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Re: [at-l] Water treatment
At 09:47 AM 5/5/98 PDT, Tim Hewitt wrote:
>Bucky wrote:
>[clip]
>>
>> Would you recommend a good concentrated anti-bacterial soap
>> for backpacking?
>
>I have not tried the gel-alcohol stuff yet but that sounds attractive. I use
>the same stuff in the woods that I use at home - I think it's Dial brand -
and
>a little bit goes a long way. The only thing I make sure of, and this is
with
>Scouts as well as Scouters and myself, is that the rinsing takes place well
>away from any water source.
>
On an LNT note, almost all of the liquid "soaps" out there are not soap at
all. They are detergents. I have heard, in lots of places, that actual
soap is much better from a LNT point of view.
One thing that attracts me to the alcohol gel stuff is that I was always
taught that effective hand washing meant using soap and rinsing under
copious quantities of warm water for 20-30 seconds to "float" off bacteria.
I just can't manage that in the backcountry unless I'm at a stream (a warm
stream? the Amazon?), but I'm supposed to be n-hundred feet away from any
water source, etc.
My current approach is:
(1) get rid of the worst of the dirt any way that works
(e.g. a no-soap stream rinse)
(2) use the alcohol gel to kill the nasties.
Charlie, any LNT comments on soap vs. detergents?
-- Jim Mayer
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