Making sure the water is safe...to drink

Filtering water, Outdoor Gear Lab

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With Flint Michigan's water crisis prominent in the news, let's take a look at what cities have done and do to provide safe drinking water. Also, what you and I can do to purify water when no reliable local authority is around. BTW, here's a timeline of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Wikipedia offers a comprehensive overview of water purification.  It offers such gems as--

The practice of water treatment soon became mainstream and common, and the virtues of the system were made starkly apparent after the investigations of the physician John Snow during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. Snow was sceptical of the then-dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases were caused by noxious "bad airs". Although the germ theory of disease had not yet been developed, Snow's observations led him to discount the prevailing theory. His 1855 essay On the Mode of Communication of Cholera conclusively demonstrated the role of the water supply in spreading the cholera epidemic in Soho, with the use of a dot distribution map and statistical proof to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. His data convinced the local council to disable the water pump, which promptly ended the outbreak.

A shorter definition of water purification and related facts are given by Science Daily.

When hiking, that sparkling, swift-running stream is hard to resist. I was always told that swift-running water is safe. But LowerGear in Water issues and treatment says no.

Not wanting to belittle Flint's water problems, For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink (Nicholas D. Kristof, 1997). Quoting the article:

''I try to boil the water,'' Mrs. Bhagwani said pleasantly. ''But the boys sometimes insist on drinking right away because they're thirsty.''

Then, she said, there is the cost. To boil water consistently would cost about $4 a month in kerosene, almost a third of Mrs. Bhagwani's earnings. She could afford that, but then there would be less money for food.

And even boiling water does not remove chemical toxins (Modern Survival Blog).


-- Marge