Iodine Granules

John Watson

John Watson

Joined
Nov 29, 1998
Messages
774
I was watching Ron Hoods Survival I and II. He talks about a little bottle with some iodine granules that he uses to purify his drinking water.

Anyone know if that stuff is available at local drug stores or health food stores?

Ron states that using this solution will kill anything in the pint or so of water that he treats. Any comments on if this works or not.

Thanks for your patience.

John
 
No. As I found when I tried getting iodine crystals (if you have the means, order Ron's full-length videos--they're worth it!), the iodine crystals of which he spoke are one of the components of methamphetamine manufacture, and thereby rather hard to obtain.

A simpler, ready-made alternative: http://www.polarequipment.com/ .
 
The School of Self-Reliance also sells resublimated iodine crystals in a screw top bottle:
http://www.self-reliance.net/ogs4.html
Scroll down a bit. They are cool people to deal with. Friends of the Hoods too, I think.
I drop the glass vial into an old plastic vitamin pill bottle to protect it when I go into the wild :) The taste takes a few swigs to get used to, but it's better than cooties!

Diablero
 
In my experience, two stage buffered chlorine dioxide is prefferable to iodine. It kills more, faster (achieving the 6log//3log standard quicker on average), tastes better and you can keep the same supply for several years even after it has been opened.

Other Chlorine products also contain silver Ion to maintain purity of drinking water for months at a time.

At any rate, at least in Western Canada, all sorts of purification products, including many forms of iodine are available at any outdoor equiptment store/outfitter.
 
Thanks for all the responses to my question. I will look into all the suggestions provided.

Hope never to be in the situation where I need it, but better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, as the saying goes. Even though I don't go into the wilderness much anymore, I still am concerned with drinkable water in other survival situations such as hurrican aftermath. Wasn't it Hurrican Andrew that hit Florida so bad and one of the problems for the people surviving the storm was little potable water until shipments could be sent in.

Thanks again

John
 
I find pretty much all iodine products to be objectionable, so I use chlorine to treat my backcountry water -- 1 to 4 drops household bleach (5% sodium hypochlorite, no additives) per quart, depending on temperature, clarity, and color. It needs to be changed after about 6 months for best results if stored in a plastic eye dropper. If you store it in amber glass with a nonreactive cap it will last a lot longer.

I think dry iodine products last a couple of years in the regular "camping" type containers, and up to 5 or 7 years with better storage.

I think the limiting factor for storage in either case is that chlorine and iodine, both of which are halogens, are fairly reactive. The molecules diffuse through the seal material out to the atmosphere. If you had a way to seal them in an ampule, I think they would last a much longer time, maybe even decades. I am not sure how much diffusion would happen through glass.

Scott
 
It seems to turn everything brown that comes near to it. Can it weaken or poison fabrics or other soft poducts by aeriation(?)?
 
This is iodine's diffusion -- it literally diffuses through air, liquids, and solids to balance the high concentration at the source to low concentrations elsewhere. Everything diffuses, but colored things like iodine do so visibly. Iodine is very reactive, so it tends to react with everything it touches. This is what makes it such a good disinfectant. It reactct with microbes very agressively (and fatally).

fabrics, natural and synthetic alike, are made up of fibers, which ultimately depend on the structure of their molecules for their strength. Things like iodine tend to change, rearrange, and break up these molecules by reacting with them. The fabric is made weaker as a result. The process is not that unlike UV degredation, where the energy for molecular destruction comes from light rather than chemical energy. The results on fabric strength are similar.

You can see the relation now between the various common forms of drinking water disinfection: strongly reactive chemicals (chlorine, bromine, iodine, ozone, etc.), UV light, and high heat. All of these things tear microbes apart. (UV light actually just maims them, but it's the same idea.)

Scott
 
Iodene kills more things than chlorene (cysts specifically) if i remember correctly but it cant be used long-term becuase it can concentrate in your body and cause problems...hence chlorene is used in domestic water.

I believe you can also sterilise water short term with potassium permanganate - add enough to make the water a light pink

The advantage of chlorene is if you leave the water open for a while after sterilising most of the chlorene should evaporate and not leave too bad a taste behind!
 
I might be wrong about this, but isn't there a cyst that neither Iodine or chlorine can kill? Cryptosportium (sp) or something like that. The shell around it is too tough and it needs to be filtered out?
 
Just the other day I picked up some water purification stuff from Sports Authority, it was like $3-4. They have 2 different brands, 1 of them from each of the companies is the tablet form, 50 tablets per bottle, the third one was a 2 stage one with 2 bottles. The one I purchased was Coghlans, they are a popular brand of camping supplies. 2 tablets per 1 quart/liter of water. I believe it has a 4 year shelf life and a 1 year life after being opened. Not a bad deal if they (SA) are local and you can save on the shipping.

I forget where I read it, but if you are interested in other water purification ideas you can use some form of (I think) Clorox bleech, and put it in drinking straws the same way that you would a fire starter cotton/vaseline ball by cutting it to size and then melting the ends shut. I'm sure one of the other guys knows the site that I got the info from. Maybe equipped.com...??? :)
 
If you don't like the taste of iodine treated water, dissolve about a quarter of a vitamin c tablet in the water after treatment is complete. I crush the tab first to make in dissolve faster. It's good for you too, helps prevent a build up of lactic acid in your muscle tissue, which is believed to make you sore the next day.
 
powells85 said:
if you are interested in other water purification ideas you can use some form of (I think) Clorox bleech, and put it in drinking straws the same way that you would a fire starter cotton/vaseline ball by cutting it to size and then melting the ends shut. I'm sure one of the other guys knows the site that I got the info from. Maybe equipped.com...??? :)
Click to expand...

I believe the origins of the "5 drops per gallon" might come directly from the Clorox website.
 
MelancholyMutt said:
I believe the origins of the "5 drops per gallon" might come directly from the Clorox website.
Click to expand...
That's very possible, I know I read it from a link posted in another thread here where the author mentioned that you can call up Clorox for more info on that topic :)
 
longbow50 said:
I might be wrong about this, but isn't there a cyst that neither Iodine or chlorine can kill? Cryptosportium (sp) or something like that. The shell around it is too tough and it needs to be filtered out?
Click to expand...

You're thinking of Cryptosporidium parvum. Nasty stuff. It is indeed very resistant to chlorination, and causes Cryptosporidiosis (severe diarrhea that can last for two weeks, as well as muscle pain and cramps, and severe weight and fluid loss.) Most natural waterways in the US are contaminated with C. parvum due to the presence of livestock waste.

Chlorine also does not kill all protozoan cysts, bacterial endospores, or viruses.


As for Iodine, it's not recommended for water disinfection anymore because protozoan cysts can survive it unless the concentration of iodine in the water is so great that the water becomes undrinkable.

It is much better to filter water than to chemically disinfect it, though the aforementioned chemicals do kill enough microorganisms to make water reasonably safe to drink in an emergency. Note that standard filtration does not also remove toxins, but an activated charcoal filter will remove most of them.
 
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