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Don't follow his advice: All it takes is a rotting animal carcass or infected human poop near your water source to render water unfit for consumption. Explosiv

Don't follow his advice: All it takes is a rotting animal carcass or infected human poop near your water source to render water unfit for consumption. Explosive diarrhea and crippling intestinal craps would be a disaster when your miles away from civilization. Millions of people in the third world die from infected water sources - my church spends millions to help them setup small water filter factories (and setup the economy around it) and it's estimated that $250 in funding helps save one person.

hyperbovine 9y ago
The article nails the phenomenon on the head -- the "outdoor community" tends towards wealthy and educated -- but then completely whiffs on the obvious deduction. Viz., getting sick from waterborne pathogens carries an opportunity cost that is far higher than the price of a filter. I've had such an illness -- from using a malfunctioning filter in a place where it was really necessary, no less -- and it suuuucks. I'd happily pay $100-200 to not have to deal with that again.
- beamatronic 9y ago
  How could you have protected against a malfunctioning filter?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    Multiple filters in series, ideally varying manufacturers?
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      You mean more manual labour filtering presumably filtered water again? These filters are rarely electric and typically hand operated and partly chemical. (Electric filters tend to fail when you really need them.) Or just heat and apply UV light to water.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
        That's exactly what I mean:) The stated problem was getting sick when a filter didn't do its job. The question was how to avoid being infected when a filter (silently) fails. My answer is redundancy. This is more expensive in time, money, and effort, but does mean that a malfunctioning filter doesn't mean you get infected.
  - hyperbovine 9y ago
    By simply bothering to read the user manual beforehand, in fact.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Exactly right. If you're plane crashed in the Sierras and your trying to survive until rescue can arrive, I can see you risking it (after all a lack of water will definitely kill you, water with Giadarsis in it will just make you sick). But If you are hiking/camping and you have the opportunity to bring something that can filter out that stuff, you will avoid some seriously nasty bad times.
- biggc 9y ago
  > Exactly right. If you're plane crashed in the Sierras and your trying to survive until rescue can arrive, I can see you risking it (after all a lack of water will definitely kill you, water with Giadarsis in it will just make you sick). But If you are hiking/camping and you have the opportunity to bring something that can filter out that stuff, you will avoid some seriously nasty bad times. It's a bit of a trade-off. If you're off camping for a long weekend and your purification system fails but you're in an area with a body of fast moving water, then you might be better off drinking from that source and hoping for the best because symptoms won't hit you until you're back in civilization. If you're stranded, and you're uncertain when rescue is going to come, then catching a parasite from a dirty water source can drastically reduce your chances of surviving until you're found.
killjoywashere 9y ago
Cramps and diarrhea, meh. The concerns are many though. Osmotic diarrhea from the cholera dead carcass is shedding can kill you in a 48 hours (this was a huge problem for the Kurds after the first gulf war and in Haiti in ... 2012?). Shistosomiasis, tinea solium, etc, etc. And the risk with the asymptomatic infections is that you become the vector. See Typhoid Mary. Giardia may not kill you, but it might stunt your kid's growth. Finally, 5.7% risk of infection is non-trivial. If the was a 1:20 adds of you falling and hitting your head in the shower, I bet you'd take baths or just skip bathing entirely.
baud147258 9y ago
I second this. In one camp, when I was a boy-scout, we took the habit of drinking in streams. Halfway through the camp, we had a diarrhea epidemic, which made us much more cautious about this.
jasonpeacock 9y ago
Amen. I drank from a "clean" mountain stream next to my campsite on a weekend trip, then the next day I noticed there was dead mouse upstream. Don't know if the dead mouse was the direct cause or not, but after returning home I had Giardia and needed strong drugs to recover, thankfully it wasn't a week-long trip.
nkzednan 9y ago
I was on a cave tour once and there was a crystal clear spring fed stream running thru the cave. The guide said something like the water looks good to drink but then we went around the bend and there was a giant pile of bat guano sloping down into the water.

hyperbovine 9y ago

The article nails the phenomenon on the head -- the "outdoor community" tends towards wealthy and educated -- but then completely whiffs on the obvious deduction. Viz., getting sick from waterborne pathogens carries an opportunity cost that is far higher than the price of a filter. I've had such an illness -- from using a malfunctioning filter in a place where it was really necessary, no less -- and it suuuucks. I'd happily pay $100-200 to not have to deal with that again.

beamatronic 9y ago
How could you have protected against a malfunctioning filter?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Multiple filters in series, ideally varying manufacturers?
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    You mean more manual labour filtering presumably filtered water again? These filters are rarely electric and typically hand operated and partly chemical. (Electric filters tend to fail when you really need them.) Or just heat and apply UV light to water.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      That's exactly what I mean:) The stated problem was getting sick when a filter didn't do its job. The question was how to avoid being infected when a filter (silently) fails. My answer is redundancy. This is more expensive in time, money, and effort, but does mean that a malfunctioning filter doesn't mean you get infected.
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  By simply bothering to read the user manual beforehand, in fact.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Exactly right. If you're plane crashed in the Sierras and your trying to survive until rescue can arrive, I can see you risking it (after all a lack of water will definitely kill you, water with Giadarsis in it will just make you sick). But If you are hiking/camping and you have the opportunity to bring something that can filter out that stuff, you will avoid some seriously nasty bad times.

biggc 9y ago
> Exactly right. If you're plane crashed in the Sierras and your trying to survive until rescue can arrive, I can see you risking it (after all a lack of water will definitely kill you, water with Giadarsis in it will just make you sick). But If you are hiking/camping and you have the opportunity to bring something that can filter out that stuff, you will avoid some seriously nasty bad times. It's a bit of a trade-off. If you're off camping for a long weekend and your purification system fails but you're in an area with a body of fast moving water, then you might be better off drinking from that source and hoping for the best because symptoms won't hit you until you're back in civilization. If you're stranded, and you're uncertain when rescue is going to come, then catching a parasite from a dirty water source can drastically reduce your chances of surviving until you're found.

killjoywashere 9y ago

Cramps and diarrhea, meh. The concerns are many though. Osmotic diarrhea from the cholera dead carcass is shedding can kill you in a 48 hours (this was a huge problem for the Kurds after the first gulf war and in Haiti in ... 2012?). Shistosomiasis, tinea solium, etc, etc. And the risk with the asymptomatic infections is that you become the vector. See Typhoid Mary. Giardia may not kill you, but it might stunt your kid's growth. Finally, 5.7% risk of infection is non-trivial. If the was a 1:20 adds of you falling and hitting your head in the shower, I bet you'd take baths or just skip bathing entirely.

baud147258 9y ago

I second this. In one camp, when I was a boy-scout, we took the habit of drinking in streams. Halfway through the camp, we had a diarrhea epidemic, which made us much more cautious about this.

jasonpeacock 9y ago

Amen. I drank from a "clean" mountain stream next to my campsite on a weekend trip, then the next day I noticed there was dead mouse upstream. Don't know if the dead mouse was the direct cause or not, but after returning home I had Giardia and needed strong drugs to recover, thankfully it wasn't a week-long trip.

nkzednan 9y ago

I was on a cave tour once and there was a crystal clear spring fed stream running thru the cave. The guide said something like the water looks good to drink but then we went around the bend and there was a giant pile of bat guano sloping down into the water.