Does the Ready.Gov site on water purification still hold true?

Don Rearic

Don Rearic

Joined
Oct 8, 1998
Messages
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Is this accurate and viable?

Household chlorine bleach and medicine dropper – When diluted nine parts water to one part bleach, bleach can be used as a disinfectant. Or in an emergency, you can use it to treat water by using 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
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cory lundin still pushes this pretty hard. so some people are still following it.
 
awad said:
cory lundin still pushes this pretty hard. so some people are still following it.
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That damned "D" is close to that "R!" :D

I have his one book, "When All Hell Breaks Loose." I need to get his other book, the first one, "98.6."

However, anyone else know about this little guideline?
 
I know that is how we treated water when I was a kid.

My dad packed it across the river in a trash can, we added bleach, and waited for the fish poop to fall to settle to the bottom.

Marion
 
I HATE chlorinated water.:barf:
I use 15 drops of Betadine per gallon in river or lake water, when I cant find a spring, which is pretty rare.
I've never seen chlorine here. Just some smelly lemon bleach crap for laundry.:thumbdn:
 
Toucan Oasis said:
I HATE chlorinated water.:barf:
I use 15 drops of Betadine per gallon in river or lake water, when I cant find a spring, which is pretty rare.
I've never seen chlorine here. Just some smelly lemon bleach crap for laundry.:thumbdn:
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Actually, if you wait, the chlorine evaporates.... So, you put it in, it kills the nasties, then it evaporates, and all you are left with is good water.

Which is why we had a multi-container system, one 'trash can' of water was decanting while we were using the other. Then we started in on the decanted container, while the other was decanting...

The Katadyn Micropur Tablets are Chlorine Dioxide...

Marion
 
I use bleach quit a lot it's cheap, commonly available and has a lot of usefull uses especially in wound desinfection etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite
It's also a strong antifungal. Do you know those sprays they sell to fight fungus in your house? smell it, it's just bleach in a fancy bottle!
If i have a infection under my nails or a splinter i use warm water and bleach and it is the best product i have found. It's also great to desinfect blisters. Just puncture the blister with a sterile needle and soak your feet in the warm bleached water. They used it as "dakin" in the hospitals until recently.
This is how you make it. http://doreen.mkbmemorial.com/NF/dakins.pdf
 
Halogens such as chlorine (bleach) and iodine will kill/deactivate bacteria and viruses (what's the plural of virus?). Iodine will kill Giardia if above 20 degrees C, but bleach is not as effective, ie. doesn't reach as high a log reduction. i understand that as the temperature decreases, the outer shell of cysts hardens, making them impervious to the chems.

Neither chlorine nor iodine touch cryptosporidium.

So yeah, if your water isn't super polluted by cysts, bleach is fine.
 
beef said:
Neither chlorine nor iodine touch cryptosporidium.
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Do the Katadyn Micropur Tablets (Chlorine Dioxide) make a different solution? I am curious because they claim that their product kills cryptosporidium, so I assume that while both have chlorine in them, they act differently?

Marion
 
Chlorine dioxide and Chlorine are different things. Bizarre huh? I didn't get it at first. Yeah, the Chlorine Dioxide kills crypto, they quote a 4 hr contact time though, incase you're trying to treat very cold water.
 
beef said:
Chlorine dioxide and Chlorine are different things. Bizarre huh? I didn't get it at first. Yeah, the Chlorine Dioxide kills crypto, they quote a 4 hr contact time though, incase you're trying to treat very cold water.
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Darn good to know...

What does the population dispersion of crypto look like? Do you know?



Don - Good Thread.


Marion
 
Well, seems like a good idea to have several gallons of non-scented, non-fabric softening bleach in the pantry for emergencies.
 
great thread. when i lived at the beach and had well water it had to be treated with bleach. we had a large drum that had to be filled with part bleach and mostly water. it helped kill the rotten egg smell of the water as well. lots of sulfur in it for some odd reason. glad i dont live there anymore.

i keep regular bleech handy around the house. lots of great uses for it
 
From the Clorox website:

Disinfection of Drinking Water (Potable)

When boiling of water for 1 minute is not practical, water can be made potable by using this product. Prior to addition of this product, remove all suspended material by filtration or by allowing it to settle to the bottom. Decant the clarified contaminated water to a clean container and add 8 drops of this product to 1 gallon of water (2 drops to 1 quart). Allow the treated water to stand for 30 minutes. Properly treated water should have a slight chlorine odor. If not, repeat dosage and allow the water to stand an additional 15 minutes. The treated water can then be made palatable by pouring it between clean containers several times.

For cloudy water, use 16 drops of this product per gallon of water (4 drops to 1 quart). If no chlorine odor is apparent after 30 minutes, repeat dosage and wait an additional 15 minutes.
 
hung-solo said:
great thread. when i lived at the beach and had well water it had to be treated with bleach. we had a large drum that had to be filled with part bleach and mostly water. it helped kill the rotten egg smell of the water as well. lots of sulfur in it for some odd reason. glad i dont live there anymore.

i keep regular bleech handy around the house. lots of great uses for it
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Sounds just like my house. We live near the water. In faucets that don't get used that much, strong smell of sulfur.

All wells get treated with bleach initially. The purpose is to kill off any bacteria that may get introduced into the water during the drilling. It ... evaporates?.... over time, and they you just have the well-water, and the sulfur smell (at least here). So I would trust bleach for water treatment. But I don't particularly mind the iodine smell/flavor either.
 
pure chlorine pucks from the swimming pool supply shop store forever. One puck will over-treat a 55 gallon drum of water regardless of temps.

Filter thru charcoal aftwerwards to rid of chlorine smell.
 
I teach emergency prep classes and the 8 drops/gallon if clear water or 16 drops/gallon if cloudy is what is government recommended, as was recommended by several people already. The 16 drops/gallon is sometimes taught as a catch all to simplify things for the lowest common denominator types. It serves as a catch all, but it's obviously wasting bleach that you may need later.

I second what was said about storing bleach. It breaks down fairly quickly and becomes less and less effective until it is useless. Pool shock is a better, more stable alternative. Thanks Chewbacca for that article. It's more clear than the way I explain it and I'll steal some of that for when I'm teaching about emergency water.

Bleach is horrible for the environment, but it works amazingly well for so many applications. Even ebola contaminated areas are treated with 10% bleach solution, in the field.
 
Bleach be good!

As has been pointed out, it has a number of uses. As far as disinfecting water, we used it in Vietnam when we couldn't get the tablets, and it worked well.

Of course, I still got dysentery, so what do I know.
 
Don

The info is accurate. Many folks around these parts with cisterns use that formula and bleach to treat all their drinking water.
 
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