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Have pen, will travel safely. That’s the hope of Maren Anderson and her team
at the University of North Carolina. They’ve been testing a pen-like device that
lets campers, hikers or disaster relief workers disinfect drinking water within
minutes in remote locations. The “pen” 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’s American Society for Microbiology meeting in Los Angeles, Anderson said
that the mixture kills 99.99 per cent of bugs in 15 minutes.