Water Purification Information

It can also be purified to meet standards for medical purposes or for industrial purposes. Purifying water should remove viruses, algae, bacteria, chemicals, impurities and anything else unfit for human consumption.

The WHO reports that over a billion people lack access to good drinking water. These countries with impure water have millions of deaths each year from the diseases that occur from drinking it. We are lucky that there are various ways to purify water so it is drinkable.
- Boiling
- Filtering
- Use of activated charcoal filtration
- Chemical disinfecting
- Ultraviolet purifying
- Disinfection by solar radiation

If you boil water for 30 minutes, it will kill most bacteria. Add a drop of bleach to a gallon of water prior to boiling and it will ensure the destruction of most pathogens but you cannot remove all chemicals by bringing the water to a boil because some chemicals have boiling points above 212F. Pour your boiled water through activated charcoal and ensure that the filtering will neutralize even most chemicals.

Iodine is used for chemical disinfection of water by adding it to the water as a pill. Because it is a simple way to disinfect water, people often carry iodine tablets with them on trips when they will be traveling in countries with water pollution issues. Because you can purify extremely large amounts of water with just a little bit of solid iodine, it is used for emergency water purification on large scales.

People can make handmade water filters from items found in the area:
- Grass
- Charcoal
- Sand

These filters do not guarantee that the water is potable.

When water is poisonous because it has been contaminated by chemical spills or fuel spills, we have to do everything we can to make it potable. We do this through purification processes such a filtration, ionization, and other methods of removing pollutants and contaminants from the water.
- Ultraviolet water sterilization
- Water distillation
- Water ionization
- Faucet water filters
- Shower filtration
- Reverse osmosis
- Water magnets

These are a few of the methods of purification that are available to us on a personal household basis.

If you are a camper, a gravity fed water filtration system can save your life, literally. These systems are light and portable which make them easy to carry when camping. The system will take in water that is contaminated and give you potable water to drink. The inner part of the gravity fed system has a carbon level through which the water is funneled by gravity. The carbon also has a section of silver in it so that the filtration is thorough. This system will purify the water up to 99% of any pollutants and contaminants including e coli, salmonella, and chemicals. This simple system produces potable water with a small amount of effort.