Wednesday, January 15, 2014


SHOULD I DRINK IT?
AN OVERVIEW OF WATER PURIFICATION
Rating- **** - Tim Sprinkle
Have you ever been hiking and had a shortage of water so you debated whether or not to drink the water you found in a stream? Well this article explains the risks of drinking water you found in the forest or other places and ways to make that water drinkable.
In the article, Tim refers to a story called “The Deer Story”. Now in this story it states that 2 hikers were in the woods and 1 of them decides to drink from a clean looking stream, unfortunately a little ways up the stream they discovered 2 dead deer bloodied in the stream. Now the moral to this is just because it looks clean doesn’t really mean it is. Later, Tim lists some techniques that will help make that water drinkable by removing the bacteria. Several ways to purify your water is to boil it, use filters or apply iodine/ chlorine drops. Boiling the water for 10 minutes seemed to be the most effective way to clean your water source, it is still a good way but the taste of boiled water is very sterile and there is a lot of preparation you must do. You have to build yourself a fire and keep it going, or set up your stove and use your fuel to boil it. Using filters is a quick an easy way to kill bacteria and parasites in your water and the filter doesn’t alter the taste. Unfortunately, filters do not protect against any viruses but by simply adding some drops of iodine as well as filtering it, you will have clean water. Iodine/ Chlorine drops seem to be the fastest and most effective way of treating gallons of water. Tim states it is the most popular method but the iodine does leave an unpleasing taste.
On our hiking trip I used the iodine drops and found them very effective. I would recommend it to others, it does have a taste that is a little off but it didn’t upset my stomach what so ever. After reading this article and finding out a little bit more about the drops, it seems they are favoured by Tim and most hikers which made me feel better of the choice of water purification I was using. From now on, any hiking trips I plan to attend I will defiantly be bringing the drops. They are small and easy to fit into a pack and they purify the most amounts of water.
Sprinkle, Tim. “Should I Drink It? An Overview of Water Purification” http://www.paddling.net/guidelines/showArticle.html?107

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