Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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June 23, 2008
        


Water, Water Everywhere...
The LifeStraw looks simple. But it has the potential to save many lives.
By JILIAN MINCER
June 23, 2008; Page R7
Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen didn't set out to help millions of people get 
access to safe drinking water. At the age of 19, he dropped out of school and 
moved to Nigeria to sell trucks.

But when a political coup forced him to leave Africa and return to his native 
Denmark in 1992, he reluctantly agreed to join the family textile business -- 
if he could focus on relief-aid products.

1
• See the complete Product Design2 report.
His experience in Africa and later working with the Carter Center in Atlanta, 
a human-rights organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his 
wife, Rosalynn, convinced him that people in developing countries needed a 
simple, durable device to purify water.

The result was the LifeStraw, a personal, portable water purifier that 
eliminates virtually all waterborne bacteria and most viruses responsible for 
causing diarrheal diseases. The product, which costs as little as $3, has won 
a number of awards, including the 2008 Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World 
Changing Ideas.

"The LifeStraw empowers people so they don't have to wait for the government 
to come up with solutions," says Mr. Frandsen, who is now 36 and president 
and chief executive officer of the family's Lausanne, Switzerland-based 
company, Vestergaard Frandsen, which manufactures the LifeStraw.

The light blue straw with a resilient polystyrene shell looks like a child's 
musical recorder. When someone sucks through the straw, the water flows 
through textile and iodine filters, which kill off viruses and bacteria such 
as E. coli.

The company says nongovernmental organizations and nonprofit agencies already 
have bought hundreds of thousands of the drinking tubes and are distributing 
them in countries with unsafe drinking water.

Aid groups also are buying them for communities devastated by natural 
disasters. Demand has been so high for LifeStraws in Myanmar, which was 
ravaged by a cyclone last month, and China, which was hit with an earthquake, 
that the two plants that manufacture the device are working around the clock 
to produce more, Vestergaard Frandsen says.

The U.S. government, faith-based organizations and nonprofit groups such as 
Convoy of Hope have sent 21,000 of the straws to Myanmar so far, and photos 
coming out of the country indicate they are reaching at least some of the 
people who need them, a company spokesman says. Vestergaard Frandsen 
eventually expects to provide 50,000 straws to both Myanmar and China, he 
says.

Jeff Nene, a spokesman for Convoy of Hope, says people in dire situations 
make the mistake of drinking dirty water, not realizing the impurities can 
cause diarrhea, dysentery and eventually death. "You can go for a long time 
without food," he says. "But you can't live long without water."

Planting the Seed

Founded in 1957 as a maker of fabric for work clothing, Vestergaard Frandsen 
shifted into relief-aid products such as blankets and tents in 1992, the year 
Mr. Frandsen joined the company. It eventually began making disease-control 
textiles such as the now widely distributed PermaNet, an insecticide-treated 
mosquito bed net that costs as little as $4 and doesn't need to be re-treated 
for three to four years.

It was while working in the mid-1990s on a project with the Carter Center to 
eradicate Guinea worm -- a parasite that enters the body through contaminated 
drinking water and eventually emerges through a very painful blister in the 
skin -- that Mr. Frandsen's interest in water-purification systems began. 
Vestergaard Frandsen provided materials for a drinking-pipe filter aimed at 
preventing people from swallowing the Guinea worm's larvae and suffering the 
misery of infection. After millions of the pipes were distributed, the number 
of Guinea worm cases plummeted to fewer than 10,000 world-wide in 2007 from 
3.6 million in 1986, according to the Carter Center.

Mr. Frandsen says the fact that a disease that caused so much suffering could 
be prevented so easily got him thinking about other waterborne illnesses in 
the developing world. He rattles off the numbers: More than a billion people 
are without access to safe drinking water. Diarrhea kills more than 1.8 
million people a year, and chronic diarrhea is the leading killer of people 
with AIDS.

"We started thinking, with 6,000 children dying a day from waterborne 
diseases, what could we do?" said Mr. Frandsen on a recent visit to the U.S.

He wanted to create a filter that could be used at the water source to reduce 
these diseases. It had to be easy to carry, and require no electricity, 
batteries or repairs.

Mr. Frandsen's father, Torben Vestergaard Frandsen, was involved in the early 
work on the design of the LifeStraw. When it was determined that the 
Guinea-worm pipe filter removed 96% to 97% of all cholera bacteria, the 
company thought developing a product to prevent cholera would be a "piece of 
cake," he says.

It wasn't. The 3% to 4% of the cholera bacteria that made it through the 
Guinea-worm pipe filter was too much to call drinking water safe. "That was 
when we embarked on a long line of development to make the product useful 
against a wide variety of waterborne viruses and bacteria," the elder Mr. 
Frandsen says in an email.

The company initially tried creating filters only from textiles, he says. But 
when it found they weren't entirely effective, it began experimenting with 
other substances, including iodine and carbon.

As far as the colors -- they weren't chosen by any designers or focus groups.

"I always loved turquoise and navy," says Torben Vestergaard Frandsen. "After 
all these years I managed to have a product in my favorite colors. Luckily, 
the color combination is not that bad for water."


CLEAN DESIGN The LifeStraw is a personal, portable water purifier
The LifeStraw, introduced in 2005, is 10 inches long and weighs about 4.3 
ounces. When someone sucks through the straw, the water flows through textile 
and iodine filters, which kill off bacteria and viruses. A second chamber 
consists of granulated active carbon that absorbs residual iodine, thereby 
improving the taste of the water.

The Real Test

The straw was tested at the University of North Carolina and tweaked by the 
company's engineers to decrease clogging and make it easier to clean, says 
Mark D. Sobsey, the professor who conducted the study.

One straw is capable of purifying at least 700 liters (182 gallons) of water, 
removing an estimated 99.9% of bacteria and 99% of waterborne viruses, which, 
while not perfect, is enough to significantly reduce the risk of infection 
and illness, according to Prof. Sobsey. The straw doesn't completely remove 
turbidity from water or make saline water potable. It also doesn't remove or 
filter heavy metals.

While LifeStraw's ability to filter out waterborne bacteria and viruses has 
been demonstrated in the lab, its effectiveness at reducing diarrheal 
illnesses in the field -- which depends on things such as whether people use 
the device consistently and correctly -- is still being measured. Thomas F. 
Clasen, a lecturer in the department of infectious and tropical disease at 
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, expects to complete a 
study of the device among users in Ethiopia in the next several months. He 
declined to release details on data collected so far.

If the LifeStraw reduces diarrhea even 10% to 15%, it would be considered "an 
effective device," Prof. Sobsey says. If the reduction is 25% to 50%, then 
"we can declare it a victory," he says.

This year, Vestergaard Frandsen introduced the LifeStraw Family, a $15 water 
purifier that families can use at home. Families pour water into the 
purifier, which kills off parasites in addition to viruses and bacteria that 
cause diarrhea. It is designed to last long enough to provide about two years 
of clean drinking water for a family of six.

Although Vestergaard Frandsen, which is closely held, declines to provide 
sales figures for the LifeStraw or the LifeStraw Family, it does say that all 
of its products "are selling very robustly, and we have significant growth 
every year."

"There is no conflict between doing good and doing business," the younger Mr. 
Frandsen says.

--Ms. Mincer is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in Jersey City, N.J.

Write to Jilian Mincer at jilian.mincer@dowjones.com3

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