Team:Buenos Aires/ motivaciones

Contamination is a mayor and continuously growing global problem. And, as only two point five percent of the water is freshwater and of all that the total usable supply for ecosystems and humans is less than 1 percent, contamination of natural water springs is a central issue to work in. Sanitary problems in developing countries many times derive from non-proper water supply and treatment. Many people around the glove have to walk many kilometers to find fresh water and even then that water may have to be treated to be safe to drink. Waterborne diseases are still a

Thereby, having the accurate knowledge of the state of the water before using it may help to prevent the population from drinking it without the proper processing. But, as the monitoring is difficult because of the lack of resources of many developing regions and the remoteness of many locations, this information is not always available.

So, we thought of a biosensor device that was cheap and could be used and understood by anyone without any type of previous knowledge.

There are many types of contamination and correspondingly decontamination processes. Heavy metals, such as mercury or arsenic, and nitrites derivated from excess of fertilizer in crops are two world spread examples of groundwater contamination. Because of that, we decided to make a biosensor of Arsenic and Nitrite in water. However, we have made our design modular so that it could be easy to change the contaminant to which it responds.

Particularly Arsenic is naturally present in earth