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Water + Salt + Energy = Clean!
codesmith.ca writes "CTV News is reporting about a device built at the Russian Institute for Medical Engineering that can convert standard water and salt into an antimicrobial solution. Apparently it's works on almost anything (virii, bacteria, cysts...) and it's safe for human consumption to boot. I can't find a site for the institute, but there are articles around. This one is fairly detailed, but hard to reach. Here's the Google cache. Here's one about a paper shows it's not exactly super-new technology." Any chemist care to comment on what sounds to be too good to be true?
I hate how p33ps who post news always make it sound revolutionary untill you actually read the story and/or think about it.
Let's have a look at that CTV report:
The resulting solution is so energy rich, it dissolves all microbes it comes in contact with, in water, on objects and on human skin. It also happens to be odorless, colorless, and completely safe for human consumption.
It dissolves microbes, but is safe for human consumption? Is anyone else not convinced?
Researchers said the technique used to control bacteria, viruses, cysts and germs is 200 to 300 times more efficient than any other purification alternative.
200 to 300 times more efficient, how, exactly? And what does it do to help cysts?
(and, er, what's the difference between a virus and a germ?)
The process is cheap. It costs just fractions of a penny to purify a litre of water. Researchers have even been able to take spoiled milk and, by passing it through the Emerald, make it fresh once again. Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?
Yep... it does. Sorry.
A virus is basically a self replicating (with a hosts help) package of RNA.
A germ (or bacteria) is a single celled organism.
Here's the problem as I see it. "spoiled" milk is not JUST caused by bacterial action. It's also a chemical conversion of lactose and lipids. Unless this stuff is some Uber-Converter that can reverse time, this story is full of crap. Now, it COULD have enough energy to 'dissolve' the biological matter present in it. Hell, if I put a huge current though an ionic solution, I can almost guarantee everything in it is going to be toast too.
That's not remarkable, that's bad swimming pool pump maintenace.
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Basically, the idiot who wrote the CTV article has taken a straight scientific story and turned it into a gee whiz pseudoscientific fantasy.
Look, unless you believe in alchemy and slow retort cooking under the full moon, the only thing you're going to get from this contraption is Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide, a strong acid and a strong base (alkali), both of which have antibacterial properties. From the technical description of the actual device, it looks like they're using some kind of ceramic membrane to prevent the positive hydrogen ions and the negative hydroxyl radicals from actually recombining with the Sodium Chloride to form the respective acid and base, so what you end up with are free hydrogen radicals (basically just free protons) and free hydroxyl radicals (basically water that's missing a proton). Neither of these is safe in any sense I can imagine. I certainly wouldn't want to be around if the two products came into contact with NaCl by accident. Heat, Light, Boom, Burn! Or maybe just a slow dermal sizzle.
There's a real pastiche of data here. Variations on a theme mixed together in a haphazard way. None of which adds up to what the CTV article suggests. What you get when you send a reporter to cover a technical story.
Useful technology no doubt, but nothing you'd want to drink.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
The problem is that the common cold and the flu are both viruses, and as such antibiotics have absolutly no effect on them. It is/was quite common to prescribe antibiotics to help combat secondary infections (I seem to always end up with a chest infection for example) which seems to have lead people to believe that unless their doctor is prescribing something they are in some way not being treated effectivly.
:) Soon enough we start to breed up a bigger better stronger bunch of killers. (Darwin by example)
To compound the problem many people stop taking their antibiotics when they feel better (they have done their job right) which means that the bacteria have been exposed to a level of the antibiotic that hasn't killed 100% of the little nasties (a scientific term
To compound the problem in the western world we think its perfectly ok to feed our livestock constant doses of antibiotics even when there is no real evidence that its a) useful or b) more efficient. There is some evidence that such animals do grow slightly faster - something thats worth throwing away our furture use of antibiotics for..
This looks like a good article on the subject: http://www.healthsci.tufts.edu/apua/Pubs/Articles/ EID6_01.pdf
And they can develop some resistance even to antiseptics, by pumping the substance out or degrading it. Oxygen would make a good antiseptic if it weren't for the fact that aerobic organisms (ie, most organisms) have enzymes to break down reactive forms of it.