Now Dankovich is partnering with the non-profit WATERisLIFE to create a book with pages that don't just explain the problem of water contamination, but actually solve it.
"My passion for this research comes from a desire to do good work for helping others and cleaning up the environment," Dankovich tells Tech Insider.
Around the world, 663 million people still don't have access to clean drinking water. That's more than the entire population of North America.
Contaminated water can cause vomiting and diarrhea and lead to deadly bacterial infection, which could easily be avoided if only people had a way to clean up their water.
Dankovich believes The Drinkable Book could be part of the answer.
Printed on each page of the 100-page book is the same message, in either English or Swahili: "The water in your village may contain deadly diseases. But each page of this book is a paper water filter that will make it safe to drink."
All a person has to do is slide the paper into one of the book's two trays and pour water on top of it. Contaminants absorb into the paper, which is treated with bacteria-destroying silver and copper nanoparticles.
The paper kills "99.9999% of bacteria under the ideal circumstances of the laboratory," according to the team's IndieGoGo page. The purified water then filters through to a tray underneath.
Dankovich and her team are currently trying to raise $30,000 to take the book from a pilot program to a full-fledged public health solution. That money will finance equipment and travel costs and provide clean water to two villages for a month, according to their estimates. One book can purify roughly 10,000 liters of water, or four years worth of water for a single person.
To keep the operations under one roof, they've created the nonprofit pAge Drinking Paper.
"Right now all the filter papers are made by hand by Teri or a student in a local church kitchen," Jonathan Levine, earth and environmental engineer and Dankovich's partner, wrote on the IndieGoGo page.
According to Levine, scaling the project to accommodate hundreds of people, let alone millions, will inevitably take time.
Just getting the proper government research grants could take up to a year. That's why crowdsourcing is so vital to the company's success.
The paper costs only pennies to produce, but more cash on hand now means more books in the hands of people who need them.
"Ultimately we hope to reach millions to 100s of millions of customers and to make pAge filter papers as ubiquitous as soap and soda," Dankovich writes in an email to Tech Insider. "Or at least we aim to try."
Though the book is not yet for sale, the team's IndiGoGo campaign is taking donations through September 18. A $10 donation can help cover the cost of producing one book.
