What are the downsides of Potable Aqua?

[MuddyWaters]

Aqua Mira basically comes with two real nice dropper bottles. The advantage to Aqua Mira is that the neither of the two components are that particularly nasty alone. I have seen no ill effects from spilling either one of the components but do carry it in ziplock bag. Its only when the components are mixed that the characteristic green color and odor of CLO2 forms. CLO2 is an unstable compound, it really doesn't like to stay together and rapidly decomposes. There was one firm that used to sell a CLO2 water treatment system where the hiker would premix a days quantity of CLO2 in the AM into a squeeze bottle and the hiker would use it all day but I expect the concentration also varied over the course of the day and therefore they had to run a higher dose to compensate. I personally don mind the 5 minute wait to mix it up. I usually carry a water bladder and couple of gatoraid bottles. I carry a spare mixing cap so I can either just fill the water bladder or mix two bottles.

CLO2 is used a substitute for straight chlorine for industrial bleaching, but due to its habit of decomposing its hard to keep it at concentration compared to using chlorine.

Agree, if water sources are plentiful, as in the AT, chemical methods are heavier. The Steripen is great for encouraging small carrying quantities of water (1/2 L minus what you drink at the source before leaving), and is the lightest method of purification I know of.

Baloney

Am is the lightest possible treatment

Unless you wanr to pretend other people never take breaks, and thats total BS

Take your break when you get water, as most do.

Now, whats the lightest?

Or look at work done .
Carrying 2 lbs for 15 min, 3 x per day id still less overall work than 4oz for 10 hrs per day. Do the math.

As ive said many times, understanding am is key to efficient use. Virus and bacteria is dead in a minute. Giardia is deactivated 1000x in a few min. If you arent drinking sewage, you dont need to wait long. No one is worried about crypto either so forget the 4 hr .

My 2 wk supply of am weighs 1.2 oz in its little bottles. My water bottles are 0.93 oz dasani.

Someone who isnt going to carry water, isnt regardless of method. Someone that will, will. pretending otherwise is just pretending really. Just like pretending it has no weight cause it was drank instead of on back .

Funny to hear these claims but never seemed to be passed by these people with filters and steripens. Maybe they use similar justification for everything in their pack, and it ends up hvy. 4 oz for steripen, 2 oz for backup batteries, 6 oz for wide mouth nalgene, several oz for chemical backup too. Etc etc. All the while argueing they have the lightest system.