Clean Drinking

Water. It’s just about everywhere and a necessity for life.

But for the adventuresome —those trekking through primeval forests or climbing soaring mountain peaks—as well as your everyday hikers and canoeists, finding clean drinking water can be a challenge. Even seemingly crystal-clear water can contain harmful bacteria and viruses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that annually 20% to 50% of tourists are affected by illness from the food they eat or the water they drink.

The water contamination problem, however, can be considered a thing of the past. Hydro-Photon, a 10-year-old company headquartered in an unassuming post-and-beam barn in Blue Hill, has developed the SteriPEN, a small, portable device that uses ultraviolet light to make water potable with a few twists of the wrist—and not just sort-of-clean water that only requires a little tweaking.

Last year, Justin Lichter completed a 10,000-mile hike that started in Cape Gaspe in Canada, brought him down the Appalachian Trail, through Maine, south to Central America, and ended in Mexico. His worst water situation occurred in—surprise!—the United States. In the deserts of New Mexico, he often found himself drinking from cattle troughs and stock reservoirs. He had no other water source for miles, so he filled his bottles and treated the filthy water twice with his SteriPEN. He reports that he didn’t get sick from that water or from any other water he treated with the pen on his year-long trip.

Although the SteriPEN has worked effectively, as it did for Lichter, on turbid water, the company recommends filtering such waters before treating. Even a coffee filter or pantyhose will work.

The idea of using UV to kill unwanted microscopic intruders has been around for more than a century, but it has been used primarily by large-scale industries like soft drink manufacturers. “What we’re trying to do,” says company president Edward Volkwein, “is put the power into the people’s hands.” Prior to the SteriPEN, individuals who needed to purify contaminated waters had to rely on filtering systems and chemicals.

The original SteriPEN is 7.6 inches long and weighs 6.5 to 8 ounces (with batteries, depending on the type). The Adventurer and Traveler models are 6.1 inches long and weigh 3.6 ounces (with batteries). The latest models can be equipped with solar-powered battery chargers.

The brainchild of company founder Miles Maiden, the SteriPEN is the foundation of what is now a multimillion-dollar business with expansive plans: Hydro-Photon is currently exploring uses for the military, emergency services, and maybe even the home market. A growing presence in more than a dozen countries, the company just recently acquired a distributor in Nepal at the foot of Mt. Everest.

Maiden studied philosophy and psychology at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. Admittedly, he had very little background in the traditional uses of UV light, which, he says, proved to be a boon. With no preconceived notions or understanding of the normal process of water passing through UV light, Maiden was able to chart his own course, sort of like building a car from scratch without the restrictions of having four wheels.

The idea of a pen-shaped device came to Maiden almost as a daydream, about a decade ago, something that just popped into his head as he was driving, he says.

“I think if I knew more about UV, I wouldn’t have come up with this idea,”
he says.

In Maiden’s first attempt, he assembled a SteriPEN with a UV lamp from California and parts he picked up from Radio Shack. The pen’s ability to wipe out the unhealthy elements was tested and retested in labs, including at the University of Maine. In all cases, the purifiers exceeded the U.S. EPA guidelines for testing microbiological water purifiers. UV can kill even the smallest viruses a fraction of a micron small that slip past the best filters. And in 48 seconds, SteriPEN can disinfect 16 ounces of water with no aftertaste. It’s also easy to use: Just push the button and put it in the water until the indicator turns green.

But even with science to back him up, Maiden found it difficult to convince consumers of the SteriPEN’s effectiveness. “How do people know that the chemicals are working?” Maiden asks. “Are you seeing the little microbes putting up the white flag?”

Slowly with word-of-mouth advertising and public recognitions—it was named one of Time magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year” in 2001 and received the Derryck Draper Award from the Outdoor Writers’ Guild of the United Kingdom for the most innovative product of 2006—the SteriPEN is working its way into the market, says Volkwein, whose marketing experience is four decades long with giants like General Foods.

But the initial price of $239, which didn’t even cover costs, continued to prove a significant sticking point until the company finally moved its manufacturing component offshore. The original Steri-PEN’s current cost is $79.

And now whether you’re on a mountaintop, in a remote rain forest, or arriving in a hotel room in a third-world country, purified, drinkable water is as easily accessible as reaching in your pocket for a pen.