a billion people in the world, good drinking water is hard to find. They can spend hours each day fetching water from distant streams, and even then, the water can be dirty. Roughly 6,000 people die every day from diseases caused by drinking unsafe water.

A team of inventors set out to design an inexpensive, easy-to-use, water-cleaning device. They agreed it couldn't have moving parts, which can break easily and be hard to replace, and it couldn't run on electricity, which isn't readily available in many areas. After 10 years of work, they came up with the LifeStraw.

Only 10 inches long and light enough to wear on a string around your neck, the plastic straw is so simple even babies can use it. When you suck water through the straw, it passes through special filters that screen out dirt and germs and improve its taste. By the time the water reaches your mouth, it's 99 percent pure. That's cleaner than the tap water in many countries!

Each LifeStraw filters about a year's supply of water (185 gallons) and costs just a few dollars. Finally, people all around the world will be able to drink up.

-Katherine Scheuten

Copyright Carus Publishing Company May/Jun 2006
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved