Re: [pct-l] boiling water

[Brick Robbins <brick@fastpack.com>]

At 03:57 PM 9/12/00 , Jack Young wrote:
>lately I have only been boiling water to a rolling boil and not waiting the 5-10 minutes the USFS and USPS advises.  Someone told me that that was just more over cautous govt diatribe and that once at a rolling boil what is going to die is dead. Am I crazy?

Depends on what you are trying to do.

Their recommendation is based on Bacteria, which is hard to kill with heat.

Giardia, on the other hand, is easy to kill with heat, and just heating the water to around 85C will kill it. Not even a need to boil it, but if you boil it at all you are safe by a wide margin.

SOOOO you may or may not need to boil for 5 min, depending on what you are afraid of.

bacteria:
-easy to kill chemically (thin skin)
-hard to filter (small)
-hard to kill with heat

giardia
-hard to kill chemically (thick, hard skin)
-easy to filter (big)
-easy to kill with heat.

-Brick

-Brick

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