Team:Brown/Project

Team Resistance Project

'Drinking water in the U.S. is among the top four public health risks posed by environmental problems.' --Former EPA Administrator William K. Reilly According to some estimates, arsenic in drinking-water will cause 200,000 – 270,000 deaths from cancer in Bangladesh alone. --NRC, 1998; Smith, et al, 2000

Accurate measurement of arsenic in drinking-water at levels relevant to health requires laboratory analysis, using sophisticated and expensive techniques and facilities as well as trained staff not easily available or affordable in many parts of the world. --Guidelines for drinking-water quality, 2nd ed. Geneva, WHO, 1996.

Around the world, contamination of drinking water is an immense problem that is difficult and expensive to detect with current technology. As such, many 3rd World countries are unable to effectively diagnose the problem across the millions of water supply sources that exist.

There is a need for a low cost, transportable, and user friendly detection system for water contamination that can be used in the field reliably.

Brown University’s Team Resistance aims to create a biosensor that utilizes a novel method to detect the presence of a toxin in a solution of bacteria.