Iodine in Water

D

DanielL

Joined
Jan 13, 2000
Messages
168
I'm sure that the topic of water purification has been worn out, but...

I had read that when you use iodine to purify water, you could afterwards use ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to remove the iodine taste.

I did some experiments at home and I find that it does not work. The iodine taste remains and the water takes on a very tart flavor of iodine. It kinda covers the taste a little but it definitely does not make it go away. Am I doing something wrong?

PS - I used ascorbic acid powder and I added it a little at a time and taste-tested repeatedly.
 
I'm not sure there is anything you can do short of filtration through activated charcoal. I switched to bleach (6% sodium hypochlorite, NaOCl being the ONLY active ingredient) and just found the the Red Cross recipe (http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/afterdis/watertreat.html):

4 drops 5-6% NaOCl per quart of cool H2O, let stand 30 minutes.

Neither iodine nor NaOCl will kill cysts reliably, so I am not aware of a performance loss with bleach. It's lighter (1/6 fl oz will do 50 quarts), cheaper, and I personally find the taste about equivalent to good quality city water. Go figure - that's essentially what they use.

If you mix acid and bleach, chlorine gas is released, which burns moist skin, so be careful with that part if you try it.

There was a time when I used iodine tabs and had to fight off the urge to kill other hikers for their fresh water, but that time has passed ;) .

Scott
 
I got a container of contact lens drops (sterile isotonic saline + buffer), cleaned it thoroughly, and refilled it with bleach. The bottle behaves like polyethylene, the same kind as the Clorox jug I got the bleach from. I have also used Visine bottles. They are small, have a dropper, and don't leak.

I work for a water system engineer and regularly specify plastic chemical pumps, tubes, and pipes for use in small water systems that use NaOCl in basically the same form as bleach. Never had a problem, although I would be careful about rinsing plastcs that need to be optically clear - chlorine is a good oxidizer of organic molecules, after all.

Scott
 
You're not using enough bleach to hurt thr plastic and bleach comes in plastic bottles.

On the iodine front, some of the water purification tablets that use iodine are also available in 2-stage which means it has a iodine tablet to purify and then a tablet that wipes the iodine taste out.

I prefer the boil & bleach method because the tablets still leave a funky taste but I have the tablets in my gear just in case.
 
northstarXO, if you boil why do you bleach?

maybe I am missing something


thanks

chris
 
'Cuz I'm freaked about nasty creek water! LOL

My aunt got giardia while hiking in the Rockies and was sick as a dog for a long, long time.

More often I use bleach for my storage water and rarely carry bleach while camping. I use the tablets for that so I'm always boiling, even with the tablets although sometimes you can't boil and you roll the dice and take your chances but I'm weird about microbes because my grandfather was a doctor and a biologist and my aunt is a microbiologist. Plus I used to do some work for Fort Detrick. Man if that place doesn't make you wash your hands 500 times a day, nothing will! :D
 
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