Two Bro's Trek ----> Tahoe Rim Trail: Water Treatment + Info Link + Pics

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Water Treatment + Info Link + Pics

So many of you have asked me and I have wondered myself, asking my cousin for advice, wondering if I need iodine in addition to my carbon filter for our water treatment. Short answer is, NO. More precisely, probably not, of course you need to use common sense on your water source. If you are filtering out of swamp or swampy water then you probably need more than a carbon filter, however, up in the alpine or highlands, a carbon filter will work fine. As long as you are not down stream from farming or pack animal industry (farming chemicals or cow/chickens...) chances are you can even drink the water without the carbon filter. A carbon filter filters down to 3 microns which is a very small particles, therefore, most living organisms cannot pass through. So, the bottom line is that our filter will be sufficient but we will bring a few iodine tabs just in case.
I found this article from REI that was super informative and really helped me understand and make decisions on our water situation, if your interested, check it out. http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/water+researcher+QA.html

Here are a couple pics of what you drink in your water. I didn't really want to post these but, I thought it was sort of cool. There are the things that lurk in our water and what our carbon filter will catch and stop us from drinking. However, these things are in our common drinking water at home too. This is why we use chlorine and other water additives to kill and/or denature the DNA of harmful things like these. I did not look up microbes that our filter will not filter but, we probably don't have to worry about microbes being in the water. The human body is an amazing machine, I am always baffled when I look a Biology and how it works and wonder why we all are still alive. These pics and thinking that I am drinking them makes me sick (guess I will try to forget these images the next time I take a drink on the trail or out of my faucet at home. Enjoy...