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

kage said:
Bleach is horrible for the environment.....
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Why is it bad for the environment? Assuming you don't hose a railroad container of it all over creation, so you're killing every living thing in sight.

Not being confrontational. I'm honestly asking.
 
Don Rearic said:
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?
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We learned it in Boy Scouts, even though we were told not to tell that we did.
 
bleach breaks down rapidly into plain old salt when exposed to sunlight. while bleach DOES fish kill if dropped into a pond, stream or lake, it breaks down so rapidly it is untracable after 15 minutes .
 
Marion David Poff said:
Darn good to know...

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

Marion
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I understand that it's not too common. I've also read that if you have a good immume system, you may not be affected by it, or even know you have it.
It tends to get those already susceptible to illness I think. I'm no expert though, maybe the cdc website would have more info?
 
Rockspyder: My understanding about bleach, especially in strong concentrations is that because it is so effective at destroying bacteria, etc. it can cause an imbalance allowing certain bacteria to thrive and others to survive by wiping out the bacteria it comes in contact with and allowing other bacteria in the vicinity that were not touched by the bleach to survive. I've read that you shouldn't dump concentrated bleach directly down the drain for that reason (I understand that it's on the no-no list in many cities), as it will upset the balance of bacteria it comes in contact with, some of which can aid in the breakdown of fats, etc in your drains. It's true that bleach breaks down quickly, but it destroys quickly too.
 
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chewbacca said:
Don,

You need to watch out if you are stock piling bleach for water purification. It loses it's effectiveness over time. Even if the container is sealed, you should rotate your stock every 6 months. That is why some suggest using calcium hypochlorite (pool shock) as your water treatment.

Check out this link:
http://www.survivaltopics.com/survi...-use-calcium-hypochlorite-to-disinfect-water/
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Very cool link with very cool info. Looks like an invaluable substance! Thanks!!!
 
kage said:
Rockspyder: My understanding about bleach, especially in strong concentrations is that because it is so effective at destroying bacteria, etc. it can cause an imbalance allowing certain bacteria to thrive and others to survive by wiping out the bacteria it comes in contact with and allowing other bacteria in the vicinity that were not touched by the bacteria to survive. I've read that you shouldn't dump concentrated bleach directly down the drain for that reason (I understand that it's on the no-no list in many cities), as it will upset the balance of bacteria it comes in contact with, some of which can aid in the breakdown of fats, etc in your drains. It's true that bleach breaks down quickly, but it destroys quickly too.
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Thanks Kage, for the detailed reply. That is what I would have suspected.

I bet it would wreak havoc on a septic system!
 
I have water storage for emergencies and use bleach even for tap water. It extends the storage time to around six months per container, when I rotate them.
 
I use old malt concentrate (beer making) drums for my water storage. food/liquid grade and about 60 gallon.

one pool shock puck in the bottom, fill it up with the hose from the treated water in the house and I tarp it to keep sunlight off it.

filled it up 5 years ago and only just recently drained it. Still chock full of chlorine goodness and the water is crystal clear.
 
Rockspyder, I've never had a septic system, but a friend of mine who does is very strict about bleach going anywhere near it. I imagine it would destroy all of those useful bacteria quickly.

Bushman5, I'm just repeating what I've been told so do what works for you, but I was told to rotate all water, even chlorinated water, every 6 months. I used to use 40 to 55 gallon drums for water storage but got away from it because of the difficulty of draining and filling them (should have just bought an electric pump instead of siphoning!). Plus, they're not portable if I have to bug out.
 
A 1% bleach solution (1 part bleach to 99 parts water) is enough to give you industrial, food grade bacterial sterilization (per FDA requirements) with 1 minute of contact time. The 8 drops/gallon clear or 16 drops/gallon cloudy is a good rule of thumb if you have more time or less bleach.


If you're worried about cryptosporidium, it will take more contact time... a 1% bleach solution will kill 99.9% of crypto with just over an hour of contact time (~62 minutes). In other words, filtering is a better option for removing crypto unless you have a lot of time and a lot of bleach.


As previously mentioned, the ecological problems with bleach are mainly that it is so good at killing, if you pour it down the drain, it can kill all of the good microbes in your septic tank, & the tank will essentially quit working. Then you have to add more microbes and it takes a while to get things going. Or if you're on a city line, if you put enough bleach down the drain at high enough concentrations (it would take industrial quantities), you could do the same thing to the municipal wastewater plant. Needless to say, chlorine bleach is also highly toxic to fish & other aquatic life, even in low concentrations.

As previously mentioned, 10% bleach can even "kill" viruses given sufficient contact time.
 
Hi Chopchop, where did you get that info?
I've read that crypto can survive IN bleach or iodine tincture. And are you suggesting drinking a 1% bleach solution, or using it for other water needs?

And both iodine and chlorine have no trouble with viruses. Bacteria and Viruses are what they're best at. It's cysts they struggle with.
 
beef said:
Hi Chopchop, where did you get that info?
I've read that crypto can survive IN bleach or iodine tincture. And are you suggesting drinking a 1% bleach solution, or using it for other water needs?
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ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DRINK 1% BLEACH!! Thanks, beef. Poor explanation on my part. 1% bleach is good for cleaning food prep equipment, for example. Don's original example was 10% bleach for topical stuff, but that strong is not required in food prep factories as far as I understand.


For drinking water, follow the instructions from previous posts (8 drops/gallon clean water or 16 drops/gallon cloudy water, let stand for 30 min or until chlorine smell dissipates to tap water levels).



The crypto info is from the CDC for treatment of swimming pools. They recommend a CT (contact time in minutes x parts per million chlorine at pH < 7.5 and temperature > 25 deg C) of 15,300 to kill crypto cysts.

A 1% solution of standard bleach is about 250ppm chlorine, so: 15,300/250 = 62ish minutes. Again, it was a poor example, b/c I just kept the same numbers. You wouldn't want your pool above 20ppm b/c you'd wreck your chemistry and you'd be wasting pool shock. Instead of 62 minutes, you'd be looking at something more like 13hrs of treatment. And, it would take you a fair amount of water and time to then get your pool back to the 3-5ppm it should be.


The actual exposure time depends on the free chlorine, which varies with pH, temp, & bleach concentration. The CDC number has some safety fudge built into it.
 
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Wow, I need to read up on that more. In the Army we used 10% bleach solution for cleaning suspected surface contaminants as we were advised by the CDC. When I worked with the CDC (with the military, I'm not a scientist) they were using 10% bleach solution to kill surface nasties too, and that's what's been recommended to the city I live in also. At home I use 10% bleach solution all the time for cleaning surfaces and I keep a spray bottle (you can get good ones at Walmart that have different solution markings on the side, which makes mixing up chemicals much easier and safer) mixed up with this solution for cleaning off the table, cutting boards, etc. It looks like I may be using way too much bleach. If I can safely use 1% effectively, then I would rather do that, as I find bleach a little scary. I use it over other chemical cleaners because I know that it breaks down into salt and water after so much time, which makes me feel a little more secure around the kids.

I guess I need to start reading.
 
chopchop said:
ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DRINK 1% BLEACH!! Thanks, beef. Poor explanation on my part. 1% bleach is good for cleaning food prep equipment, for example. Don's original example was 10% bleach for topical stuff, but that strong is not required in food prep factories as far as I understand.


For drinking water, follow the instructions from previous posts (8 drops/gallon clean water or 16 drops/gallon cloudy water, let stand for 30 min or until chlorine smell dissipates to tap water levels).



The crypto info is from the CDC for treatment of swimming pools. They recommend a CT (contact time in minutes x parts per million chlorine at pH < 7.5 and temperature > 25 deg C) of 15,300 to kill crypto cysts.

A 1% solution of standard bleach is about 250ppm chlorine, so: 15,300/250 = 62ish minutes. Again, it was a poor example, b/c I just kept the same numbers. You wouldn't want your pool above 20ppm b/c you'd wreck your chemistry and you'd be wasting pool shock. Instead of 62 minutes, you'd be looking at something more like 13hrs of treatment. And, it would take you a fair amount of water and time to then get your pool back to the 3-5ppm it should be.


The actual exposure time depends on the free chlorine, which varies with pH, temp, & bleach concentration. The CDC number has some safety fudge built into it.
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:p Thanks Chopchop, just wanted to clarify! Thanks for the link too.
 
Where I worked we used 10% bleach to give it some shelf life, and 10% is the recommended for noro-virus (aka the norwalk #@$#storm) that way you can fill the bottles on monday, and on wednesday they should still kill stuff, whereas the .08%(or whatever) ammonia quatrinate (which is great stuff) had a shelf life of about 40 minutes. try getting people to keep fresh stuff made up that often!
anyone got a handy link for solar sterilization?
 
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