Mixed Oxidant Disinfection Pen
—Taming Water in the Wild

You say you’re hiking out in the desert and you need to disinfect a liter of drinking water—fast? No sweat if you’re carrying the new Mixed Oxidant Disinfection Pen, a lightweight, battery-operated, six-inch device that uses a small amount of electrical current and salt to produce a disinfectant more effective than chlorine.

The Pen, developed by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health under the direction of Dr. Mark Sobsey, and funded by the MIOX Corporation of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was recently unveiled in prototype form at the 100th General Meeting of the American Society of Microbiology. According to its developers, the cylindrical-shaped device is capable of treating 300 liters of water on one set of batteries—at 1/100th the cost of bottled water.

The M.O.D. Pen operates by electrochemically generating a mixture of oxidants from salt solutions, which will disinfect up to one liter of water within 15 minutes. It was evaluated for its ability to inactivate waterborne parasites, viruses and bacteria, as well as inactivate the chlorine-resistant Cryptosporidium parvum microbes. During the first ten minutes it reportedly showed a dramatic inactivation of the former microbes; after 90 minutes there was a significant inactivation of the C. parvum oocysts.

According to Dr. Sobsey, such an invention—which is basically a miniaturization of commercial water disinfection technology developed by MIOX Corp.—could eventually be used during civilian disasters or military conflicts, or simply for wilderness recreation.

Note: MIOX Corporation expects their Mixed Oxidant Disinfection Pen to be available on the commercial market by the summer of 2001.