Safe drinking water? Canadians develop a simple test with a pill

In developed countries, testing whether water is safe to drink can be a long process, in developing countries there is often no testing available at all.  This means in many cases people are forced to drink water at their risk, often leading to sickness, sometimes serious, even deadly.

A Canadian research team has developed a new simple, low-cost test.

John Brennan (PhD) is the Director of the Bio-interfaces Institute, a professor in the department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Canada Research chair in Bio-analytical chemistry and bio-interfaces.

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In North America and other developed countries, if one wants to test the safety of water for drinking it usually involves taking a sample, putting it in a sealed container, packing carefully and mailing to a laboratory.

Some time later, perhaps anywhere from one to several weeks, the results will come back.

Too often in the developing world, testing for bacterial contamination is just not available, and where it is, it can be costly, perhaps prohibitively so.

In examing solutions to this societal concern, Canadian researchers were inspired by a simple commercial breath strip which reacts chemically in the mouth.

Using that basic principle, they developed a pill that dissolves in a small amount of water and changes colour to indicate the presence of bacteria.

No colour change means the water is safe.

Instead of costs and long delays, the low-cost pill can give results almost instantly.

Using a commercially available “sugar”, called pullulan, to create a solid pill, the sensitive testing/reactive enzymes are protected from oxygen and temperature changes that can render them useless within hours.

The latter development is extremely important, especially when sending or storing the pills in remote or undeveloped regions.  Previously such technology required refrigeration or even freezing to protect the enzymes until they were needed. 

“..this is one of those technologies, that has the potential to really have impacts.” Brennan

At best this is costly and inconvenient in developed countries, and difficult to impossible in remote or undeveloped areas.

With this new development, the pills can be shipped as is, and stored on the shelf for long periods, which is an enormous advantage, as is the expected low-cost.

Unlike many scientific breakthroughs, because the pullullan is already commerciall available and approved, instead of the usual 5-7 years for a development to reach the market, professor Brennan thinks this could be ready in as little as two years.

In an interview for the university, professor Brennan said,” If what we’ve discovered doesnt translate into having some kind of positive impacts for society, what have we really done. I think this is one of those technologies, that with some additional work we still have to do, has the potential to really have impacts. That’s, if anything, a reason to be proud.”

The research project is funded by the Sentinal Bioactive Paper Network and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)