Scientists at MIT have found a way to make cheap water filters, made from the sapwood of white pine trees. It can filter out 99 percent of E.Coli from contaminated water.

Sapwood is simply the part of a tree where sap flows. It has millions of pores big enough to let water pass while trapping bacteria. It will filter anything that's 70 nanometers or larger. Most bacteria is larger than 200 nanometers.

Co-author of the study Rohit Karnik explains, "today’s filtration membranes have nanoscale pores that are not something you can manufacture in a garage very easily. The idea here is that we don’t need to fabricate a membrane, because it’s easily available. You can just take a piece of wood and make a filter out of it."

[MIT, via UPI]