decontaminate

That’s sent water treatment operators scrambling to find ways to decontaminate water supplies without breaking the bank.

"You don't want to know what's in there. It's full of human waste and other garbage. We decontaminate immediately after each dive."

The MIT team found that this process could effectively decontaminate water with low concentrations of lead.

When reused, the decontaminated robots still picked up plastic and microbes, albeit smaller amounts of both.

One team of researchers is focusing on carbon- and sulfur-based quantum dots, using them to create safer invisible inks and to help decontaminate water supplies.