Angry pathogens, how to get rid of them: introducing microfluidics for waterborne pathogen separation to children

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach for introducing to a non-scientific audience a major public health issue: access to safe drinking water. Access to safe drinking water is a privilege in developed countries and an urgent need in the third world, which implies always more efficient and reliable engineering tools to be developed. As a major global challenge it is important to make children aware of this problem for understanding (i) what safe drinking water is, (ii) how ingenious techniques are developed for this purpose and (iii) the role of microfluidics in this area. This paper focuses on different microfluidic-based techniques to separate and detect pathogens in drinking water that have been adapted to be performed by a young audience in a simplified, recreational and interactive way.