According to Bardford Angier's "How To Stay Alive In The Woods", one drop of Iodine in one quart of water and wait 30 minutes. Both amount and time can be doubled if the water is particularly suspect. Iodine is preferred to clorine (bleach) in tropical settings, if that's a consideration.

Sorry for the somewhat off topic post but I thought this would probably be the best forum to ask-

What are some safe and reliable home remedies for disinfecting water in the bush, other than boiling? I remember tincture of iodine and bleach, but forget the ratios. I seem to remember it was something like 4 drops of iodine per gallon, or 1/4 teaspoon of bleach but forgot the exact proportion. Anyone know, or have a different/better way? This discussion came up with some friends who came across some of my purification tablets, with one point being that a bottle of iodine is more versatile.

anyway, TIA

Mark

Either will work to the best of my knowledge but I dont remember the exact ratios either. The ones you stated sound about right...for whatever thats worth

Get yourself some puritabs. One tab treats 1 litre. They are a clorine based tab and the water taste a little funny but its still drinkable.

Get one of the pump/filters. They are easy to use and you don't have to worry about any of the formulas or bad taste.

One tablespoon of household bleach per 210 litres works for Cholera. You let it stand for about a hour to be safe. It is good to also boil the water. If it works for Cholera it should work for most other bacteria. I don't like the tablets, makes your coffee tastes funny.

Jaco Human
jacohu@mweb.co.za
SA Hunting Experience

Having had Giardiasis I am admittedly in the once bitten, twice shy category, but I always treat water by two of the three methods discussed above.

I run it through a piece of muslin cloth to get the big chunks out, then filter it. Your filter will last a lot longer if you pre-strain the water. If I have time, or am in a cold climate I boil it for a bit to brew coffee, tea, cocoa, etc.

If I'm in a hurry, or it is hot out, I throw some chlorine or iodine in it. If you have ever had an intestinal parasite (they're like a democrat, only worse if you can believe it), you will not mind the taste one little bit.

One thing that is important to remember is that you need to give the chemical treatment a half hour to work. If you boil the water, you need to get it to a rolling boil for five minutes at sea level, more at altitude.

If you are using Iodine in the Povidone Iodide form you will need to use 8 drops/liter for clear water, and 16 for cloudy water.

If you get Giardiasis the treatments are either quinacrine or metronidazole (Flagyl). Quinacrine is not available in the US, but should be readily found in most of the rest of the world.

JCN

Get one of the Exstream filter bottles from this place...www.libertymountain.com or order from elsewhere BUT GET ONE!



Each stage of the filter sytem may be replaced so you don't have to replace the whole system once the pre-filter is plugged up. I have used these in Southern and Northern Africa without incident. Further, they are much more convenient than filtering water or treating it and THEN putting it into a water bottle or canteen.

Best,

JohnTheGreek

The best thing to use is a quality filter. I like the Katadyn Combi since it has a charcoal filter which really improves the taste and will pull some contaminants from water. If the size and weight is not to your liking, as mentioned above, the Katadyn/Exstream bottle filters are very handy and include a charcoal filter and have a slight iodine taste.
Prolonged use of iodine drops is to be avoided. Bleach will work but is also hard on your body. Katadyn makes some micropur tablets which are chlorine dioxide, supposedly what municipal water systems use, and do not have any side affects. First off, use a coffee filter to strain the larger particles, then toss a tablet in per quart/liter of water. The wait time varies from 30 minutes for clear water to 4 hours for dirty, cloudy water (EPA specifications).
If you choose iodine or bleach and the taste bothers you, get some single serve packets of Crystal Light mix. Makes a world of difference.
http://www.katadyn.com/site/us/home/

Household chlorine and iodine will disinfect water for bacteria and simple protiens, but they will NOT get giardia or cryptosproidium. Crypto and giardia are cycsts with hard shells that allow them to pass through without being touched. The good news is that they are very large comparatively, and can be easily filtered by even the cheap backpacking filters.

How much filtration you need depends on what you think is in the water. In the western US I use a good filter with average pore size of .2 microns, you can find pore size on the package. This will filter out all the big stuff like crypto and giardia which are found almost anywhere cattle graze and crap in the water and especially near beaver.

If you are in an area where you worry about more than those contaminants, you will need to purify the water AFTER filtering. Most of the time iodine and chlorine will suffice, but if you can afford it, get a MIOX pen, it is the only form of water disinfection that will kill everything in water. Period. Game over, the best there is.

I would dininfect in places like Mexico and Africa where pathogens and viruses are more of a problem than giardia. Viruses are very small and will travel right through all but the best filters made, and won't even slow down for a backpacking filter. If you are worried about them, filter first to remove large particulates and disinfect. Viruses tend to cling to particulates so as long as you don't force the water through the filter faster than you should, you will trap much of them with the particulates.

Bacteria are larger than viruses, but many strains are still small enough to go through a filter. Again, disinfect after filtration to remove the big stuff.

If you don't filter first with any method of disinfection, the bacteria/virus can be insulated from the chlorine/iodine by being srapped in the dirt or whatever. Household bleach is only 5% chlorine which is very weak. If your worried about it, get a MIOX pen.

Hey that reminds me of a joke- How do you make holy water?

You boil the hell out of it.

I think boiling is probably the best and simplest (now watch some infectious medicine MD's straighten me out here!) way of making sure water is safe to drink. A few of us were talking though about situations like when you are travelling with children and you get a suspect water supply. One guy recently chartered a sailboat in the mediterranean and had his children get sick for a couple days, he thinks it was the water tanks.

The MIOX pen looks interesting but I can't see the difference between that and bleach, which is made with electricity and salt water.

Before I went to Canada I stopped by REI in Dallas. They had two little bottles of tablets. You put so many iodine tablets in so many liters of water then followed with the other tablets that killed the iodine taste. They worked super. Both bottles weren't more than an inch and a half tall and a half inch around. Drop them in your shaving kit.

I can't see messing with a home remedy when it's that simple.

So how does boiling stack up against all these chemicals? Is it better, worse, or whatever? I used to backpack/camp alot in the Adrondack Mountains and I used to boil all my water and never had a problem. Ahhh, to be young again

Mark,

I thinks thinks like Crypto and giardia are resistant to boiling to some degree and science is finding a whole host of "stuff" that can live in thermal vents at far higher temperature and pressure than previously thought possible so I guess there is a "theoretical" risk although a much reduced one.

More realistically, the problem with boiling is that it looses its effectiveness somewhat at alltitude as water boils at a lower temperature.

Getting back to your friends senario of water tanks, they are a very real danger and can harbour things like Legionaires Disease. In the past in similar circumstances I have added a lots of household bleach into the tanks and after about 12 hours, drained it & then flushed the system out with clean water.

Buts not only water you have to be careful of. I once saw a company of 120 guys go down with the shits over a 36 hour period. It was evetually traced back to dirty "dish clothes" in a field kitchen they were being fed from..

Regards,

Pete

Boiling works, but for the cysts you have to boil for a very long time.

The differences in bleach and MIOX are pretty drastic, actually. Bleach is a combination of sodium and chloride, much like salt. when it disassosiates it will actually increase the amount of solids in the water, but kills organics.

MIOX uses salt (rock salt, table salt, road salt...anything) and produces and electric charge through the solution, producing the same oxidizer that bleach has (hypochlorous acid), but it also produces ozone, chlorine dioxide, hydrogen peroxide and a few short-lived oxidants. The combination of oxidants is far more effective than just hypochlorous acid, which is the weakest oxidizer of the bunch.

the one downside to the MIOX (other than price) is the required residence time, 4 hours. That means you have to treat you water 4 hours before you can drink it because it is difficult to kill giardia and cryptosproidium. If you filter first, those should be removed and you *should* be able to get away with a much shorter residence time before drinking. All other organic matter is quickly oxidized, expecially in the presence of ozone.

Personally, I won't use bleach or iodine. I don't like the taste and I don't think they work well enough to bother with.