Have pen, will travel safely. That鈥檚 the hope of Maren Anderson and her team
at the University of North Carolina. They鈥檝e been testing a pen-like device that
lets campers, hikers or disaster relief workers disinfect drinking water within
minutes in remote locations. The 鈥減en鈥 contains pellets of table salt which can
be dissolved in water and converted with a battery-generated current into a
powerful sterilising mixture. Each pellet copes with one litre of water. At last
week鈥檚 American Society for Microbiology meeting in Los Angeles, Anderson said
that the mixture kills 99.99 per cent of bugs in 15 minutes.
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