Light Touch
The Best Disinfectant
Exploring how sunlight, even absent any bells and whistles, can purify biologically contaminated water.
Treating water with the SODIS method in Kiribati, Micronesia. [The Pacific Community (SPC), www.spc.int]
Two years before he was appointed a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Brandeis was speaking metaphorically, on transparency and banking corruption, but the statement derives its force from the centuries-old, commonplace belief that sunlight was, in fact, a readily available, free and effective disinfectant.
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