[pct-l] Water Treatment

[albert at survivalcrafters.com]

That's why I elected not to use bleach to start with (I'm kind of a novice
distance hiker). All the sites I looked at except one that show how to use
bleach (which is fine) said the same thing about needing to be able to smell
the bleach in the water for it to be effective. My concern is that just like
sight and hearing we're all diffenent to some degree. You may be able to
easily smell 3 drops in a liter where I might need 14 drops in a liter
before I smell it because of my age and previous profession. The packaged
products tell you to put x number of drops or tablets in a specific amount
of water, I need that.

There was only one site I found that said specifically to put 7-8 drops of
bleach in a gallon of water to purify it and didn't mention anything about
the smell. This made me wonder if bleach can come in different
concentrations which would make this 7-8 drop method not very accurate also.

 
Albert

-----Original Message-----
From: pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net [mailto:pct-l-bounces at backcountry.net]
On Behalf Of Eric Lee
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 12:57 PM
To: 'Eugene Leafty'; 'Kevin Cook'; mntmn4jesus at aol.com
Cc: pct-l at backcountry.net
Subject: Re: [pct-l] Water Treatment

Eugene wrote:
>
I treat with bleach.  I've never tasted it.  I've brought some bleached
water home and had family members drink it, not knowing that it was from a
mountain creek, and said it tasted delicious.
>

If you and your family can't detect the chorine in the water then you're
probably not using enough to do a reliable job of sterilization and you've
just been drinking water that was relatively clean in the first place.  Or,
I dunno, maybe you have a magic chlorine-resistant nose or something, in
which case congratulations, carry on!  

But seriously, in order to create an environment with bleach that reliably
kills pathogens in a short amount of time you *have* to have a certain
concentration of chlorine in the water, and that concentration is going to
be noticeable to most people.  Objectionable?  Well, that's a subjective
term, but detectable, yes.  If it's not detectable then you're probably
using the bleach as more of a placebo than a real purifying agent.

Eric

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