carbon/charcoal can be made via wood burning..

Here is a simple water filter, still requires boiling.
Not all of these layers are completely necessary but it gives you a good example...the most important elements are the activated carbon and sediment/particle filtration via sand and cloth or cotton balls/coffee filters.

a good source of activated carbon is Brita and like filters. They also have ion exchange resins that aid in the removal of contaminants. The carbon in a brita filter is far better than the stuff you could make at home without chemical/heat treatment.
You can also buy activated carbon by itself online, we use it at my job so I just brought a half gallon container home.

ALso, you can boil water in anything and collect the simple distilled water via the steam and a rag/bandana/cloth draped over the boiling vessel. Distilled water is not a long term solution though unless you are running chromatography equipment with it.

 

I'm not sure what you consider "high tech," but what you outlined is insufficient treatment for river/surface water in America, where the biggest problem is chemical industrial and agricultural pollution. Boiling will kill disease organisms (although not necessarily remove the toxins some can put into the water) but those are the least of your worries if you want to drink the Missouri.

You need something that removes chemical contaminants from the water--activated charcoal and similar. Distilling water to remove salt or such can be done by just boiling and condensing. Distilling water to remove volatile organic compounds requires precise temperature control you're not going to be able to achieve with a pot on the stove, let alone a pot over a wood fire or a can of Sterno. In my book, fractional distillation is quite high tech.

As another old lady in an apartment, I recommend you investigate a gravity-feed urn or bucket system with good ceramic candles or similar filters tested to remove a full range of contaminants. If you have to resort to river water, which is very much a last resort with most rivers near urban areas these days, you can cloth filter the flotsam and jetsam, run through the ceramic and activated carbon filter to remove contaminants, and then boil/treat with chlorine to kill any possible viruses the filter couldn't deal with. There's essentially only one way to purify water--clean up trash/turbidity by removing large particles that interfere with further treatment/clog filters, remove chemical contaminants, and remove biologic contaminants. Removing biologic contaminants can be done with simple home means. Removing chemical contaminants is another whole kettle of fish. Fortunately, filters are sold to handle chemical removal that last for many hundreds of gallons and keep on the shelf until needed. Any 76-year-old grandma can buy herself a gravity filtration system if she isn't up to drilling a few plastic buckets herself, and a wheelchair-bound 96-year-old could manage to pour some quarts of water into one. Plan ahead, get an urn system/couple of buckets, stock up on high-tech filters, and make your life both simple and safe if you need to treat water in future to make it potable. The only possible reason for farting around with half-assed make-do chemical removal contraptions is failure to plan/having survived so far past TEOTWAWKI that nothing else is left. If you make it that far, you can start charring collected bones and planting fields of cilantro in the abandoned empty lots. Until then, just buy yourself a decent gravity filtration setup. A soda-bottle's worth of sand and cotton balls isn't going to keep the Missouri from poisoning you.

If you don't want to get a good gravity-feed filtration system, or even if you do, treat some tap water with chlorine now and store enough of it to last you through an emergency/until your out-of-state kids can hopefully get to you. It's a good idea to store at least a few week's worth of a couple of gallons a day of potable water even with everything needed to filter river water. Water is pretty heavy stuff at 8 pounds a gallon for an old lady to be trying to haul into an apartment, and that's assuming she isn't taking her life in her hands trying to get to the river in the first place. Store at least 60 gallons of clean water for yourself, which will get you by for 2 weeks comfortably or for a month for just drinking, cooking, and wiping yourself around the edges. I'd also suggest storing some waterless body cleanser and shampoo and biodegradable disposable towels and washcloths. Consider having a set of disposable sheets as well. Then you're good for basic bodily hygiene until you run out of clean changes of clothes. (I also have a small manual washer that can wash and rinse a couple of sets of clothes with about 3 gallons of water, but that's an optional extra.) As far as waste disposal, pee in a bottle and use that and any leftover cooking/washing water to flush the toilet once a day or pee in the toilet and stock enough kitty litter you can just poo in a bucket and cover it up for a few weeks. (Or you can safely use raw Missouri water to flush the toilet if it's close enough and you're up to the haulage--just don't drink it, cook with it, bathe in it, or wash your clothes or dishes in it even if boiled.)

Thread on Safe Water Theory:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=392651

 

I'm not sure what you consider "high tech," but what you outlined is insufficient treatment for river/surface water in America, where the biggest problem is chemical industrial and agricultural pollution. Boiling will kill disease organisms (although not necessarily remove the toxins some can put into the water) but those are the least of your worries if you want to drink the Missouri.

You need something that removes chemical contaminants from the water--activated charcoal and similar. Distilling water to remove salt or such can be done by just boiling and condensing. Distilling water to remove volatile organic compounds requires precise temperature control you're not going to be able to achieve with a pot on the stove, let alone a pot over a wood fire or a can of Sterno. In my book, fractional distillation is quite high tech.

As another old lady in an apartment, I recommend you investigate a gravity-feed urn or bucket system with good ceramic candles or similar filters tested to remove a full range of contaminants. If you have to resort to river water, which is very much a last resort with most rivers near urban areas these days, you can cloth filter the flotsam and jetsam, run through the ceramic and activated carbon filter to remove contaminants, and then boil/treat with chlorine to kill any possible viruses the filter couldn't deal with. There's essentially only one way to purify water--clean up trash/turbidity by removing large particles that interfere with further treatment/clog filters, remove chemical contaminants, and remove biologic contaminants. Removing biologic contaminants can be done with simple home means. Removing chemical contaminants is another whole kettle of fish. Fortunately, filters are sold to handle chemical removal that last for many hundreds of gallons and keep on the shelf until needed. Any 76-year-old grandma can buy herself a gravity filtration system if she isn't up to drilling a few plastic buckets herself, and a wheelchair-bound 96-year-old could manage to pour some quarts of water into one. Plan ahead, get an urn system/couple of buckets, stock up on high-tech filters, and make your life both simple and safe if you need to treat water in future to make it potable. The only possible reason for farting around with half-assed make-do chemical removal contraptions is failure to plan/having survived so far past TEOTWAWKI that nothing else is left. If you make it that far, you can start charring collected bones and planting fields of cilantro in the abandoned empty lots. Until then, just buy yourself a decent gravity filtration setup. A soda-bottle's worth of sand and cotton balls isn't going to keep the Missouri from poisoning you.

If you don't want to get a good gravity-feed filtration system, or even if you do, treat some tap water with chlorine now and store enough of it to last you through an emergency/until your out-of-state kids can hopefully get to you. It's a good idea to store at least a few week's worth of a couple of gallons a day of potable water even with everything needed to filter river water. Water is pretty heavy stuff at 8 pounds a gallon for an old lady to be trying to haul into an apartment, and that's assuming she isn't taking her life in her hands trying to get to the river in the first place. Store at least 60 gallons of clean water for yourself, which will get you by for 2 weeks comfortably or for a month for just drinking, cooking, and wiping yourself around the edges. I'd also suggest storing some waterless body cleanser and shampoo and biodegradable disposable towels and washcloths. Consider having a set of disposable sheets as well. Then you're good for basic bodily hygiene until you run out of clean changes of clothes. (I also have a small manual washer that can wash and rinse a couple of sets of clothes with about 3 gallons of water, but that's an optional extra.) As far as waste disposal, pee in a bottle and use that and any leftover cooking/washing water to flush the toilet once a day or pee in the toilet and stock enough kitty litter you can just poo in a bucket and cover it up for a few weeks. (Or you can safely use raw Missouri water to flush the toilet if it's close enough and you're up to the haulage--just don't drink it, cook with it, bathe in it, or wash your clothes or dishes in it even if boiled.)

Thread on Safe Water Theory:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=392651

lol
mkay.

If someone is caught for a day or two in an emergency where they are waiting for rescue and they just don't happen to have an elaborate multi-tier filtration/decontamination system and/or a full 55 gallon food grade drum of water....they might just appreciate knowing how to make a simple filter.

But still, thanks for the detailed information:
and the vague-ish slight..
:

 

If someone can plan ahead enough to be sitting around waiting for rescue with a soda bottle, grass, rocks, sand, cotton balls, a coffee filter, and something as high-tech as activated charcoal all to hand, they can plan ahead enough to have something like a couple of plastic buckets and a tested ceramic dome or candle filter in their kitchen or a Sawyer plus AC filter in their backpack guaranteed to do the job completely right. Why do it half-assed, I'll just try a-wing-and-a-prayer when it's simple to do it in a way that guarantees you truly safe water? People come here to plan ahead and prepare for emergencies, which means they have time to think it all through and do it right so they aren't caught with their pants down.

 

Words have specific meaning in water treatment. Purify means exactly one thing to water, the killing of all microbes.

It doesn't mean sediment removal or detoxification. Purified water can still be hazardous to your health if everything else is ignored.

For the most part you will find field expedients to contain risks. Fire or xylem do a good job on bio-threats, and removing sediment is easy enough, but detox is borderline impossible. And if you don't have the right size tubing for xylem filtration or a pot to boil in then even purification is impossible.

You can't make a distiller from clutter around a home. Distillation is a precision process requiring very special parts. All you can do is boil water and perhaps recover steam, but that isn't distillation. You can't detox it.

Expedient fabrication is not ever a good primary plan. It is a "needs must" situation that will still leaves many threats and vulnerabilities, but still a bit less risky than plain raw water.

A good primary plan always includes the specialty modern gear.

You might want to learn the fundamentals first on how water is made safe:
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=392651

 

Zeke most folks do not know the difference in "purify" or "treat". Thanks for your attempts at educating those who fall into that category.

 

.........but I want to know other ways that do not use any high tech. Like, how do I make a water distiller from things made from a average city apartment?.........

These 5 are about as low tech as you can get.

And lastly, the SODIS Method Of Water Purification
Essentially: Fill a clear, PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottle, and lie in the direct sunlight for at least 6 hours.

Polyethylene Terephthalate symbol

 

These 5 are about as low tech as you can get.

I know that you didn't get to name the videos but the word "distiller" is used too freely and incorrectly.

The top one is the perennially worst offender. A tea kettle that diverts hot water vapor is an utter waste of time. Collecting random boiled steam is just making boiled water more complicated. If anything the added copper flex tubing likely made it more toxic. If all you can do is boil water then don't waste time trying to divert steam like that through a copper flex tube. The boiled water already was microbe dead and you did nothing for detox but likely make it worse. Everything about those tea kettle rigs is a failure.

The "solar distillers" are again not true distillers, but this mislabelling has been grudgingly accepted in place of what they should be called, namely solar sublimators. Water experts must have granted this mistake an official pass at some point.

But there are issues with them because they will allow lower boiling temp VOC's to sublimate with the water. Plus it takes only a very short time before those bottles begin breaking down structurally in the sun. So without a constant source of newly manufactured PET plastic bottles using the old ones for solar sublimating means the end product grows increasingly toxic over time.

SODIS suffers from the plastic breakdown issue even sooner and to a higher degree. SODIS is not a valid long term option once disaster strikes and new bottles quit coming.

Those evaporator pits are a valid choice but asking anyone who has ever used them will tell you they are extremely low production. Because you need so long to get enough water you are trapped in place. On the move they are useless.

That last vid was a joke. The only thing that was useful was the cotton shirt to reduce sediment. There was no microbe or toxin abatement worth mentioning. A funnel, 3" piece of plastic tube, and a piece of green stick xylem would have done a 100x better abatement job.

Youtube has lots of vids. But Youtube doesn't verify scientific veracity.

The solar sublimator soda bottle vid is worth knowing and so is SODIS. The first to deal with brackish or sea water. SODIS has value for when you have sun but no fire. The dew pits vid is technically valid but functionally useless. The kettle "distiller" and the "3 layer" vids offer nothing but wasting time and resources, while giving the watcher a dangerous false sense of safety.

 

Thank you NoSound and Mr. Sockpuppet, I appreciate both of you for the time you took to actually come up with ideas.

Most elderly, poor, city folks, do not have room for 55 gallon drums, nor would they have the money to prep. The vast majority of elderly that live in apartments barely make enough just to eat, let alone prep. And barrels cost $. Prepping takes money and space.
I am trying to find as many low tech, low budget ways that a poor, elderly person could get through with for a short time, a couple of days to a couple of weeks at most. Not prepping, Not storing.
One last note, this is not for me. Think of the elderly poor in food lines and at the food bank today.

 

Thank you NoSound and Mr. Sockpuppet, I appreciate both of you for the time you took to actually come up with ideas.

Most elderly, poor, city folks, do not have room for 55 gallon drums, nor would they have the money to prep. The vast majority of elderly that live in apartments barely make enough just to eat, let alone prep. And barrels cost $. Prepping takes money and space.
I am trying to find as many low tech, low budget ways that a poor, elderly person could get through with for a short time, a couple of days to a couple of weeks at most. Not prepping, Not storing.
One last note, this is not for me. I want to put a small pamphlet together so I can give it to the poor that come through the food bank and food lines.

A Sawyer Mini kit is just $20, lasts for many thousands of gallons, and fits in a pants pocket.

There is a point where trying to be less expensive comes with a real risk of danger. Most field expedient methods require a fairly high degree of skill and labor to create a system that still might get them infected from poorly treated water.

Something actually can be worse than nothing sometimes. The copper flex tube for a tea kettle will be more expensive than a Sawyer Mini and actually may poison them. They were better off just using a tea kettle.

Projecting false hope with bad ideas is very wrong. Worse, it opens you up to liability. Creating a pamphlet with risky ideas for distribution to an at-risk group can be grounds for a restraining lawsuit. And trying to teach people a health and safety subject you don't have expert skill in is both morally wrong and intellectually dishonest. It's like passing out loaded handguns to chimps.

Become far better skilled at making safe water before trying to go teach an at-risk group.

Teach them things you actually understand.

 

Boil, filter , store in copper vessels

 

The Missouri is the 7th most polluted river in the US. Sure, drinking from the Ohio or the Mississipi without adequate water treatment first is even more dangerous, but still, 5 million tons of toxins per year dumped into it directly and approximately another 20 million tons washing into it from the watershed is something I'd want to remedy with more than just a piece of cloth and boiling before I drank the water.

As to the boiling--we're back to you can't do much of anything without some kind of preps. BBQ grills and charcoal may be "cheap enough," but you still have to buy them and store them somewhere if you want to be able to boil water with them after the lights go out.

If someone is hoping to help the completely indigent/homeless who are totally dependent on charity and the government to stay alive in even ordinary circumstances, then it's the charity that probably needs to figure out how it can prep to tide those dependent people over in an emergency until the government gets there. If they can't keep food on the shelf for an ordinary week/have nowhere with a shelf in the first place, they aren't suddenly going to be able to keep 3 days of food and water on hand for an emergency, let alone several weeks' worth.

And sure, some filtration is better than no filtration, but what are the odds people who can't afford a can of soup to eat tonight can afford cotton balls and coffee filters, let alone a Brita pitcher to disassemble for the charcoal?

The OP started with a question about what a 76-year-old grandmother living far from her children could do to prep for an emergency, to which the answer is many things, and then moved the goal line to what can the indigent and homeless relying on food pantries and soup kitchens do, to which the answer is that those depending on others for their survival now are almost certainly going to continue to depend on others in a disaster. Those with at least a roof over their heads can probably find enough jars and bottles to hold 6 gallons of water apiece for 3 days and should at least store that somewhere, which beats the food pantry trying to find somewhere to store 600 gallons for 100 people. The pantry, however, might be able to stash some food-grade plastic buckets and a filter to put together a gravity system in an emergency or even just a few Sawyers + AC to filter bottles of water for a number of people in turn.

 

I believe the main focus should be on knowing multiple options and how they work, vs an argument over 'if they had this, then they wont need that'.
On any given day as you go about the daily routine, something could happen that requires you to work with only what you have on you at the time. After all, that is the essence of what this site is about, no?

 

Regardless of what you may find on the internet there really aren't that many field expedient options to make truly safe water.

Making marginally treated water is not something to be taught to at-risk groups. There is a duty to those you teach to teach the right way or you should take a pass on something you know to contain risk. There are ethical and legal considerations that mandate what you share when coming from a position of knowledge and authority.

Like it or not, handing out how-to pamphlets to an at risk group is putting yourself in that position of authority.

Not asking to debate the poor, or who the poor are, or who is going through the food bank. Not asking what someone "thinks" a poor and elderly person should be able to afford or if they own a computer or a car. Not asking to debate. (Hand to mouth poor only, no car, no computer, rent a room only poor)
Asking about water ideas only, that someone poor and elderly would have access to in their home.
Not asking for high tech ways and filtration kits that one would have to buy.

Here's the fact you don't seem to realize.

Once you put something on a public forum that you don't personally own, you no longer have any rights to direct the conversation.

The rest of us are free to redirect or criticize all we want. So get used to it.

You have a moral and legal obligation if you try making a pamphlet to deliver only effective working advice to those at-risk people. Marginal methods are completely unethical in this case and put you at odds with health authorities.

If you open a soup kitchen for the poor you are still mandated to abide by the local restaurant health code. Giving the food away free doesn't relieve you of your health and safety responsibilities. This responsibility is exactly the same regardless of whether you are handing out a free lunch or free advice. Argue with me all you want but most field expedient methods to clean water do not get a pass from health and EPA laws. You can have a restraining order put against you and you can be fined from municipal, state and national authorities for giving unsafe advice. If the EPA gets wind of this the fine maximums can range into the millions. If someone got ill because they used your advice then you can face criminal endangerment charges.

Quite frankly, you shouldn't be doing this. You have no skill at this. You are not a legitimate health and safety authority and have no business putting yourself out as one by making an instructional pamphlet. Go ask your local health code office if you don't believe me. They will surely tell you in no uncertain words that to make a pamphlet you must show your certified skill rating. Flat out, you have no skill set to be making this.

At present you represent a real risk to society for contemplating making such a pamphlet. My advice is to drop this unethical idea.

Good intentions are not a valid justification for putting people's lives at risk because you are unqualified.

If you can't see the wisdom in what I say then I can only hope the authorities catch you in time and shut you down hard.

 

If you were caught in a situation where the water supply got contaminated, I would think that there would be enough good water in the tank before the toilet and in the pipes that you wouldn't have to worry about drinking bad water for a few days.

 

Not asking to debate the poor, or who the poor are, or who is going through the food bank. Not asking what someone "thinks" a poor and elderly person should be able to afford or if they own a computer or a car. Not asking to debate. (Hand to mouth poor only, no car, no computer, rent a room only poor)
Asking about water ideas only, that someone poor and elderly would have access to in their home.
Not asking for high tech ways and filtration kits that one would have to buy.

Another example of treating/(purifying) water-:taped:
Bleach is a item even the extremely poor (generally, but not always) will have access to in their place.

Adding bleach to the water, for example, add 6 drops of bleach to each gallon of water. Double the amount of bleach if the water is cloudy, colored, or very cold.Glass containers. Stir and let stand for 30 minutes. The water should have a slight chlorine odor. If it doesn’t, repeat the dosage and let stand for another 15 minutes before use. If the chlorine taste is too strong, pour the water from one clean container to another and let it stand for a few hours.

The toilet tank is a good idea. I also thought water heater, but some of the old apartment buildings that the poor are living in do not have individual water heaters, it is a (?boiler? water heating unit) that feeds the entire building.

 

Bleach is a viable option, depending upon the age of said bleach. It begins the degrade after 6 months, and is useless after a year.

Obtain a quantity of Calcium Hypochlorite and make your own, freshly made bleach from it.

Or better yet, get a copy of "When there is no FEMA," and have all the information needed, right at your fingertips.

 

I have always been partial to digging a small pit a few feet from the water source and letting it fill with water. You clean a lot of stuff out that way.

 

Zeke, I know where you are coming from but are these authorities that have these skills you speak of, the ones who put Flint Michigan water at risk?

Also, what is normally done in municipal water supplies to remove organic chemicals?

 

Haven't followed thread but based on last response I though this might be of interest....

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#...s_rd=ssl#q=municipal+water+supplies+are+contaminated+everywhere&start=0&spf=429

 

I used to work for a water treatment company, Culligan Water. There is really only one way to filter water and remove everything, bacteria, virus, spores, chemicals, large atoms of radioactive material. That one way is reverse osmosis.

Osmosis is the means by which plants absorb water through their roots. The root is more concentrated with dissolved minerals than ground water so water flows through the plant's root membrane into the root, up the stem, to the leaves, etc.

Reverse osmosis reverses this. This is membrane technology. The more mineralized water is put under pressure and forced through a membrane. The membrane removes minerals, virus, chemicals, radioactive material down to two microns. What is left is pure water.

A water treatment company can install one of these reverse osmosis units under your sink and supply you with pure drinking water for a few hundred dollars. But there are other units backpackers and campers use which look like bicycle pumps which will supply you and your family with the best drinking water for about one hundred dollars or less. With one of these units you can drink swamp water or any other water on the planet no matter how polluted. If you can operate a bicycle pump, you can do this.

Any other method, any other filter or any sort has flaws depending on the bad agent you are trying to filter out. A reverse osmosis unit has no such flaws. It will work for everything.

 

I'm loving parts of this discussion; the parts where people talk about ways to improve the safety of the water. On the other hand the parts where people try to convince the OP that trying to help people makes him stupid, liable, or generally evil are less cool.

I'd bet he already knew many things that have been pointed out, like not using river water if he can avoid it.

For example I have several filtration setups, and know how to make my own. My favorite one puts water through successively smaller filters, then an RO unit. I could use the river water my houseboat floats in if I had to. I also know that system will eventually be used up so I better have some other methods in mind.

Some basic principles come to mind that I learned in boy scouts on the 1990's
First: Any water is better than none. Dehydration will kill you faster than anything.
Second: Use the best water source you can. Rain water being the best, water coming from the end of a 3,000 mile long river being the worst.
Third: Filter the best you can.
Fourth: Boil the water
Fifth: Sanitize with chlorine or iodine if possible

If you can do all five you'll be good, but if you had nothing but a glass and you're at the end of a long river you're better off drinking it than just waiting and dying of dehydration. Any contaminants that MAY be in that water will kill you way slower than dehydration would.

I'll expect the experts to now tell me I'm an idiot and I'll kill everyone around me for stating such foolishness.

 

Fourth: Boil the water
Fifth: Sanitize with chlorine or iodine if possible

I'll expect the experts to now tell me I'm an idiot and I'll kill everyone around me for stating such foolishness.

Why would you bother using a sanitizer once you boiled?

It's like saying you boiled twice because you don't think it boiled right the first time.

 

A couple years ago, I did a Survivalistboards review upon a low tech emergency water condensing unit. Though it is a bit pricey.

This will be able to make contaminated water, as well as sea water, potable.

Review: The Survival Still Emergency Water Purification System

 

Zeke that's a great point. One of the things I always think, but forget to say is to be sure EVERYTHING your water touches is safe. It would be a shame to collect, filter, then sanitize water only to store it in a vessel that leeches things into your previously potable water supply.

If I were to create a rain collection system I'd cover the roof in plastic or something. Of course as I typed that I remembered last night's wind. Hmm, not as easy as typing a sentence lol.

 

Plastic tarping a roof is tricky. Even in tract homes the builders will usually break up the roof designs to avoid the cookie cutter appearance. So you can't have any way for an uncovered eave or overhang drop water onto your tarp. Then you have the fragile nature of tarps. It's purely temporary at best. Some will get lucky on roof shape and destructive weather and some will not. So I never see it as an automatic possibility. People want advice they can count on and you just can't count on a shingle roof that way. What people can count on is the right kind of roofing materials.

 

The water volume problem is a tough one. The only way to really get enough is to rely on a large enough constant supply, or have a large collection area & storage.

One thing I've been thinking about is big rivers. They are a two edged sword. They provide the benefit of providing all sufficient volume, and constant availability. They also carry the risk of containing chemicals that are harmful.

I did have one thought that I'd love to hear input on. Is it a safe prediction that shortly after a SHTF event the addition of chemicals to the river would (mostly) stop? If so, this resource becomes more viable.

I gathered a few facts & did a little math. The Mississippi river is estimated to be as long as 2552 miles long, and flows at an average rate of 1.2 mph. That means all the water that's in it right now will exit the river in 2.89 months. So in a worst case scenario even at the end of the river the water should be a lot better than it is right now 3 months after the end of the world. If you're using a different river, or are closer to the start of it, the wait time to flush any man made pollution out of it would decrease.

Edit: I reread the source of my figures & discovered the 1.2 mph number is for the headwaters. At New Orleans the river flows at an average of 3 mph. The math to figure the time to have all new water would get harder, but now I'd guess it's between 1.75 & 2 months. ALSO the EPA states right now 50 cities use the Mississippi river as their primary water source including where I live. I sure hope my city is doing a good job filtering it.

More info here: https://www.nps.gov/miss/riverfacts.htm

 

Generally speaking,Drinking water is not specified in acidic or alkaline water, According to requirments the general control of drinking water PH is between 6.5 and 8.5,
excessive acidic water or alkaline water maybe make the body acid-base imbalance.
Aluminum chloride or alum with polymerization of purity water.

 

Aluminum chloride or alum with polymerization of purity water.

Aluminum is always a poor treatment choice because aluminum has no positive biological function in the body. If needs must to make safe water and all you have is aluminum compounds then do it if forced to, but it is always better to use a non-aluminum compound.

What is the source of the chemical (most serious) pollution of our waters? Is it mostly industrial or is it agricultural?

It's very location specific.

And don't forget medical waste, post consumer runoff, mycotoxins from algae infestations, acid rain, mining runoff, and a host of other causes.

 

What is the source of the chemical (most serious) pollution of our waters? Is it mostly industrial or is it agricultural?

 

I decided before replying today I'd read a little.

I learned a few things. Here's the last paragraph fom an article about the Mississippi river. "In decades past, pollution control often sought to address clear “point sources” such as factories and sewage treatment plants. Now the focus is on indirect sources of pollution — runoff from farms and urban areas that trickles into streams and makes its way into waters such as the Mississippi, the MPCA’s Vanderbosch said." Article here http://www.startribune.com/how-the-upper-mississippi-goes-from-pristine-to-polluted/411707016/

So I infer from this that the big polluter sources have been largely handled. Now the largest source of pollution is from farm runoff. The pollutants generally mentioned are things I could test for with my aquarium test kit. Just for fun I'll get a sample of the water just south of Minneapolis and evaluate it as if I wanted some prized fish to live in it. Numbers don't lie!!

I also skimmed this 52 page document titled "State of the River 2016" https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByX3chjR3UG6cjl5TFhSTUl1Vm8/view Very good info in there. Mostly the data is promising. Most pollutants are decreasing, some are about staying the same, and a few are rising but have not yet reached unsafe levels.

Overall I'm concluding that my previous idea that the water could be clean in a few months was naïve. The processes of water coming from the entire watershed takes a lot longer, but we are making progress and reducing the amounts of things going on the ground that will eventually end up in the water. Also the current status tells me that you could drink it if you had to. I'd filter the heck out of it first though.

Cheers!

 

Well, the shift in attention isn't really about having "solved" the industrial polluter's problem, as it is recognizing a new threat.

Farm runoff has habitually been a low priority issue. But now they are seeing new effects coming from it. As the water takes on an increasing load from farm runoff they are seeing more algae blooms in the river system. That sucks up free oxygen and creates a fish kill. Then invasive critters rush in to fill the gap. State fish and game departments have been pushing this shift in budget limited cleanup resources because they can still threaten industrial polluters with fines but farmers are a bit of a protected class and it's harder for farmers to remediate their runoff problems.

 

Check out "DIY:Gravity Fed Water Filtration System" on youtube.com

Very easy to make and works just great.

 

Good for visual instruction, but the vid maker uses buckets that are not food grade. Buy food grade buckets for this job.

Also, source your filter from Monolithic filters instead of Amazon. Monolithic doesn't use Chinese sourced filters.

https://www.monolithicmarketplace.com/collections/water-filters-collection

 

Get a filter

 

This thread is about leaving a super easy water purification method for an elderly lady (I would say forget about all the MacGyver stuff, why reinvent the wheel when there are cheap wheels out there). Anyway, till this day I still get ****ed off that they discontinued the AquaPail...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFL6zqGbPFU&t=29s

Unfortunately I got into water purification merely months after these babies were all gone for good. If I would have started a year earlier I would have bought a mountain of AquaPails!! They would have hands down been my choice to give out to family members and friends in case of SHTF. I believe they stopped making them because one of the layers of filtration became too hard to get anymore, maybe zeolite?? But I'm not 100% positive on that. But yeah that would have been the best thing ever to stick in a helpless old ladies closet in case of SHTF.

 

You can but zeolite today easily. Screens and sponge layer are easy enough and so is the final GAC layer.

If they quit making it then it was another issue. Bad company management, price point too high to generate demand, or a fault with the unit itself.

I'm pretty sure they would have been busted at some point for trying to pitch that zeolite kills microbes. Zeolite is good stuff but there's no way they can assure that powdered zeolite will reduce bacteria and cysts by 99.99% simply by running water through it in loose sand form. It may kill a lot but even 99% isn't good enough to get a reputable lab certification.

If you want easy then nothing could be easier and affordable than this: https://www.monolithicmarketplace.c...collections/water-filters-collection/products/just-water-complete-bucket-system

Everything including the buckets for $60. It was designed for affordable and easy NGO use in nasty places.

Removal capabilities as follows:

>99% Arsenic 5 and 99% Arsenic 3
>99% Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)
>95% Chlorine and Chloramines
>99% Taste
>99% Odor
>98% Aluminum
>96% Iron
>98% Lead
>90% Pesticides
>85% Herbicides
>85% Insecticides
>90% Rodenticides
>85% Phenols
>85%MTBE
>85% Perchlorate
>80% Trihalomethanes
>95% Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons
>99.99% of particles larger than 0.5 micron, including Anthrax
>100% Giardia Lamblia
>100% Cyclospora
>100% live Cryptosporidium (WRc Standard)
>100% Cryptosporidium (NSF Standard 53 – A.C. fine dust – 4 log challenge)
>100% removal of E. Coli, Vibrio Cholerae (Johns Hopkins University)
>99.999% Salmonella Typhil, Shigella Dysenteria, Kiebsiella Terrigena (Analytical Food Labs)>99.9% Virus (Ceutical Lab, FDA Reg. Lab)