Pure Water – by Kathleen Wilker

Rating: ****

Every day we have to drink water in order to stay hydrated and healthy, but when we are active in the outdoors for a longer period of time we cannot bring all the water we need with us. So how could we get fresh and clean water when being in the outdoors? Kathleen Wilker’s article “Pure Water” gives you instructions and ideas how to purify water, either the old-fashioned way or with the newest technology.

Kathleen Wilker’s article informs about three ways of purifying water: boiling it, filtering it, or treating it with bacteria-killing tablets. When purifying water you should be picking your water carefully. Kathleen Wilker suggests collecting the clearest, debris-free, running water from the shore that you can get. Boiling the water is the first option to purify it that Wilker talks about. Another possibility mentioned is purifying the water with approved purification tablets. In this article though, Kathleen Wilker focuses on the newer technologies that do not require chemicals or fuel for a fire. There are three products she gives information about: the manual pump and the gravity filer which are both filtering systems, and the ultraviolet light pen that works by zapping bacteria, viruses, and protozoa.

In my opinion this is a very interesting and well written article. I liked to read about all the different possibilities how to purify water, as it can be very helpful when going camping. Water is one of our basic needs and it is important to purify it in order to prevent diseases like beaver fever. It was interesting to learn more about different purification systems, especially the gravity
filter which is a bag that holds 10 litres of water. When hanging it on a branch, it can filter 1.5 litres a minute. I think that this could be a great filtering system for group campers.

I recommend this article to everyone who likes to go camping and everybody active in the outdoors because it is important to know how to purify water, and it might give you an idea for alternative-purifying without chemicals or fuel.

Kathleen Wilker. “Pure Water”. Ottawa Outdoors magazine. (Spring/Summer 2010): 22,23. Print.