Can Lifestraw save the world?

You should probably explain that I put my hand under an into my under arm and kind of made like a chicken flapping motion to try to make sound, to make my body talk. Okay, I didn't know what. I had no idea why you were doing. Really, I get it now. My hand smells funny. Now. Olivia Newton John would not approve. I was once kicked out of an Olivia Newton John concert for being too rowdy? Are you serious? What? I need a little bit more on that. I'll tell you.

I'll tell you another time. Okay, Wow, Chuck gosh. You've heard of this body called the United Nations. Some say it's fraudulent, some say it's official. Yeah, of course, um, but you are familiar with you. I've been down to N been to that building? Have you really it was Whenn't it like a Mike Brady design that building? Yeah, sort of that era. It feels like the flags. What were you down there for? Well? I didn't go in. I just have been to New York and said, oh,

look there's an UN building. You just shouted at it. Yes, out exactly. Um, the you win. In my opinion, it's a legitimate body, and I like it because it does things like try to reduce the number of people who don't have ready access to clean water by half. It's a huge undertaking, great initiative. But that's something that's going on right now thanks to the u N. That's what they can do. That's one of the things they can do is kind of like throw their spare tire about

and be like, hey, China, let's do something. Yeah right,

um and uh. I say that that's a substantial undertaking project because there's about one point one billion people as of two thousand and six I believe, who lacked ready access to clean drinking water right and it's it's hard to imagine here and they developed West where we just waste water, and in a startling degree, it's so cheap and abundant and plentiful, especially in areas like the southwest or the southeast, which you know here in Georgia we

have like our own um reservoir. The Chattahoochie River starts in North Georgia, so we have that, and then South George has this huge aquifer, so we're set for clean drinking water. So it's hard to imagine having to walk twenty kilometers to go get water and bring it back and that be part of your daily life, you know, but it is. And it's stuff like that that keeps the developing world undeveloped because how can you focus on anything innovative if you have to walk twelve miles to

get water every day? Yeah, if you're struggling just to stay alive, what else you're gonna get done that day besides meeting the goal of staying alive for yet another day staying alive? Also, you know, again it's hard to envision. We've talked about um, how how how much food and water? How long can I go without food and water? And all that was like we're trying to make it human,

but it's it was tough to conceive. Imagine if the water that you did go get when you brought it back to your house, you drank it, and then a couple of months later it killed you, like you died from diarrhea. Literally. Yeah, you want a couple of stats, Yeah, please, About fifty of the world's uh destitute people josh suffer from disease because of the water that they cook with and drink and about. And this is really startling. Six thousand people per day die from water borne illness. Could

have been prevented people a day. It's like, that's such a huge figure that it's it becomes like this um, this mass that that doesn't have any real definition. It's hard to put faces to that, you know. Yeah, I think about that tonight when you get a glass of water from your tap. Just sucking bum everybody out think about today. Six thousand people die because they can't do something as simple as this exactly, and um dead trombone. Now, Um.

The way that people do die, it's not necessarily from thirst. It's usually not from thirst because there is water out there. The keyword here is um, sanitary, clean drinking water. Exactly. There's water out there, but they're full of all sorts of acteriathogens. Apparently there's about four billion cases of diarrhea every year. I count for about two that is grass this article um cites about one point eight million people die every year from diarrhea. And and you but you

become dehydrated. You do it so often that you become dehydrated so quick that you die. And hydration brought on by diarrhea. And if you're already malnourished, that's where the problem is. It's not you know, I could get dehydrated and drink more water, but if you're already malnourished. If you say, like have HIV and your child or even an adult with HIV, I think children get diarrhea at a rate of four times that if they have HIV, and adults are seven times more likely to get diarrhea

if they have HIV. And developing nations a lot of people have HIV. Yeah about like HIV cases are found in developing nations. So couple that all together, and you have people dying because of something as simple as diarrhea. That's just a nuisance to people like us. And we said, yeah, we just go get the ammonium. But imagine a world where there is no ammodium. I don't take amodium um. But so that's so I can imagine that world weird anyway.

The article cites one point eight million deaths from from diarrhea um. I would dispute that. I found that Giardia, which is a diarrheal parasite um, causes two point five million deaths alone, and cryptosporidium, which is also a parasite that brings on diarrhea causes about three point five million deaths worldwide alone. So just between those two bugs and six million deaths a year from diarrhea dying of diarrhea. And again, as we're saying, this is all from access

to a lack of access to clean drinking water. Right. So that's right, Josh, And hopefully there is a solution on the rising. And about five years ago someone made great strides and solving this. A guy from what was his name? His name is Torben vaster guard Franson. Yes he's Swiss, yes, and Dutch or Danish? Does he? I didn't know the Swiss head names that fancy. The Swiss are gonna write in and say, of course we have

names that fancy, how dare you? Yeah, Josh? He developed something called life straw and uh, it's a company based out of Lausanne and Laosanne. I said it like I was from laos though, um is it Lusanne? In they basically produced stuff for clothing, but inwo they started to make relief products like tents and blankets. About five years after that they phased out all their conventional textiles to

concentrate on relief products. And in two thousand five is when uh sister Franzen developed the life straw because he was looking at a way to help guinea worm. Right. Do you remember when that speaker from the Carter Center came and talk to us. Yes, remember that pipe straw that they had, Yeah, So that was the original life straw. It was just as no frilled black tube that has a steel mesh filter in it because the Volkswagen. Yeah.

And it has a string that you you can um that allows you to wear it around your neck so you always have it with you. It's not it's not cumbersome. UM. And then what you do is you just lean into the water and you drink, drink it, use it like a straw, h and it filters the water. This specifically the original it's still called the personal pipe filter. UM. It originally was designed with the help of the carter center um to fight guinea worm. Yeah, we actually mentioned

this and that food and water was the parasit. I think it was a guinea worm was one of the three growth parasites. Yeah, and and I think I had a little sidebar on it two in the food water. Let's hear it. And now is the time we talk about guinea worm. I don't know. I was talking about the LifeStraw. We have previously mentioned this, but we felt like it deserved its own full Well, that's what gave.

It's what gave the LifeStraw. It's birth, I guess in in two thousand and five, I guess is when they really came up with this this personal pipe filter and like we said, it filters out. Um. Do you remember how to say this? Chuck? Is it dr cunlus, dracunculus, dracunculus, that's what it is, drcunculus. The guinea worm. Right, this this little s ob gets um, it goes down in your intestine, lodges, reproduces, and then eventually travels down usually

to your leg right, and then when it's exposed to water. Next, once it's ready to come out and it's grow and do about a meter in length. Um. The next time it's exposed to water, this milky substance, it's actually millions of guinea worm larva go right into the water supply and the whole life cycle is brought on again and again and again. Yeah. So what happens in these developing nations.

People go down to the river to wash their wound or just to be in the river, and then everybody, all of a sudden the rivers infected and people are drinking out of it. And that's just one of the diseases. There are many, many, right, But that's what gave rise to this life straw. The problem is the original personal pipe filter. It was large. The the filter was large.

So the guy Torbin right Mr. Flourished name went back to the drawing board and created life straw which is much more um I guess, detailed, and and is much more effective at at removing pathogens and bacteria and parasites. Yeah, and as it as it exists today. The personal life straw is about ten inches long twenty for our friends everywhere else in the world, about two I'm sorry about an engine around It's made of plastic. Like you said, you wear it around your neck. So you've always got it.

And it takes about eight minutes to drink a quart of water, which you probably shouldn't be drinking a quart of water faster than eight minutes. Should we walk through how how this one works actually, because that's what we did. Ingenious and its simplicity, well it is, and you know they've I've had these with um emergency drinking straws, filtration straws in my backpack for years, so it's not like

it was a brand new idea. No, those are all classified as what's called the p o U water purification systems point of use. Yeah, exactly right, look at you. So what happens. Obviously you suck the water through. It goes through a filter at first that removes the big stuff. Then there's a polyester filter that gets things much smaller, down to about fifteen microns, which is about a tenth of the diameter of a human hair. Yeah, and that's

actually small enough to catch bacteria most most specter. So that's really yeah, that's true. Uh so that's really small. And then it goes through iodine coated beads resin beads, and iodine is a halogen and I used to put iodine pills in water when I was camping too, so it has the same effect that kills parasites, viruses a lot of bacteria, and they're in a little chamber that you know gets the most bang for your buck as

far as touching the water. Then it goes into an empty chamber, and then it passes through the carbon filter, which is the final step. And everyone knows that carbon um helps helps it taste better. It's very porous and does a good job of cleaning things like odors. So so you lean down and you drink the water out of any water source and then when you're done, you blow air through it and that pretty much blurs out the stuff that you caught f and then you go

back to doing whatever you're doing. This could be the end of our show eight minutes later, drink after corn of water. But it gets better. It does with the LifeStraw family. Yeah, so chuck over its lifespan. The the personal um life straw can filter about seven hundred courts of water, so taking that that's about two courts a day. Um that lasts for a full year. Okay, so you get your life straw, you use it for a year, you get another one, the Family one, is much more effective.

I think it's uh. It filters enough to to keep a family of five in water for three years before it needs to be replaced ten quarts an hour by comparison, which is obviously why they call it the Family one, right, And it does about eighteen thousand courts over its lifespan of three years. Right, Yeah, And it's kind of similar, right, but it's just larger and it uses gravity, and it's

got a couple of more parts to it. And you just said the magic word, Like there are all sorts of water purification systems out there that require things like electricity or a diesel generator or something that you don't

necessarily have. The cool thing about life straw and a life straw family UM water fill terms is that, like you said, it uses gravity um or with the lifestock personal suction UM, but with the family version, there's like a bucket at the top that has like that initial filter, and then it goes down through increasingly smaller by micron

textile filters. It goes through a halogen chamber that releases a low level amount of chlorine right um, and then it hits the plastic hose so just exiting the bucket, it's already been filtered three times, goes down this hose down to another cartridge that that This is where the ultrafiltration takes place, and it's also where it's um discharged after that um And the cool thing is is after you're done, you can squeeze his cleaning bulb three times

and basically it back flows all the impurities and there's a separate tap to get rid of that, so you clean it very easily. You don't need anything extra. It's all self contained and it uses gravity, no electricity, no anything. Brilliant and its simplicity just like it's smaller buddy, right. But it also it saves five people's lives for three years rather than one one person's life for a year, right, and doesn't have a little spicket at the bottom, so you can kind of use it as a as if

it were a repository of water. Yeah, that's exactly what it is too. By the time it gets out of that tap, no matter where it is, it's gone through this filtration process. So yes, it is a repository. That's that's right. And at the end of this process, my dude, friend, you are going to have nothing in their particle wise larger than a droplet of fog, right, a droplet of fog, and that would be ninety nine percent of bacteria and viruses, including things like salmonella and shakila and uh enter A

coccus and whatever. That last one is staff staff Yeah. Um. The problem is is that there are some pretty nasty bugs that are smaller than a droplet of fog, right, fifteen microns, right, because we said with the LifeStraw, and I think both of them the smallest, the the filter goes down to his fifteen microns. Yeah, um, some nasty ones too. Unfortunately, remember we talked about cryptosporidium and Giardia.

Both of those are smaller than fifteen microns and even worse than that, Giardia um is actually resistant to iodine, which is the LifeStraw. Personal is like big, like the the last death blow is that running it through that those those um halogenized resin beads, right, And actually we

need to point out that's just for the personal. Actually, the family one does filter out the Giardia and the cryptosporidium, which is good, but the personal doesn't because that's you know, it's about as good as they can do for a little ten inch personal system right. It Also, UM doesn't filter out heavy metals fluoride, So if you don't want to get dumber, you're out of luck. Slayer what mega death?

Oh yeah, okay, nice? Are you know? It's sad as It took me a second figure you didn't laugh at first, and then and I was like, I just want to crawl under this desk um arsenic. So if you're in a if you're in a if you're a poor person in a developed area that has all sorts of factories but no environmental regulations, you're kind of out of luck

with LifeStraw personnel as well well. And there that comes in an effect though in a case of like a urban disasters, because they start to send these two places like New Orleans and so in that kind of case you'd be kind of out of luck with the fluoride and stuff. So there there are some things that that

the LifeStraw can't do right UM. And as a result, there's a lot of people out there who are dedicated to making sure that people get clean water who are saying like this is great, this is helpful, but UM at the same time, it's it's not really solving the problem. So like UM in this article, there is a guy

named Paul Heatherington. He speaks for Water Aid, which is a British charity, and I think there's a lot of people who agree with them, UM that the way to really solve the water crisis in the developing world is to UM educate people on how to treat their water, how to take care of their water, and then after they understand this, or probably simultaneously is an even better idea, UM, give them a clean source of water that's nearby, dig

them a well. Remember, if you're walking to and from water twelve miles a day, you haven't gotten to the point where you're manufacturing heavy equipment that can dig you a well that will supply your village that comes later. Right, So a multi pronged approach, get get life straw in the hands of these people, work on the education. That's Chuck's advice, right, should go to them life straw so they can stay alive long enough to go to these

education classes exactly. Obviously, Josh, education and changing an entire culture of water, sanitation and hygiene is going to take a long time. So in meantime, get life straw in the hands of these families. And luckily there are a lot of companies, relief organizations, charities that are getting on board because even though they're only think like you get a deal in bulk, you can get them for about

three bucks apiece if you're a big organization. But I think they're like five dollars just to buy a single one, and that's even too much money for these people. Yeah, that's that's part of the problem. And that's another thing.

I didn't see any criticism of Life Straw, of the company that manufactures life straw UM, but I get the impression that there's people out there UM, especially NGOs that are dedicated to water UM, that feel like companies that produce relief products are there not selling to these to their clients, their end users. They're selling their creating these things, are selling them in between two people like you and me, or rotary clubs or large corporation. Right, So I went

on and um, there's links on UM. What is how do you say this company's again best investor guard franz in um and it says donate. There's like a whole thing where there's links to the rotary club. There's one in Spain, there's one in the U k. And then there's one in the US. They all have different sites you can donate. So when this it was supposed to

be three bucks, I've seen five bucks. But then where the rubber hits the road on this rotary site, it's six fifty for a life straw and then twenty five for the family unit, and ultimately it doesn't really matter. It's six fifty. You and I can afford that. And I think like we should kind of put out something of a challenge to the stuff. You should know listeners to donate one of these each. What do you think? Don't you think? So? Dude, we get like a couple

hundred thousand life straws out there, that'd be awesome. Okay, you're looking at me for approval, like I can says, I don't want to do that today. I feel like going back to bed. And luckily, Josh, like I said, there are companies getting involved. And think this was just released today. Uh, the Danes have teamed up with Coca Cola, our own Atlanta's based Coca Cola, and Vest Guard friends in in a in a group called Water for All and they have a deal going Coca Cola apparently is

the leading bottled water seller in the Nordic regions. It's called Killed Killed the Bold. Is there water that they sell there? You are good at Nordica? Probably all right. But they have a program called Three Leaders of Clean Water, and it's this partnership where they donate three Leaders of Clean Water to Africa for every purchase of Coca Cola's bottled water brand there. And just yesterday they donated twenty seven thousand life straw personal life straws through this partnership

to Africa. See, I think I never got really, I can't get to finish my point. Vester gard Frandsen, Right, they are making the product that is very helpful. It's literally saving people's lives. Right. Um. I think anytime you combine capitalism with relief efforts, it kind of turns my

stomach a little bit. I don't mind it, but it seems like when I really step back and think about it, that's such an a Western elitist view of things, because it's like arguing with somebody like, well, why don't you charge a little less, why don't you donate some of these and having a disagreement while there's somebody dying at your feet, you know. So, I mean I think it's this is one of those cases where it's like, just let's get these people their stuff and then we can

have this conversation later. You know. Well, yeah, but unless it's a an NGO that has developed this and invented this, then you can't expect this guy to just go broke giving these away. I don't And it was tricky though, I know what you're saying is and same same with Code Cole. It's like, awesome, you know you helped foster this transportation of thousand um lifestraws to people who didn't have them. But like people begin with which a lot of people have a problem with buying bottle water in

the first leg. So I think there's problems with it, But ultimately it's it's very very important not to lose sight of the that end user of life straw who's like, please send me one so I don't die. We should also mention too that um, the reason that you know we said that that that that company, the Friends and Company, quit making their other textile products was because they probably found that was a good market for these other things. Like they also make the permanent and zero fly, which

are these things? I think, is it Julia Roberts just really involved with the netting, the anti malaria netting. It seems like in uh Angelina Jolie thing to be involved in She's all about in the movie everything. Yeah, but they also do manufacture those two produ ucks which which helped present prevent malaria, not present malaria, that would be

a whole different malaria, come and get it. So they also have these care packs for HIV positive families and you get like a permanent and a life straw and antibiotics, condoms, things like that, some brochures and brochures to educate you. So they're doing good and we love it. We're behind it all the way. I don't want you to get

the wrong idea from Josh's harsh words. Right, thank you checkers. Um, they're not the only people creating stuff, and the Rotary Club isn't the only group that you can go through to donate things. Um again, Carter Centers dedicated to guinea worm. They kind of have their eyes on that prize because we're on the brink of eradicating it from the planet, like literally won't be found on Earth. Yeah, once I

think two countries maybe three have it left. Um and only be the second time that's ever happened in the history the world. What was the first one that polio? Yes, Josh, I think it was polio because this is the first parasitic disease, second disease overall. So the Carter Center really wants to get rid of this. So you can donate to the Carter Center at Carter Center dot org, slash health, slash Guinea, underscore worm and that will take you to their little mini site. You can do all sorts of

donating there. You can go to vestor guard Franson dot com. I'm gonna go ahead and spell that one for you, okay, V E S T E R G A A r D hyphen f r A N D s E n dot com and then slash donate. That's gonna take you to all these Koana sites. UM. And then there's a group called Project h Design dot org. So in this article it cited that they're um passing out life straws to people in India. UM, I didn't see that anywhere.

It's not just in Africa. I mean this is happening all over the world, but Africa and is obviously a big ground zero for waterboorns. And yeah, in India is developed, being as that country is, I think a significant portion of people in that nation, uh sixteen million residents which is surprisingly that's of New Delhi's sixteen million residents don't have access to clean drinking water. Um. So yeah, it's

not just in Africa. Uh. I didn't see Project H designs water or lifestyle project, but they did have something called the hippo roller. It's you know what a sod roller is. It's like a big drum with like uh I guess a handles attached, like a lawnmower handle. It's this, but the drum in this case is plastic and you take it to your water source, fill it up up to twenty five gallons, and just roll it back home, so you don't have the big thing on your head. No,

and it's huge most of the time. Apparently people can haul five to six gallons at a time. This allows them to basically make five trips and once those are a hundred bucks um and you can go onto Project H design dot org um and find out about do any of that. And they have a bunch of different cool ones, cool projects that they're funding. And here's my final call, Josh. I would encourage people to try and

conserve water on their own. It's not like the water that you can serve in your house and uh peoria is going to go to be bottled up in chip to Africa. But we went through our drought here in Atlanta last summer and we had all kinds of water restrictions, and Emily and I really got used to the idea of, you know, water is a limited resource and you shouldn't

just waste it. And we really gotten that that. You know, we're not like using our bathwater to do our dishes, but we collect our water from our a C unit and water our plants and we like I never pour water out like that I'm drinking that's gotten, you know, tepid. I always like pouring a plant. Just try and reuse what I can, So I would encourage people to do that. I always pour it on myself in a sexy manner, give my T shirt. That's to do with it. And

it's not wasteful at all. It's well worth it. So we'll see what happens after um the giant nations of the world are drawn into World War three, and the Balkans over water conflicts in Until then, we'll keep podcasting, right, and if you want to learn more about life straw, I strongly recommend you, guys, go type that word L I F E S T R A W into the swinging search bar how stuff works dot com and Chuck, Now it is time for a listener, man, Josh, I'm

gonna call this a couple of emails about uh madaffanel. Okay, remember we talked about that in Is Science Facing Out Sleep? I do I like that one? You want to give a quick rundown on what what that product? What that product is? Madaffanel is a non stimulant um I guess drug of arousal that people that was originally designed for knocleptics, and suddenly people who don't like to sleep and like to get things done for forty eight hours at a

stretch without feeling tired started taking That's right. So we got one from a neurobiology um major. So he is a neuroscience major and he's Dave A. K A the professor, and he has just to say, guys are writing in as a neuroscientist, and you're probably scared that I'm writing you with a pocket protected complaint about the number of times you incorrectly said munafodil instead of medaffanel. Seven. He points out, Yeah, we got it backwards, which is not

unlike us. But fear not, guys are coming peace. I'm a PhD student from Toronto, Canada but studying neurobiology of cocaine addiction. UM familiar with madaffanel because it has regular recently undergone clinical trials for use as a treatment for

cocaine addiction. It has thought that medeffanel could work for cocaine dependence the same way methodone works for heroin as a maintenance treatment, but the results are inconclusive right now, A word of caution to just because a drug like medeffanel doesn't directly impact dopamine systems in the brain doesn't mean it can't have rewarding and addictive effects. Do you

everythink of that? I did, any drug that can keep you up all night so you can be twice as productive as a potential to be addictive, because productivity itself can be extremely rewarding. I never really thought about that. That's great, So it's like indirectly addictive. Then yeah, lastly, at the risk of being two technical. More and more evidence is suggesting that glutamate and GABBA G A B A, the neurotransmitters directly impacted by medefanel, play an important role

in addiction, perhaps even more so than dopamine. In fact, by altering dopamine levels, drugs like cocaine make long term changes in glutamate and GABA circuits in the brain, and these changes are thought to underlie addictive behavior. You say, cocaine exactly like Glen Fry. It's chilling cocaine. Thanks a lot, guys. I swear on my medaffanel that I won't sleep until I see a podcast on addiction. Man, this is so crazy.

He's like a big person in a week to predict an upcoming podcast or that would have already come out by now. That's right. That was from Dave the professor, and then we had another note from Andrew. He said, I just listen to your Now you went too angry. Just listen to your podcast on facing out Sleep. Was a little bothered by your one sided bashing of medaffanel. A little bothered. That's angry. You focused on people who

abuse medeffanel by using it. To avoid sleep. I've been using it for my sleep at mia for three years and has greatly improved my quality of life. Prior to this, I would sleep eight hours a night and still be tired all day. Now I sleep eight hours a night, feel awake and alert the rest of the day. Ethical doctors aren't prescribing this to allow patients to avoid sleeping. They prescribe it to patients who have a medical condition which caused them to be tired despite having had enough sleep.

And he says I still love the show, so he wasn't really angry, Signed the chairman of the maker of Madafanelnafadel, I mean Dan Andrew. Yes see, you got it wrong. That's right if you have a correction, specifically, if you're a neurobiologist, we love hearing from experts. We should keep his email addressed to Okay, let's do it so in case we have questions and and don't forget we're all starting the push now to um donate life straws, right chuck, Yeah, yeah,

So we're going to figure this out. Well, we'll look for more information soon. In the meantime, if you want to donate a life straw, knock yourself out agreed. Uh. If you are an expert in your field and you think that what you have to say would interest us, we want to know yes we do. Send us an email at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. The how stuff works dot com I phone app has come soon. Get access

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