Issues in Chemistry

Producing Clean Water in an Emergency

McGill University (2011, February 25). Producing clean water in an emergency.ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 27, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2011/02/110223151941.htm

Disasters such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes often result in the spread of diseases like gastroenteritis, giardiasis and even cholera because of an immediate shortage of clean drinking water. Now, chemistry researchers at McGill University have taken a key step towards making a cheap, portable, paper-based filter coated with silver nanoparticles to be used in these emergency settings.

In my thoughts...

It is a fact that in emergency settings we need something to immediately provide our basic needs, such as clean water to drink. With this new breakthrough there are some issues that we need to talk about. But first let us take a look into the relevance of this new insight into our own settings.

For example here in the Philippines, the occurrence of disasters such as floods and earthquakes really resulted to a more big problem when people are gathered together in an evacuation area. There is a need to supply all of them with safe and clean drinking water to avoid diseases. Good to know that there are group of researchers who are looking for a device to address this problem in a state of emergency situation. By using the paper-based filter coated with silver nanoparticles.

But the main issue accompanied by this is that, would it be possible for the Third world countries like the Philippines to make used of this new discovery? In the Philippines we know that silver is considered as one of the precious metal although if we have to make used only a fraction or minute particles of silver to be coated into a paper to be use as a filter in emergency situation this would still implies that we need to spend money in order to have this and I guess ordinary people who are usually victims of calamities would find it hard to afford this.

And probably we can adhere to Theodore Parker when he said that “ As society advances the standard of poverty rises”.