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RE: [at-l] Water treatment

>
> At 07:03 PM 5/3/98 -0400, you wrote:
> >Problem is not just giardia and assorted little beasties like that, but
> >things like horse droppings, moose piss, fertilizer, pesticides, soap,
> >mine tailing runoff, etc. I may not like it, but I will carry a filter.
>
Warning: some of the above are not removed by any common filters. Without
very fancy resin exchange water purifiers or heavy water treatment such as a
municipal water system uses, most dissolved impurities are not removed.
These include uglies like heavy metals, e.g. lead and mercury. For example
when ATC installs a well, we test the water for all sorts of things that
might be harmful. Some of these are only tested once because they are
inherent in the supply, e.g. heavy metals, others are tested frequently as
they change with contamination via leakage around the pipe or even grow in
the pipe, e.g. e-coli.

In short, it pays to know where the water comes from. For example I would
not recommend attempting to use the water from Copper Mine Brook which is
near the road in South Mountain Pass (a bit north of the Bear Mountain
Bridge). This water is not treatable by anything you are likely to carry. I
would be similarly wary of water coming off actively farmed fields where
there is probable use of fertilizers and pesticides, both of which have
components that may dissolve in the water. I am not as worried about the
cows in the field as the filter will handle most of that. Piss and poop are
two different things from a treatment standpoint. Piss is sterile but tastes
bad and may have concentrated dissolvable chemicals that the kidneys
separated out - heavy dilution fixes most of this as they are all things
that the body has already been able to process. Poop may have bacteria
and/or viruses which the better filters can remove or kill. Check what your
filter says about viruses in particular as they are tiny.

Not all dissolved things are bad for you, but they may taste truly evil,
e.g. heavy iron or sulfur flavored water. For example the water at RPH cabin
is safe to drink (we test it) but many people don't like its taste.

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