During emergencies with interrupted water service, for instance, in water pipe breakage, flood, or a hurricane, it is best to use only bottled water for drinking and cooking. However, there are also methods for disinfecting water if you do not have access to bottled water before regular water service is restored.
In this guide, we will be discussing how to boil and disinfect water to inactivate most pathogenic microorganisms in the water.
1. Boiling
One reliable thing to do when trying to kill microorganisms and parasites in water is to boil. Although boiling might not evaporate all the chemical pollutants present in the water, it will surely keep you safe from the host of microbes in the water. Five to ten minutes of boiling is good enough to get the job done.
Most harmful microorganisms cannot withstand the boiling point of water and will die off as the boiling point of water is approached. You can carry out your boiling in a ceramic, glass, or metal container over a stove or campfire. Suppose you cannot get a fireproof vessel around, heat a piece of rock for thirty minutes, and place it in the water container. However, ensure you don’t use any river rocks or quartz as they can be explosive.
2. Distillation
After the event of a disaster, your water supply can be in a tainted state due to radiation, heavy metals, salt, lead, and other contaminations. Trying to filter these contaminants out will ruin your costly water filter. You are not left with many options when the only available water is dangerous. Water distillation is the safest solution that you can turn to.
You can heat water into steam and capture the steam, which will settle to give you relatively clean water regardless of the contaminations contained in it before the process. Certain organic compounds and volatile oils might not leave after the distillation process, but most heavy particles will not go with the steam. To create a steam distiller at home, one fast way is to assemble a small-diameter copper tubing and a pressure canner.
3. Filters
Drip/suction filters and pump-action filters are the two primary water filters widely used today. The latter uses a pump to push out raw water through a filter cartridge. The former are filter cartridges that utilize an IV-like bag gravity drip action.
You can also use them on hydration bladder hoses to suck water as often as needed via the filter. The Katadyn Pocket Filter is an excellent choice. It has a ceramic cartridge that filters off large pathogens, and the silver inside of it inactivates the smaller microbes like viruses.
Other ways to purify water in emergencies include using survival straws, UV light devices that are very damaging to microbes, and disinfecting tablets. There’s also SODIS – Solar Water Disinfection, which involves using solar energy to treat water. However, this might not be feasible if there’s an inadequate supply of solar radiation.