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→Empowering communities to produce their own water disinfectant
===Empowering communities to produce their own water disinfectant===
The good news: chlorine is really, really easy to produce. One device (there are more) that accomplishes this is the WATA® developed by the Swiss organization Antenna Foundation. A container with a WATA® device is filled with brine is filled with brine, an electrical current is run through the brine for a certain amount of time, and voilà. (For the technically inclined, the current turns sodium chloride into sodium hypochlorite). One litre of the resulting solution is enough to disinfect 4,000 litres of drinking water. The solution is bottled and sold by local entrepreneurs, and distributed in retailer shops, or sold usually by women.
Chlorine also comes with its own safety system: if your nose tells you there is too much chlorine in the water, there probably is. The strong smell from water with too much chlorine will probably put you off drinking it long before the concentration actually becomes dangerous. For more information about the advantages and disadvantages of disinfecting water with sodium hypochlorite, and chlorine in general, see the Akvopedia articles referenced below.
