Water Filtration and Purification Basics
For my recent video in my bushcraft basics series I elected to make a short about water purification and filtration. It wasn’t the easiest video to research, but after a week of talking to experts and visiting outfitters, I came across the four best ways to filter and/or clean the water for drinking. Here is the short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJlmuBglps Here is water you should never drink:
- Radioactive water
- Water near agricultural streams, because of pesticides
- Water downstream of a coal-ash treatment area
- Any water in a dump
- Water downstream of a gold mine
- Untreated water in just about any stream or lake
Filtering water is important to take out protists, bacteria and viruses. I talked to an expert at the WHO and he narrowed do the list to this:
Protozoas:
- Amoebiosis
- Giardiasis – Fecal to oral (Giardia is the organism)
- Crypto (resistant to chlorine disinfectants) (Cryptosporidium) the disease Cryptosporidiosis.
Bacterial (down to 200 nm)
- Cholera (bacteria Vibrio cholerae) – most rapidly fatal (12-18 hours)
- E. coli – Normal gut bacteria but certain strains produce toxins O157 causes blood in your kidneys. Toxiggelic and hemmoragic.
- Typhoid : Caused by a type of Salmonella
- Salmonella – bacteria that cause other diseases
- Dysenteria (nickname for) – Chigella
- Campilobactor – Often spread by birds and is in drinking water in streams
Viral (down to 25 nm)
- Infectious hepatitis A / E
- Rotavirus – globally main killer for infants
- Norovirus – Transmitted through water
Many many others.
- Ascaris worms – nutritional deficiencies
- hookworms –
- whipworms
- Pathogenic helmins
- Leptospira
Filters
Here are some of the things from my video if you want to get any for yourself:
If you want more info, I wrote this full article on Water Purification and Filtration Basics.
