Water purification?

[lummox]

go pee in the water.

[erik]

Attitude said:

Typical Erik factoids.

 

factoid?? who said that was based on facts. i sure didnt. i just made the #'s up to repersent a value not the exact #....duh!!!

 

my point was proven as a filter is more costly in all aspects over iodine.

 

thanks for keepin check on me sweetie pie!!!!

 

 

[erik]

Gary_Yngve said:

erik said:

please explain your logic on the 2lbs 1 liter bottle theory? and also the pills i have take 10 minutes to work. oyu cant wait 10 minutes? and ray is right plan ahead! you know forethought!! it works amazingly! even for beyond the water drama!

 

filters are not for us based CLIMBERS(i dont know about backpackers)

 

One liter of water weighs 1 kilogram, which is over two pounds. If you have to use chemicals to purify the water, you have to either sit and wait for it to work or you have to hike while waiting for it to work, carrying the extra weight in the meantime. If you have a filter, you can drink up instantly, and not have to carry any water.

 

In fact, for those people arguing volume, if you have a Platypus, your volume can be less when using a filter because you don't ever carry the liter of water.

 

Anyway, I'm not saying a filter is for everything... I really like a filter on long approaches and for climbs that are not carryovers. But it seems the general attitude of people here is that filters suck, which I think is a tad overblown...

 

gary

 

so what happens when you start to climb with no water source? i still dont think your logic makes much sense to me. yeah you fill your bottle and then put the little tablet in it and then walk for 10 minutes.....sounds a tad more efficent as you keep moving as your water/tab does its magic.

 

stop.

take pack off

un pack filter

find suitable source

drop filter in

run some water thru it

drink/fill your bottle

continue to pump water thru

dry

repack

pick up pack

walk

repeat every hour?

 

i tend to think i like to constantly drink water and not at predisposed stops. more flexiable to carry your own water and then to be a slave to plans.

 

 

[chucK]

Hey Gary,

On the surface your Triumph plan sounds quite logical....except for one little thing. You chug a litre of water at the lake then guess what? Whether it's in a bottle, purifying with iodine, or it's in your stomach...

 

YOU ARE STILL CARRYING THE WATER UP TO THE COL!!!

 

I do not believe that stomach linings counteract gravity.

[Thinker]

erik said:

Thinker said:

My hunch is that more backcountry illness come from transfer of microbes between members in a party rather than from 'bad' drinking water sources, though both do regularly happen.

 

NOT TO BE A PEST OR ANYTHING(BUT ISNT THAT WHAT I DO BEST?? ) BUT COULD YOU DEFINE AND SUPPORT REGULARLY...THE ONLY PERSON I'VE KNOWN TO CONTRACT GIARDIA GOT IT IN NEPAL.

 

The closest I can come 'off the cuff' while at work is this:

Giardiasis Surveillance --- United States, 1992--1997

 

and this: web page which states there are 700 to 900 cases of giardia per year in the state of WA.

 

I don't have a technical definition of regularly, but I could argue that the reasoable man would consider the 700 cases per year to be 'regular', even if only 10% (a number I've picked out of my ass) of the cases occur in the backcountry.

 

Erik, your point is well taken. It would be an interesting topic to research thoroughly. I'm an engineer, so my knowledge on this subject is limited, but I'll check with my roommate who is a MD with an interest in bc medicine and see what she comes up with.

 

PS. here's another pertinent article that jumped out at me.

Giardia Lamblia and Giardiasis

Edited August 28, 2003 by Thinker

[Gary_Yngve]

erik said:

gary

 

so what happens when you start to climb with no water source? i still dont think your logic makes much sense to me. yeah you fill your bottle and then put the little tablet in it and then walk for 10 minutes.....sounds a tad more efficent as you keep moving as your water/tab does its magic.

 

stop.

take pack off

un pack filter

find suitable source

drop filter in

run some water thru it

drink/fill your bottle

continue to pump water thru

dry

repack

pick up pack

walk

repeat every hour?

 

More like every two hours. And it doubles as your rest break. The filter is at the top of my pack, so it's pretty quick to whip out.

 

If I'm doing a climb (not a carryover) with no water source, then I'll have to carry water with me, and I'll leave the filter behind at camp (or whereever we're caching gear).

 

I don't think filtering is necessarily better than iodine, but it's not really inferior either.

[Attitude]

erik said:

Attitude said:

Typical Erik factoids.

factoid?? who said that was based on facts.

I guess you need to look up the definition of factoid.

 

fac·toid n. A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition.

 

[chucK]

Gary_Yngve said:

If you have a filter, you can drink up instantly, and not have to carry any water.

Not quite

 

 

 

Speaking of water pu[t]rification, a couple weeks back I was at the surplus store and they told me the Army no longer uses iodine, but Chlor-Floc tablets. They looked real handy as they came in little foil packets so you didn't even have to carry that (dinky) heavy glass bottle. What they do is Chlorinate and Floculate (?). The Floc part is some agent that makes all the sediment in the water bind together which can then be filtered out with something more crude than a special water filter (the box says to use flannel).

 

So I tried 'em.

 

I put the little tab in my bottle and shook it up and it got all full of milky white sediment. I filtered it out using my t-shirt. The t-shirt got all gummed up and I had to use two different parts of my shirt to filter out 20 oz of water. My t-shirt got patches of slimy off-white goo on it. The water still was cloudy, but I didn't feel like running it through my shirt again. I drank it. It tasted like pool water. Yech.

 

Chlor-Floc tabs

 

[erik]

tude'

 

still dont see what you are getting at? i was making a point not pressing facts. maybe next time for your personal benefit i will not include arbitrary figures so that i dont mess with your overlty logical thinking.

 

are you trying to be all semantical again???

 

[Thinker]

I took the time to read this article throughly, and it really presents a good discussion of giardia and other microbes in the back country. I thought it deserved being highlighted a bit better.

 

Giardia Lamblia and Giardiasis With Particular Attention to the Sierra Nevada By Robert L. Rockwell, PhD

 

(the following quote by no means summarizes the entire article, but seems germane to the discussion here)

 

"Also, while so much attention is being given to Giardia, there are worse organisms to worry about such as Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, and the other organisms mentioned earlier.

 

In an informative study, [37] investigators contacted thousands of visitors to one of the high-use sites during the summers of 1988 through 1990. Water samples taken on 10 different dates at each of three locations exhibited Giardia cyst concentrations between 0 and 0.062 (average 0.009) per liter. A goal was to enlist volunteers who were cyst-negative before their trip, verified by stool analysis, and then determine what fraction were cyst carriers after the trip. Unfortunately, stool collection is not a particularly enjoyable task, and only 41 people agreed to participate. Of these, two acquired Giardia cysts during their trip, but neither came down with symptoms. Six of the others exhibited post-visit intestinal symptoms, but none tested positive for Giardia (interestingly, all six had filtered their water). In sum, no cases of laboratory-confirmed symptomatic giardiasis were found.

 

The water that wilderness travelers are apt to drink, assuming that they use a little care, seems almost universally safe as far as Giardia is concerned. The study referred to earlier,2 in which the researchers concluded that the risk of contracting giardiasis in the wilderness is similar to that of a shark attack, is telling. What they did find is that Giardia and other intestinal bugs are for the most part spread by direct fecal-oral or food-borne transmission, not by contaminated drinking water. Since personal hygiene often takes a backseat when camping, the possibility of contracting giardiasis from someone in your own party—someone who is asymptomatic, probably—is real. Recalling that up to 7 percent of Americans, or 1 in 14, are infected, it is not surprising that wilderness visitors can indeed come home with a case of giardiasis contracted not from the water…but from one of their friends.

 

This theme, that reduced attention to personal hygiene is an important factor for contracting giardiasis in the wilderness, is becoming more frequent in the literature.2, 10, 14, 37, [38]

 

Outside of the Sierra, Giardia cysts in concentrations “as high as four per gallon [§]” have been detected in untreated water in northeastern and western states. [39] But even with this concentration, one would have to consume over nine liters of water to have a 50 percent chance of ingesting 10 or more cysts.

 

Indeed, there may be as much unwarranted hysteria surrounding Giardia in wilderness water in these other areas as there is for the Sierra. For example, an oft-cited report describing acquisition of the disease by 65 percent of a group of students hiking in the Uinta Mountains of Utah [40] is now viewed with considerable skepticism. Specifically, the attack rate was far beyond that usually seen with water-contracted giardiasis, no cysts were identified in the suspect water, there was no association between water consumption rates and the likelihood of the disease, and the authors categorically discounted food-borne or fecal-oral spread, stating that it had never been reported (correct at the time).2 "

 

[Gary_Yngve]

chucK said:YOU ARE STILL CARRYING THE WATER UP TO THE COL!!!

 

I do not believe that stomach linings counteract gravity.

 

Hehe, you're right about that. But you're not as thirsty, and the weight is closer to your center of mass.

 

Whatever, if you're climbing with me, I'll carry the filter, and you can use it if you wish. And I won't mock you for using iodine... it all works.

[fern]

chemicals from the Army? probably had saltpeter and speed in it too

[Gary_Yngve]

chucK said:

I do not believe that stomach linings counteract gravity.

 

But if you add lots of the magic ingredient , they will counteract gravity!

[lummox]

i carried about 2 gallons of water with me during a hike the other day. i dint drink nor even plan to.

[Attitude]

erik said:

tude'

 

still dont see what you are getting at? i was making a point not pressing facts. maybe next time for your personal benefit i will not include arbitrary figures so that i dont mess with your overlty logical thinking.

 

You're funny.

[minx]

erik said:

Gary_Yngve said:

erik said:

please explain your logic on the 2lbs 1 liter bottle theory? and also the pills i have take 10 minutes to work. oyu cant wait 10 minutes? and ray is right plan ahead! you know forethought!! it works amazingly! even for beyond the water drama!

 

filters are not for us based CLIMBERS(i dont know about backpackers)

 

One liter of water weighs 1 kilogram, which is over two pounds. If you have to use chemicals to purify the water, you have to either sit and wait for it to work or you have to hike while waiting for it to work, carrying the extra weight in the meantime. If you have a filter, you can drink up instantly, and not have to carry any water.

 

In fact, for those people arguing volume, if you have a Platypus, your volume can be less when using a filter because you don't ever carry the liter of water.

 

Anyway, I'm not saying a filter is for everything... I really like a filter on long approaches and for climbs that are not carryovers. But it seems the general attitude of people here is that filters suck, which I think is a tad overblown...

 

gary

 

so what happens when you start to climb with no water source? i still dont think your logic makes much sense to me. yeah you fill your bottle and then put the little tablet in it and then walk for 10 minutes.....sounds a tad more efficent as you keep moving as your water/tab does its magic.

 

stop.

take pack off

un pack filter

find suitable source

drop filter in

run some water thru it

drink/fill your bottle

continue to pump water thru

dry

repack

pick up pack

walk

repeat every hour?

 

i tend to think i like to constantly drink water and not at predisposed stops. more flexiable to carry your own water and then to be a slave to plans.

 

 

couldn't agree w/erik much more. went out a few weeks ago with someone who was depending on a water filter. turns out we ran short of water and he'd left his where w/our gear where we camped. glad i had tablets. he didn't carry his filter b/c it was bulky and heavy but didn't bother to have tablets w/him.

[dryad]

A couple years ago I did an Outward Bound trip and we were given iodine solution in a little dropper bottle. It was super-convenient. No need to wait for pills to dissolve, just drop in 5 drops, shake up the bottle, and wait a while for the iodine to work.

 

Does anybody know where to get iodine solution? I haven't seen it sold anywhere.

[fern]

first aid section of the drugstore. iodine tincture.

[Ursa_Eagle]

why hasn't Allison brought up her beloved Miox pen yet???

[Sphinx]

This thread is so boring, can somebody just shoot me now?

[Thinker]

Sphinx said:

This thread is so boring, can somebody just shoot me now?

 

I'll shoot ya.........right on back to Spray where it's more stimulating to folks like yourself who were raised on Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeanie.

[Sphinx]

Thinker said:

Sphinx said:

This thread is so boring, can somebody just shoot me now?

 

I'll shoot ya.........right on back to Spray where it's more stimulating to folks like yourself who were raised on Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeanie.

What's gilligan's island and i dream of jeanie?

[allthumbs]

I like drinking clean, clear water.....I use a MSR filter and have yet to be sick. I figure if I can't handle an additional 13 ounces of filter in my pack, I'd better give up the mountains for the rocking chair.

 

I will say I've never been sick from eating pussy or rimming her asshole. Whatever.

 

Trask - member in good standing of both the Mile High Club and the Red Wing Club.

[bunglehead]

How's your vacation Trask? You have a valid point about the filter. I just hate gving McOutdoorstore (OOPS! REI) my money I'll probl'y just break down and get a filter as I too enjoy cold clean water.

[Sphinx]

This thread is only worth posting to for