Wow, pretty bold title... I have filtered / treated water since I was a kid (well maybe not as much when I was a kid)....
What do you think of this?
https://slate.com/technology/2018/02...necessary.html
Wow, pretty bold title... I have filtered / treated water since I was a kid (well maybe not as much when I was a kid)....
What do you think of this?
https://slate.com/technology/2018/02...necessary.html
For what its worth---Warren Doyle says he doesnt filter water on the AT as its not needed!!
OK let the fire storm begin----
Easy enough to say in the mountains, harder to say in the meadows, pretty dangerous to do in the flatlands.
If you're a 'full time' hiker building up immunity over a decade or so in primarily remote places... I can buy the argument.
But for most of us folks trotting out to the woods for a week or less once or twice a year probably not any chance of building up enough immunity for most places.
What's a sitting? In summer it is not difficult to consume 7 liters of water a day for me when hiking long hours.
Maybe no biggie (on paper) to hit that source once, but day after day for weeks?
" The data on Giardia and Cryptosporidium are similar: A study in the popular magazine Backpackeragain only found pathogens in a minority of sampled sites, with the highest recorded concentration still so dilute that obtaining an infective dose would require consuming 7 liters of water in one sitting."
Either way;
This seems like the most accurate takeaway from the article overall:
"If the real danger comes from eating after a trip to the cathole, then that’s the point thatshould be emphasized—not an unsubstantiated view of all water in the mountains as suspect. In all likelihood, it’s not the water that’s gross. It’s you. "
I don't know guys and gals...we know the science of bacteria and pathogens pretty well. I'd say that unless you have a super unique gut tract, consuming surface water anywhere is a big risk.
If you've got access to a spring like many of us in this room are likely able to identify and use correctly that's one thing.
I think that article sends the wrong message to the wrong group of people.
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I think the article should come with a litany of qualifiers. What if you're on immunosuppressants? What if your health is compromised in some other form or fashion?
I don't "need" to wear a seatbelt when I drive, I only "need" one in case of an accident. The rest of the time I wear one for insurance.
Same thing goes for filtering water. With most filters rated for thousands upon thousands of gallons one unit is, essentially, a "lifetime use" item if properly cared for. If it keeps me from getting sick just once, it's well worth it. If it keeps that one illness from ruining a trip, then it's worth even more.
My two cents:
1) The odds of getting a waterbourne illness from any one source is overwhelmingly low.
2) The majority of illness that are blamed on "bad water" are actually transmitted by contact with infected people or contaminated surfaces. Proper hand washing with honest to goodness soap is far more effective at reducing the spread of pathogens than water treatment.
3) Most commercial filters do not protect against viruses like Noro virus that is ever present on major trails.
4) It you are unable to treat your water, just drink it. Dehydration is generally more dangerous to the average hiker than waterbourne contaminants.
5) All that said I still treat my water, because I think it's easy and a smart thing to do.
If it was safe to drink untreated water, why does every municipal water system in the country treat water? I’ll keep filtering, or using aquamira.
I make a judgement call. I mostly worry only about water quality staring in Virginia and ending at Vermont. In the middle states I'll opt to filter more often then not. Although even in the mid Atlantic, there are a fair number of good spring sources. We are truly blessed with good water along the majority of the AT.
I probably treated less than 10% of the water I drank from GA to ME. If it was coming from a spring or a pipe in the side of a mtn, I drank it without thinking. If I was at lower elevations and especially around livestock pastures, I would filter. The few times I drank from ponds, especially in ME, I filtered. I knew I was rolling the dice a bit, but never had any issues.
On my 2013 thru hike, I didn't filter or treat my water until I reached Pennsylvania. I believe you need to look at each water source and make an independent decision. If its coming out of the rock from a spring, then there is no reason to treat or filter. If it is a stream, river, or other water source where animals or humans can defecate, then you probably should treat or filter to be safe (although, more likely than not you will be ok).
In high school and college I never filtered. With so many people on the trails now and the amount of TP laying around. I filter. I have had had amoeba 3 times (overseas) giardia several times. I am not playing roulette anymore. If people want to drink straight from the river I wont stop them but I am carrying a filter.
As a biology teacher, I'd say that you're taking your chances with not filtering. You may be fine for quite a while from only backcountry sources...until you're not and you have a nasty case of giardensis or amoebic dysentery from a source that "looked fine". You'll notice that the article goes on about the "lack of evidence" of contamination in backcountry water sources, then tries to use a sub-set of that same evidence to claim it's not a problem. Worse, they use some fairly misleading evidence. The Sierra Nevada study they site, you'll note, only did relatively thorough testing of the hikers themselves for illness, while testing only three water sources once a week for 10 weeks. That's hardly conclusive, and they still documented a 5.7% infection rate with actual G. lamblia. Given what I know about microbes and the probabilities of picking up something really nasty (and possibly dangerous) I'll be filtering every drop I drink.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure....especially the low price ($ and time) of prevention in this case. The last thing I want on a long/thru hike is to get sick from something that I could have easily prevented.
25% of people are already infected with giardia and are asymptomatic.
You can interpret from that that 25% of people will not show symptoms even when affected. So yeah there's a substantial possibility that you don't need to filter water, at least 25%. No need to take years to build immunity or such hogwash.
Other people get you sick
Not your own restroom hygeine necessarily
But their hygeine
Very rarely the water
The norovirus outbreaks demonstrate the sickness vector
Don't be foolish enough to think that's the only sickness from people. It's just a really pervasive one due to long life on inanimate objects
Just the same, there's nothing wrong with treating your water if it's simple and easy. But generally is not something to stress about if you can't for some reason...with mountain spring water.
Surface water running thru a cow pasture is a different story altogether.
The average lifespan in the US today is approaching 80 years. This number has progressively increased because we have learned to treat and prevent disease. Everything is a roll of the dice so you do your best to weight the odds in your favor. The more times the dice come up in your favor, the more rolls you get.
Those that are infected by giardia, but are lucky enough to never show symptoms, are still carriers. People that are infected can pass along the infection by touch. So please, if not for your sake, filter your water for the sake of all the other people out there that you have contact with.
As a teacher around thousands of sniffling students for several years, what you say about the transference of microbes causing sickness is true. Out of 8 years being a teacher, I got sick (a cold) in two of those years which is pretty good. This is considering the exposure and the area of the world I taught in didn't believe in toilet paper or soap in school bathrooms. I attribute this to washing my hands often, carrying sanitizer and using it everywhere I went in school. Imagine just the stairway handrails and door knobs for starters. People often don't understand why cold weather is cold and flu season. It's mostly that infectious germs survive much longer on surfaces in the colder environment allowing for increased exposure and a higher incidence of infection.
Washing your hands often and using sanitizer is a sure way to lower your risk of getting a sickness anywhere and I think filtering water on a highly used hiking trail is just good preventative sense.
No problem STE.
Over the past two years I have filtered from scores of different water sources.
In so doing, I presumably concentrated a relitively small number of cooties present in some of these water sources into a much more densely packed and far less benign concentration inside my Sawyer Mini.
I expect this dense concentration of cooties (pathogens?j is alive and well in the filter right now. They may even be multiplying inside that filter in my nice warm closet.
So my question is this:
Even if my hose/leak management is better than most, should I be concerned that the months I have spent collecting and concentrating cooties in a $25 filter might have created a time bomb?
Or to put the question mor generically, has anyone seen studies about how effective filters as they are actually being used — and is it even possible they could do more harm than good under some conditions?
Yes.
But that because we are affecting the low end marginally.
I find it funny that I have numerous ancestors that lived 80-101 yrs old......150-300 yrs ago. Before sanitation, before running water, before understanding of germs and disease. In fact, people have commonly lived that long for thousands of yrs. Our lifespans aren't actually getting any longer, less just die prematurely from sicknesses or accidents or childbirth today. But, we are killing ourselves with poor diet, poisons in our environment instead.
Sawyer recommends flushing the filter with diluted bleach in between trips and for long term storage. Don't know if that's totally effective, but I'm sure it improves the situation. Personally I buy a new mini every year, at $25 a piece I'd rather just have a new clean one each spring.
Interesting article, my take away has to do with the numbers thing, some folks worry themselves into a tizzy with contamination of their treated water with a couple drops of "dirty water" during filtering saying something like " all it takes is a single microbe to make me sick", or something like that. Not true, and this article seems to further confirm that.
But I'll keep treating, except some places, like those glorious clear springs along the AT....
And as already said, I've never been in an accident, why on earth have i wasted time with those silly seatbelts?
I think I will replace mine, too.
Given that Sawyer recommends a bleach flush between trips, one cannot help but wonder what their recommendation would be for an AT thru hike — which others have observed can be a series of 26 week-long trips.
Just as seatbelts are not so good for children without a car seat, an otherwise good filter might not be so good for thru hikers without special attention.
I take a Visine bottle of bleach with me into the field. Every few days I put a few drops of bleach into my plunger and back wash my filter with bleach water.
I had a hiking partner get giardia and I saw it practically cripple her. She was so dehydrated her tears were only salt. If you've seen somebody with giardia that has 3 days to get to town I think everyone would take the extra time to filter water.
The thread should have been closed after the quoted post. When did it become not good enough for an adult to do their research, evaluate their risk tolerance, and make their own informed decision? Instead, it goes a step further when having made their own personal decision, they now must seek to impose their decision on everyone else and castigate anybody who dares disagree. Is it too much ego or too much insecurity?