Team:Buenos Aires/ motivation
From 2013.igem.org
Motivation
Limited access to clean water is a deep problem and tends to worsen with time . The pollution that converts water in non-drinkable can vary from just a single toxic (eg arsenic) to a highly complex mixture of types of substances such as those found in various river basins (eg Sali-Dulce, Matanza-Riachuelo among others). Depending on the type of contamination (complexity and abundance), making the water to be drinkable could be easy and inexpensive . Even if it weren't possible to make it drinkable, information on pollutant levels could be easily used to modify consumption patterns and seek alternative sources of water.
At present, the spatial and temporal quantification of contaminants is limited by the difficulty in processing the samples and associated costs. Moreover, the lack of centralization and systematization of data does the task of obtain them by decision makers, stakeholders and the general public, very difficult.