Ideas That Make You Want to Slap Yourself on the Forehead and Go "WOW!": LifeStraw

*Ideas That Make You Want to Slap Yourself on the Forehead and Go "Wow!": LifeStraw

LifeStraw is a product made by a company of the same name that filters drinking water of waterborne diseases, thus potentially saving millions of lives a year. As pictured on ABCNEWS website the product is a tube that appears to be about the size of a recorder.

Users can drink contaminated water through it because it is lined with disease-killing filters. The filters remain active through about 700 liters of water or a year or more of normal human water intake.

A single LifeStraw sells for about $3.50, "the mere price of a frappuccino at Starbucks," in the words of ABC. That sounds too much for impoverished nations to pay in the quantities needed. Maybe the price could be cut with mass purchases or maybe the United Nations could chip in to buy them.

ABC also reports that LifeStraw was one of Time's Best Inventions of 2005.

-Benjamin Harris


*See also "Cisterns," 3-15-05.