An Answer to the World’s Water Crisis?

Nano technology

An Answer to the World’s Water Crisis?

As the world’s population rises from 6.5 billion today to 9 billion by 2050, access to fresh water will become even more important in the near future. Unfortunately, 97 percent of the world’s water is salt water; of the remaining 3 percent, twothirds are frozen.1 As well as being scarce, the remaining 1 percent of the world’s water supply is not evenlydistributed, and this shortage is clearly a serious problem for developing countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated2 that 80 percent of illnesses in the developing world are water related, resulting from poor waterquality and lack of sanitation. There are 3.3 milliondeaths each year from diarrheal diseases caused by E. coli, salmonella and cholera bacterial infections, and parasites and viral pathogens. In the 1990s, the number of children who died of diarrhea was greater than the sum of people killed in conflicts since World War II.

the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and Allianz highlighted how nanotechnologies for water treatment are expected to impact the developing world. PLoS Medicine, a policy forum for improving healthcare in society, has also identified4 the importance of improved water treatment as one of the top 10 ways nanotechnology will change lives. A third, more recent, paper also considered the top 10 ways nanotechnologies will affect us, and clean water is listed among them.5 Clearly, nanotechnologies are set to make a considerable impact on the water sector, most likely through three main areas: purification and wastewater treatment, monitoring,

and desalination.