Clean Water in Space – and on Earth

Iowa State chemists help astronauts make sure their drinking water is clean

“Lipert said the testing technology can also be a useful tool in many earthbound applications, including forensics tests for drugs, environmental tests for heavy metals and water quality tests for pesticides or herbicides. “This is a very flexible platform,” he said. “You just have to work out the chemistry for each substance you’re analyzing.”

Think about this: There are a myriad of applications on Earth for technologies such as this. Clean, safe, drinking water is an issue for over a billion people. Imagine a cheap version of this technology applied to water quality issues in developing and third world nations.