Why can't we drink the water?

abo4ster

abo4ster

Joined
Aug 24, 2003
Messages
1,461
I understand that since the industrial revolution pollution has made most water sources unpotable. But aside from chemical contaminants, why are biological contaminants such a concern?

Is Giardia, Cryptosproridium, E-Coli, etc. new biological threats?
If not, have we just evolved to not have a tolerance?
Or, is there just a huge increase those?

Anyone know the answer?
 
The contaminents include alot of agricultural runoff. They can be toxic agents like pesticides, or nutrients (fertilizers) which promote the rapid growth of bacterial and viral agents.

n2s
 
In the mountain west, the main problem is Giardia which has spread tremendously in the last 30 or 40 years. It is amoebic dysentery and is spread in streams by infected mammals. I caught it by drinking from a spring in the late 80s. It is not fun and can be dangerous. The cure is a anti parasitic drug called Flagil (sp?) that is almost worse than the disease-it is very hard on your liver.

After having Giardia I am very careful about the water I drink.

The good news is that a good filter (2 micron) will remove the critters.
 
Giardia (Giardia lamblia) is a protozoa. What it causes (Giardasis) is very much like Amoebic dysentary: abdominal cramping and severe "runs." No fun whatsoever, but it takes days after ingesting a cyst of G. lamblia for symptoms to appear. Filters or chemical disinfectants are a very wise precaution. Beaver are a big vector for Giardia lamblia.
 
Water borne diseases have been keeping the human population down for centuries. The most famous is cholera. There is a tendency to have a higher tolerance for the local varieties of diseases, but some of these are so mean that they debilitate the local inhabitants. Some of the problem with drinking contaminated mountain water is that your body has not been raised fighting intestinal parasites, but a lot of it is just the nature of the bugs.
 
Believe it or not I have heard some suggest that water treatments such as chemical and pump systems are overkill in US waters.There is a very high probability that you wont get sick when drinking from clean backwater sources,esp.if you are in good health.Water near ANY human habitation at all is almost always nasty.Giardia ia a nasty bug but not usually life threatening in healthy adults.It is however an uncomfortable problem(I've had it as well)and may lead to dehydration as well as a general weakening of the immune system.These things placed together greatly weakens a survivors chances over extended time periods.I have swam in creeks and rivers and even drank straight from creeks on many occasions and have only gotten sick on one occasion from what was blamed on giardia.Whats funny is that I myself and a whole lot of people I know have been more sick from restaraunt food poisoning than any other thing ingested.Of course one might argue that this stands to reason due to the frequency with which we frequent public restaraunts.All this being said I still use a hiker purifier for all my back country drinking as its better safe than sorry.:)
 
Originally posted by not2sharp
The contaminents include alot of agricultural runoff. They can be toxic agents like pesticides, or nutrients (fertilizers) which promote the rapid growth of bacterial and viral agents.

n2s
Click to expand...

This is simply not true. Though some agricultural chemicals have found their way into groundwater, only in a few areas have the levels exceeded EPA standards. And, keep in mind, the EPA sets these standards about 100 times lower than what has ever been known to cause ANY negative effect on test subjects. The local golfcourse and city lawns are responsible for more chemical runoff than all the farmland in the county. Definitely not worth worrying over in a survival situation. Besides, I'm pretty sure most water treatment plants don't even try to remove these chemicals unless they're super high.

Also, regarding fertilizer- Potassium, Phosphorus, and Nitrogen directly feed PLANTS, such as algae; not bacteria or viruses that cause disease. The fertilzer is not even directly toxic to aquatic life; the algae grow so quickly that they remove oxygen from the water, thereby suffocating the fish.
 
I would beg to differ. Agricultural/chemical pollution of ground source water and surface streams is a problem in parts of the Southwest, particularly along the Mexican border and areas of heavy cultivation/irrigation. I see stories almost every day on the issue. Human fecal/viral/bacterial contamination is also a possibility in some desert streams/rivers. And please note that those articles telling you that backcountry water is fine to drink as-is use mostly alpine/mountainous country for their examples. Those of us who hike in the low elevations of the Southwest I think are well-advised to filter/purify water they obtain from the water sources they encounter.
 
In many places in the west, groundwater has been polluted by nitrates both from agriculture and from septic systems.

As for drinking backcountry water, if you get Giardia once, you WILL filter your water after that. The high country is bad in most of the continental US due to the spread of the disease in mammal populations. As noted above beaver spread it as they migrate, but also the ungulates are a bad influence. Deer, elk and especially cattle are culprits.

When I got Giardia, it was in a mountain range in central New Mexico. I drank from a spring in an area where there was no surface water for beavers, but lots of cattle and some deer and elk. This was the only place I hadn't used a filter in years, so I could pin it down. I didn't get sick with it for over a year. I got a cold the next year and lowered my resistance. It took two 10 day rounds of Flagil to get rid of it
 
you have never had a case of the runs untill you have had amoebic dysentery, having lived and traveled extensively in the third world, i would reccomend that you take all precautions to secure your water from a clean source, or clean it yourself. dont think that the natives are immune to the bad water, they have a huge ammount of gastrointestinal disease, and the child mortality rate is severely influenced by the water contamination.

alex
 
The Surgeon General pronounced (in 1917, I think) that amoebic dysentery probably killed more soldiers in the Civil War than all other mechanisms conbined. Because the victims' body temp. spiked due to dehydration towards the end, they were said to have died from "Camp Fever." Roman generals knew (without knowing the exact cause) that "bad things" happened if the latrine was up-hill from the water supply, a "secret" lost by 1860.
 
Seems nothing changes. If it smells bad, tastes bad or can kill you, dump it in the water and it'll go away.:eek: :barf:
 
A lot of the man-made pollutants that get into the water are not toxic per se, but do things like cause cancer. Sometimes the Clean Water Act levels are in fact too tolerant.

Arsenic is a big one that was underestimated. A while back, the UN put a bunch of well in Bangladesh (?) to prevent cholera or something similar. It worked great. However, there was a lot of arsenic in the water from the wells. They eventually noticed severe health problems due to arsenic. It served as a real wake-up call. Acceptable arsenic levels will be changing in 2006, mostly because of a bunch of dead (and dying) Bangladeshis.

Arsenic builds up in your system, essentially never leaves, so you can drink relatively clean water that will eventually kill you. A lot of the other inorganic (mineral) contaminants, like nitrates, do things like cause cancer.

You have to be careful with things like chlorine too. The halides (of which chlorine is a member) react with organics, like leaf pigment, to make carcinigens and other nasties. You basically have to run it through activated carbon to remove the producs of disinfection.

I'd almost rather just contend with the biologics (germs) like our forefathers did. There is something a little less frightening about fighting bugs that can be killed or filtered outright.

Clean water is really a complicated business nowadays.

Scott
 
Forty years ago water in local streams was pure; you could drink it with no treatment.

That changed in the 1970's when a lot of moronic people started crapping right into streams (I am NOT kidding).

Giardia spread far and wide. Now if you drink that water you will get cleaned out from one end to the other.
 
Originally posted by MarkJ
I would beg to differ. Agricultural/chemical pollution of ground source water and surface streams is a problem in parts of the Southwest, particularly along the Mexican border and areas of heavy cultivation/irrigation. I see stories almost every day on the issue. Human fecal/viral/bacterial contamination is also a possibility in some desert streams/rivers. And please note that those articles telling you that backcountry water is fine to drink as-is use mostly alpine/mountainous country for their examples. Those of us who hike in the low elevations of the Southwest I think are well-advised to filter/purify water they obtain from the water sources they encounter.
Click to expand...

Well, I must admit I was talking about my area. Southern Illinois. Someone mentioned nitrates in groundwater. Here, I am not aware of it ever getting high enough to affect healthy adults. The concern is with infants and pregnant women. I have been to meetings with the EPA, and am involved in writing nutrient management plans for local farmers, and spend my days taking soil samples to test for these nutrient levels. I help oversee five spray rigs that apply chemicals to farmer's fields in the spring. I have never seen anything that would make me afraid to drink our water due to agricultural reasons.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top