Many of us take clean water for granted. We twist the cap off a plastic bottle or head to the kitchen faucet for a cool drink without a second thought. However, obtaining water that's fit to drink is a daily struggle for about one-sixth of the world's population [source: World Water Day 2001]. According to the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, more than a billion people on this planet don't have ready access to clean water. To make matters worse, purifying water to make it drinkable can be a time-consuming and expensive process.
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Contaminated water can cause disease and death. About half of the world's poor suffer from diseases caused by the water they drink and use for cooking, and approximately 6,000 people die each day from illnesses that access to clean water could have prevented [source: United Nations]. Cholera, typhoid and enteric fever are all deadly illnesses caused by the consumption of contaminated water. Bacterial or viral contaminants in the water can cause diarrhea and vomiting in humans by releasing toxins into the intestines. As a result, a person becomes dehydrated -- and could die, especially if that person loses more than 10 percent of the body's fluids [source: Rehydration Project]. Contaminated water causes more than 4 billion cases of diarrhea each year; 1.8 million people die from it, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Diarrhea can be especially severe in young children and persons who are malnourished or have weakened immune systems: Children with HIV get diarrhea at a rate four times that of their non-infected peers, while adults with HIV are seven times more likely to contract diarrhea than adults who don't have HIV. Adding to this problem is the fact that more than 95 percent of the world's people with HIV live in developing countries without consistently safe water sources [source: WHO].
Ensuring the safety of the world's drinking water has become a top priority of welfare organizations around the world. Studies show that filtering impurities from the water is the best way to make it drinkable, and at least one company's already on the case. LifeStraw is a water filtration device developed in 2005 by Swiss corporation Vestergaard Frandsen. Inexpensive and easy to use, LifeStraw has become a major weapon in the battle against waterborne illness. In this article, we'll learn about LifeStraw and discover why Forbes magazine named it "one of the 10 things that will change the way we live" and why Time named LifeStraw "the best invention of 2005."
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