What’s the best Chemical treatment for water?

[sirbingo]

Hey Y’all,

I can’t stand lugging around heavy filters…and pumping them is also a pain in the tuchas.

I’ve read many of the threads here on WhiteBlaze and its all so confusing.
One person says “I use plain ol’ Bleach”
Then another person will respond by saying “Bleach is CH-06-OH Hydrochloride Diathaline and it when combined with pond scum it causes cancer!”
Then you have the group that says “I just drink it straight from the source and I’m just fine!”


Currently I’ve been using Iodine for disinfecting my water and for the possibility of coming under nuclear attack on the trail….but now I hear that once you open a bottle of iodine its effectiveness starts to lessen immediately.

Oh Vey!

For all of y’all that use chemical treatments for your water, what do you use and why.

[dzierzak]

Polar Pur (iodine) does not lose effectiveness once open. As long as there are iodine crystals in bottle, it will continue to work.

There are other water treatments which do lose effectiveness once opened.

Ed

[PJ 2005]

Bleach + pond scum causes cancer? I'd really like to see the evidence of that. The FDA approves bleach as an water purification method. Just don't go crazy with it... 2 drops per liter/wait a half hour (make sure to bleed the threads) is sufficient for questionable water. For anything coming straight out of the ground, I wouldn't bother treating it.

[Tipper]

2 or 3 fingers of single malt Scotch should do it.

Short of that, I hiked successfully with Aqua Mira, but also met lots of those folks who used household bleach, iodine (my backup), and/or drank staright from the source.

[sirbingo]

This is where I heard the first mention of the cancer / bleach thing....


Don't use bleach because if there is any organic matter in the water which there will be it becomes cancer causing especially over a long period of time

From this thread: http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?t=22941&highlight=cancer

[DawnTreader]

I have exclusively used polar pure for years, but I can't say that I have never been sick from the water.. I'm not sure.. I like it..

[hammock engineer]

I use Aqua Mira. It is basically beach. I haven't gotten sick yet using it in Ohio a little and in KY.

[PJ 2005]

Well, no disrespect to Hobbit, but I've never seen anything that said bleach reacts with organic matter to produce cancer-causing agents. It'd sure make me think twice about using it. Buttt... as long as you buy the unscented, plain bleach, you're just chlorinating the water. Tap water is chlorinated too, and I guarantee the stuff they suck out of rivers and lakes has organic stuff in it!

[Vi+]

Questions, such as “What’s the best Chemical treatment for water?” typically elicit the same responses:

“I just drink it straight from the source and I’m just fine!”

You’re just fine, so far. Regardless which water treatment we use, we all pass that test. When you die, you probably won’t submit a post urging us to use a different method.

“... once you open a bottle of iodine its effectiveness starts to lessen immediately.”

There is an old philosophical theory, which remains favored by more than a few even today, that we all begin to die at the moment of birth. We stalwart souls (soles?) ignore this and hike on.

“As long as there are iodine crystals in bottle, it will continue to work.”

The implicit question isn’t dichotomous. The question isn’t, does iodine stop working when it is opened? The question is, does Iodine’s ability to perform the work diminish after opening? Iodine tablets are considered to have a shelf life, the decline of which is greatly accelerated by opening the container. I suspect Iodine crystals differ somewhat from tablets in this regard.

“For anything coming straight out of the ground, I wouldn't bother treating it.”

I live on property in a rural area. There are several springs on my property. Some springs erupt from the surface travel some distance, re-submerge to travel some more, then re-erupt, continuing in sequences.

I have springs which combine with surface water running off houses, lawns, and roads before they submerge.

Animals drink from surface water. They also defecate there. Dying animals lay in surface water, presumably to cool their fevers. Some die where they lay and rot away there.

When these surface waters submerge, then re-emerge as “spring water,” they appear quite inviting.

I’d appreciate receiving further information from anyone, on how I, too, can develop giardia testing vision, or taste buds.

Wells in my county need to be a minimum of 300 feet below ground before they’ll authorize the required inspection. Mine is only at 80 feet and was “grand fathered.”

I’ve noticed bottled spring water, labeled as coming from West Virginia, which is listed, elsewhere, as having the most polluted water in the country. If it’s good enough to drink, sell it to outsiders. I hope someone must pass “spring water” before it is sold commercially. I suppose you can send a test bottle containing a sample drawn from a commercial bottle to Sears for free testing.

I hike with the imperfect little Iodine Tablets which seem less of a hassle to deal with.

[Dances with Mice]

The BEST chemical treatment for water may be denatured alcohol.

Burning in a stove underneath a pot of the water.

[Two Speed]

Bleach + pond scum causes cancer? I'd really like to see the evidence of that. . . Chlorine in the presence of organics yields trace amounts of chloramines, which is carcinogenic. The exact level of hazard is debatable, and depends on many, many factors, but it still ain't a good idea to increase exposure to chloramines. Rough filtration, even if just running the water through a bandana, is a good idea, both to reduce the formation of chloramines and to improve the efficiency of disinfection.
The BEST chemical treatment for water may be denatured alcohol.

Burning in a stove underneath a pot of the water.Weren't you the guy who was swilling creek water and washing it down with Everclear?

Or was that me? :-? Now that I think about it I am a bit foggy on that part.

[Skidsteer]

[quote=Dances with Mice] The BEST chemical treatment for water may be denatured alcohol.

Burning in a stove underneath a pot of the water.




Weren't you the guy who was swilling creek water and washing it down with Everclear?

Or was that me? :-? Now that I think about it I am a bit foggy on that part

The Everclear was mine and I had enough to make coffee in the morning.

Barely.

[mweinstone]

dear sir, your post is both fake and phoney. lol. phoney as the swill you would drink. i sir will take my liquid from the ground untill that day in witch it is death to the animals and humans to do so. and on that day i shall die with dignity sir. with the animals. and you sir may go on in your chemical protected suit. depenndent on others to supply you. i will be free of it i tell you ! live by faith man! i do have a lifetime of heavy drinking straight from the source under my belt with no poor health. ever. because there is a simple equation to being certian about water. height from nearest human use times density of nearby human use times flow times plants at waters edge. in other words, in central park, you could have clean water, but only if it were on top of a very high outcrop. thousands of feet. but on the other hand, the swath of the entire appalachian trail lies on mountains reletivly high enough, givin the sparse density of towns nearby, to be sure that it is almost covered head to toe with pure water. even most culverts in gaps by small roads are clean as can be. so there.

[jbwood5]

I used MicroPur MP1 tablets by Katadyn on a 165 mile BMT hike that I completed last week. In the past, I always used filters. These tablets are individually sealed in foil and it would be a good idea to have a pen knife to open them. Sometimes I could tear into the foil, but sometimes I needed to cut the foil with a knife. The tablets helped cut the pack weight down.
These disolve like a seltzer and you should let the chemical work for at least 20 minutes for good looking clear water and up to 4 hours for questionable water. I usually let it work for 20 minutes on this hike since I used mostly spring water. The water tastes pretty good with only a slight Chlorine taste which is about like my tap water at home.
As with all purification methods, avoid water along roadsides or creeks that may have passed near a landfill. Nothing can remove heavy metals or other poisons such as fertilizers.

John Wood

[Dances with Mice]

The Everclear was mine and I had enough to make coffee in the morning. But what did you use in your stove?

[nutlub]

Originally Posted by hobbit http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?p=344786#post344786)
Don't use bleach because if there is any organic matter in the water which there will be it becomes cancer causing especially over a long period of time


Chlorine in the presence of organics yields trace amounts of chloramines, which is carcinogenic.

It is for this very reason that I do not use house hold bleach...and wile I'm at it I will never eat French Fries again!!! French Fries and Cancer (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/garfinkel/15067/)


chloramines! :dance acrylamide!

[Skidsteer]

[quote=Two Speed;358976]




The Everclear was mine and I had enough to make coffee in the morning.

Barely.


But what did you use in your stove?

I never said I had hot coffee.

[Two Speed]

I never said I had hot coffee.While that statement is correct in the narrowest sense, my recollection is that your idea of coffee was to get a mouthful of grounds and wash it down with water, hot or otherwise. Of course this had nothing to do with your consumption of Everclear the previous evening.

What I don't understand is why you refused to follow the example of your clear headed, practical and admirable hiking partners who stuck to barley pop, cooled to proper drinking temperature in a convenient creek. If you had that little experiment with the "ultimate lightweight coffee maker" probably would have never occured.

[strnorm]

The best on the market is the ultra violet light, second would be the frontier filter straw from cabela's, the light is around $90, the straw is around $9

[Heater]

While that statement is correct in the narrowest sense, my recollection is that your idea of coffee was to get a mouthful of grounds and wash it down with water, hot or otherwise.

My understanding was that it was a Coffee extract... or tincture.

Now, I do not know how much flavor you could get from a 6 hour soak. What I wanna know is how the stimulating properties of the caffiene may have been diminished by the chemical reactions with the Alcohol... or if it really mattered at that point.

My guess would be the latter.

:-?

[RedneckRye]

First off, I didn't bother to read all of the previous posts. Whatever those folks said is absolutely correct, as far as they know.
What I know is that I am lazy and don't like to pump. Sometimes I'm in a hurry and don't like to wait on what ever chemical treatment is in my pack. Sometimes I look thru my pack and find a filter, sometimes some chemicals, sometimes a big-ass rock that someone stuck in there. Sometimes I use some combination of those treatments on my water.
My personal favorite is to start cursing at the person who put the rock into my pack, then to curse at the rock, then to praise the rock for its weight and beauty, then to dip my bottle into the source and think good thoughts and guzzle that whole quart down.
Of course, if the water looks nasty as hell and I can look upstream and see cows and beaver dams, I might use all of the above. Or maybe none of those.
How to treat your water comes from your own experience and your never ending paranoia about cooties ( Giardia, crypto, lambdia, god knows what else).
Also, usually I treat my body to a sip of bourbon once or twice a day and that seems to cure most of my problems.
Yes, I have been ill a couple of times, usually I blame it on the fact that I don't use Purell or some other alcohol type of disinfectant on my hands frequently enough.
Their is NO science behind this. But there is the TRUTH that there is something sacred and holy about sticking your face into a creek and drinking till you are full and content.

[Two Speed]

. . . Now, I do not know how much flavor you could get from a 6 hour soak. . . Ahhh, that would explain why Skids went to sleep with duct tape over his mouth, he was soaking his coffee!

And all this time I thought he was trying not to keep us up with his snoring . . . actually, the 6 hour "dans la bouche" coffee soak method works on both counts, so this makes it an ultralight technique! Silly me!

RR, I really liked your post, and if I ever have a chance to slip a large rock into your pack, well, count on me. I wouldn't dream of depriving you of the opportunity to admire a rock or two.

Long winded, rambling coments follow. Continue reading at your own risk!!!

The debate about the "best" water treatment method has been going on for quite a while now, and probably isn't going to end any time soon. Without specific knowledge about the contaminant no one can really prove their method is the best. What a knowledgeable and intelligent hiker can do is read, make their best effort to figure out what's most likely to cause them problems and select an appropriate treatment method, if any. I think this article (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?p=119497#post119497) is a great place for any hiker to start their eductation. IMHO the author does an outstanding job of explaining some of the complexities and cutting through the BS that surrounds this subject.

When I can afford the weight I like to carry a Katadyn Mini. Ceramic filter, with silver iodine impregnation, about 9 oz, and delivers some really good water. Also slow as Christmas and extremely prone to clogging. When my pack weight is getting heavier than I like I carry Aqua Mira. Relatively fast, light and the taste isn't wildly objectionable.

I am treating less of my water, but also getting more selective about where I pick it up, too. My preference is spring water, straight from the source. However, if the source looks nasty or I have any reason to think it suspect I treat it. The larger the creek the more suspect on Planet Two Speed. Large carcasses within visible range, particularly if they are immersed in the creek are cause for me to pass on that particular creek if possible. Water with wierd odors, tainted color and muddy water should also be passed on, if possible.

The whole water treatment debate inevitably involves personal hygiene and whether or not the individual hiker thinks scrubbing their cookware out once in a while is a good idea, too. IMHO soap, judiciously applied to hiker AND cookware, is a good thing. Purell has its' place in this world, too.

The long and short of it is that I haven't died yet, so I must be doing something close to the correct method.

[Photofanatic]

Once upon a time I swam in a public pool and over the course of a few hours playing with my children I incidentally ingested some of the pool water. At the end of the day I was wretching my guts out.

That never happened to me from any other water source with our without treatment and quite frankly if you are on a long hike there will come at least one time when you run completely out of water and forfeit treating your next source for the sake of quenching your thirst.

[rswanson]

I’ve noticed bottled spring water, labeled as coming from West Virginia, which is listed, elsewhere, as having the most polluted water in the country. If it’s good enough to drink, sell it to outsiders. I hope someone must pass “spring water” before it is sold commercially. I suppose you can send a test bottle containing a sample drawn from a commercial bottle to Sears for free testing.
This might be a shock to some but bottled water is exempt from FDA testing if it is bottled and sold within the same state. This is about two-thirds of all bottled water sold in the US. About one fifth of states don't require regulation of this water either. The FDA also does not require bottle water to be tested for parasites like giardia or cyptosporidium, let alone treated for such. By and large, tap water is more heavily regulated and safer.

[Critterman]

Awhile back someone posted an army website that compared water treatment products and also had alot of general water treatment info. After reading way too much of it, here are the lessons I took away:

Cold water requires longer treatment whatever you use. Cloudy water may require more chemical to treat effectively.

Bleach - kills bacteria and virus within a very few minutes, giardia within 30 minutes under best condictions but more likely hours. Crypto not well at all.

Iodine - kills bacteria and virus reasonally well. Not too reliable for giardia even less for crypto.

Aqua Mira - Kills bacteria and virus within a very few minutes, giardia within 30 minutes to 2 hours and crypto within 4 hours.

Micropur - directions say wait 4 hours and it will kill every thing.

Now ask yourself what are you most worried about. Me I worry about bacteria and virus as they are the most common water borne pathogens. Bleach will work just fine if the water is reasonally clear and with in a very short time ( 1-10 minutes ) depending on temperature. However I will also take a few Micropur for the really questionable water.

[ShakeyLeggs]

This might be a shock to some but bottled water is exempt from FDA testing if it is bottled and sold within the same state. This is about two-thirds of all bottled water sold in the US. About one fifth of states don't require regulation of this water either. The FDA also does not require bottle water to be tested for parasites like giardia or cyptosporidium, let alone treated for such. By and large, tap water is more heavily regulated and safer.


21 CFR Part 129. These regulations require that bottled water be safe and that it be processed, bottled, held and transported under sanitary conditions. Processing practices addressed in the CGMP regulations include protection of the water source from contamination, sanitation at the bottling facility, quality control to assure the bacteriological and chemical safety of the water, and sampling and testing of source water and the final product for microbiological, chemical, and radiological contaminants. Bottlers are required to maintain source approval and testing records to show to government inspectors. Checking adherence to part 129 regulations is an important part of FDA inspections of bottled water plants.

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/botwatr.html

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/bot-h2o.html

[rswanson]

21 CFR Part 129. These regulations require that bottled water be safe and that it be processed, bottled, held and transported under sanitary conditions. Processing practices addressed in the CGMP regulations include protection of the water source from contamination, sanitation at the bottling facility, quality control to assure the bacteriological and chemical safety of the water, and sampling and testing of source water and the final product for microbiological, chemical, and radiological contaminants. Bottlers are required to maintain source approval and testing records to show to government inspectors. Checking adherence to part 129 regulations is an important part of FDA inspections of bottled water plants.

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/botwatr.html

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/bot-h2o.html
The United States is a republic; states govern and regulate themselves in matters like this, where the state has jurisdiction. Take a look at the FDA's regulations for Title 21, Food and Drugs, part 129 processing and bottling of bottled drining water, which can be found here (http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=c032822671a9bf9c13b5e87a248e4a6e&rgn=div5&view=text&node=21:2.0.1.1.17&idno=21.). This is current as of May, 2007. All the regulations refer to government agencies having jurisdiction where the water is processed which means, as in call cases simliar, the State. The FDA outlines the procedures and its up to the state to regulate and enforce their own standards.

Here's an excerpt demonstrating this:


Title 21: Food and Drugs


PART 129—PROCESSING AND BOTTLING OF BOTTLED DRINKING WATER
Subpart B—Buildings and Facilities


§ 129.35 Sanitary facilities.


Each plant shall provide adequate sanitary facilities including, but not limited to, the following:
(a) Product water and operations water —(1) Product water. The product water supply for each plant shall be from an approved source properly located, protected, and operated and shall be easily accessible, adequate, and of a safe, sanitary quality which shall be in conformance at all times with the applicable laws and regulations of the government agency or agencies having jurisdiction.The Federal government does not assume jurisdiction until the product passes from one state to another. The majority of bottled drinking water produced in the U.S. is sold within the state in which it was produced.
We have some serious thread drift going on!

[Brrrb Oregon]

dear sir, your post is both fake and phoney. lol. phoney as the swill you would drink. i sir will take my liquid from the ground untill that day in witch it is death to the animals and humans to do so. and on that day i shall die with dignity sir. with the animals. and you sir may go on in your chemical protected suit. depenndent on others to supply you. i will be free of it i tell you ! live by faith man! i do have a lifetime of heavy drinking straight from the source under my belt with no poor health. ever. because there is a simple equation to being certian about water. height from nearest human use times density of nearby human use times flow times plants at waters edge. in other words, in central park, you could have clean water, but only if it were on top of a very high outcrop. thousands of feet. but on the other hand, the swath of the entire appalachian trail lies on mountains reletivly high enough, givin the sparse density of towns nearby, to be sure that it is almost covered head to toe with pure water. even most culverts in gaps by small roads are clean as can be. so there.

Man, I don't know if it's in your water, but I think you've gotta be ingesting something chemical. ;)

Life your own life, hike your own hike, pick your own poison. But hey, mweinstone, don't shoot anybody for doing a little research, buddy. We can't all live through the apocolypse, and we don't all want to. Some of us are choosing to just go lay down in your water source and die when that day comes, and you're just going to have to cope with that.

But I have confidence in you. You're tough. You'll be able to manage it. Just remember that a year later the Mormons will be coming out of their basements, looking fat and happy. Be ready for that. They've got some Scouts in that troop, and no fooling.

[oldbear]

Man,You haven't lived until you've had a good case of Giardiasis. I really didn't think it was possible for that much stuff to come out of that many orifices at the same . If I wasn't so sick , I might have actually had time to be impressed by it all. You want to talk about fast weight loss ? Oy ! I kept thinking that if I could sell this stuff to some Hollywood starlets not only would I improve my love life But I could make some real money too.
Oh yeah , I use bleach and back it up with w/ iodine tablets. I think that coffee filter paper works really well for straining out particulate matter with

[Jim Adams]

This might be a shock to some but bottled water is exempt from FDA testing if it is bottled and sold within the same state. This is about two-thirds of all bottled water sold in the US. About one fifth of states don't require regulation of this water either. The FDA also does not require bottle water to be tested for parasites like giardia or cyptosporidium, let alone treated for such. By and large, tap water is more heavily regulated and safer.
There is a local brand of bottled water here in Pennsylvania bottled by a major player in the business that is treated Monongahela River water. You are warned to not eat the fish....how refined is the water?:eek:

geek

[minnesotasmith]

1) Iodine is cheap, but it's bad for the thyroid longterm. It also tastes lousy enough hikers who use it commonly bring something to flavor the water so they can get it down. Anything that makes you drink less water is a bad idea. Don't rely on iodine IMO.

2) Bleach (hypochlorite) is cheap and easy to get. Water treated with it tastes like the south end of a north-bound mule. It also damages everything it inevitably leaks out on. Like iodine, IMO it's obsolete. Don't treat your water with bleach IMO.

If you use bleach, make sure to get a) the unscented, and b) Chlorox name brand, NOT a generic.

3) Steri-Pens and the like (ultraviolet radiators) are unreliable IMO. Why? In water treatment plants, they make sure the water comes within a VERY close distance to the UV source, much closer than the water in a Nalgene will come to a Steri-Pen. This is because UV does not penetrate water well. Don't rely on treating your water with UV IMO.

4) Aqua-Mira and other chlorine dioxide sources (is a completely different chemical than bleach): very little taste, very portable, some delay to drink, mid-priced. This, plus prefiltering with a coffee filter, is what I used on my thruhike last year. Worked well.

Note that there are chlorine dioxide tablets (Katadyn, etc.) you can use instead of liquids such as Aqua-Mira. I presume they are as effective, and they are certainly more convenient to use. However, they cost easily twice as much per volume of water treated. That's why I went with Aqua-Mira.

[fiddlehead]

There is a local brand of bottled water here in Pennsylvania bottled by a major player in the business that is treated Monongahela River water. You are warned to not eat the fish....how refined is the water?:eek:

geek

Reminds me of a story a few years ago in Maine.
The big bottled water company there is Poland Spring water. well, they were sued because: 1/ their water doesn't come from a spring (they dig wells)
2/ their water had more solids in it than was allowed by law
3/ their water had bacteria in it.
They settled out of court. (for 12 million bucks!)
They are still in business under the same name today as far as i know.
Most of the water on the AT is safer than this expensive bottled water.

some thoughts on water:


Once you get giardia, it is suspected by many that you will never get it again. ( i got it 14 years ago in Nepal and have drank water all over the world ever since, including Nepal, and never got it again, there are similar stories from others who had it)

I used to carry bleach and never got sick when i treated water this way, although i only treated water that was suspect (big streams, beaver dams, rivers) I only ever put one drop in and waited 15-20 minutes.

The biggest problem people who don't treat water have, is from people who do treat and assume that everyone else does too so they don't feel bad about polluting a spring or seep. It should be known that many do not treat the water so please respect them and keep it clean. (wash your underwear somewhere else, please)

I once saw a poster on here who asked if they needed to treat the water that they wash their clothes in.

Old time ranchers and horse people out west sometimes drink the water even where their cows and horses were in it. they say it's only human's you have to worry about. I don't know if that's true but i drank some pretty nasty lookin stuff already and didn't get sick.

If you carry nothing and the only water for 30 miles is full of cow ****, you can always boil it. Just build a fire on the spot and boil up all you want. The boy scout manual used to say you had to boil it for 20 minutes but i think that's not adhered to anymore, just boil it for 30 seconds as long as it's rollin.

We drink the rain water here in Thailand. It's clean and good tasting. We even had a dead chicken in it once and I made them dump the tank (2,000 litres) but they said "oh good now, we can have chicken tonight for dinner" When asked when was the last time they cleaned the tank, they said "this will be the 1st!"

Thai's believe that hot water for a shower or washing is bad and that cold water is bad if you are sick (for drinking) Many people have told me this.
when i was in the hospital for surgery, they would not let me have cold water the whole 6 days i was in there.

Not to change the subject too much but did you know that Kevin Trudeah did a test on 50 people who wanted to lose weight and drank Diet Coke or Pepsi, so he told them to switch to Regular Coke or Pepsi and 90% of them lost weight!

Redneck Rye: I didn't read them all either, but yours was the best post on this page!

Enough about thirst for one day. I need a drink.

[dixicritter]

When I've gone out with SGT Rock and the boys we've always treated the water. We used Iodine then after it has done it's job we neutralize the Iodine with Vitamin C. I love to watch that brown water turn crystal clear again, and it has no yucky taste to it at all. Just a normal water taste.

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

I've used a variety of techniques over the years.
Iodine + vitamin C works well, but my doc doesn't want me to use it (interferes with a med I'm on)
Bleach works, but in order to be effective you have to add enough to mess with the taste and wait a while - heating the water afterwards will get rid of the taste BTW. Must use Ti or SS pot to heat. Aluminum reacts with the bleach
Aqua-Mira is my current choice for chemical treatment

I often do not treat water in deep wilderness area. If I know there are no people or cattle above and that the water is coming from springs running down a mountain, I will just drink it.

If I know there is a town and / or cattle above, I will often opt to boil my water just to be absolutely sure everything gets killed. It is a pain and requires building a very small fire, but I do it anyway. I feel safer and peace-of-mind is an important part of my wilderness experience. YMMV

[AlabamaDan]

I used to never treat my water and got sick as a dog after drinking from a nice clear stream in the Smokies. Had to go to the Dr. to fix it. I had some bug that didn't go away for weeks. Haven't drank straight from a stream since.

I was reading a book "Hunter's Bible" from the late 1960s and it says to treat water with just a few drops of bleach. That's what caused me to find this post. Seems simple and reasonably effective eh?

[Tennessee Viking]

I am hearing good stuff about Aqua Mira. Its clorine based treatment.

The first time I tried the Iodine tablets, it made me feel even more thirsty.

I been checking out some of the new filters pumps. I can't recall the exact name or brand, but it was only a pound or two. I believe it But it could fit into an empty water bottle for storage.

[Username75]

[quote=Two Speed;358976]




The Everclear was mine and I had enough to make coffee in the morning.

Barely.
Sqeez'n sterno thru a sock
(use pink sox{won't change color thayt way})
just as bad, so use Bay Rum after shave.

[dperry]

Much bottled water is simply tap water that's been filtered.