LifeStraw®

From mental_floss Blog:

Providing money, roads, education, electricity, and employment to needy people of the world is a noble idea, but it's like putting the cart before the horse when a billion people don't have a reliable source of safe drinking water. They are in danger of ingesting typhoid, dysentery, salmonella, diphtheria, E. coli, or cholera. Water treatment plants and long distance pipes are terribly expensive for Third World nations, and even purified water can become contaminated with disease before consumption. A possible solution: a personal water filter for each person. Danish water purification company Vestergaard Frandsen has developed the LifeStraw® Personal, a small filter that requires no power and can be worn on a string around the neck.

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