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The outdoor community made water filtration a must for a reason
- jrgaston 9y agoI've heard too many giardia testimonials to risk drinking unfiltered/unpurified water while hiking in the US west.
- dade_ 9y agoGrowing up in western Canada we were warned against an awful illness Beaver Fever, which is a catchy name for it.
- js2 9y agoHN discussion on the Slate article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16285322
- vhost- 9y agoYears ago my friends and I took a trip to the Wallowas in Oregon near the Idaho border. We were mostly camping backcountry with a few nights at campgrounds. I filtered my water at the campgrounds, but when we went backcountry, I was about to just put my bottle in the stream and one of my friends stopped me and told me to filter it and to never just drink out of a stream regardless of where you are in the US. He was from that area and told me that ranchers will let their cattle graze where ever they want, even on protected federal land, polluting pretty much every water source and everything downstream. They were very right. We saw cattle feces everywhere. It was very unsettling. Edit: I also got giardia at Smith Rock one time and it wasn't fucking pleasant.
- Mediterraneo10 9y agoIn many parts of the world you should be wary of drinking from a stream if you don't know the area well, but unfortunately a filter won't help: the water may have been contaminated by a mine upstream, but filters can’t remove mining byproducts.
- mcguire 9y agoMany ranchers have (scandalously low-priced, but that is another story) leases to run their cattle on specific federal lands. Cattle drop poop pretty much everywhere they go. (Weirdly, donkeys apparently collect theirs into big piles. Oddest thing I've ever seen.) If cow manure is unsettling, you may want to be careful what parts of the outdoors you visit.
- wavefunction 9y agoThat's BLM and National Forest lands. Anything beyond that is illegal but you should still protect yourself from unscrupulous ranchers just as you should look both ways on a one-way street.
- waterphone 9y agoWhich is the vast majority of public recreation land in the U.S.
- wavefunction 9y agoYep, and always filter your water there. I filter or boil my water even at 11,000 feet in altitude where the cattle do not roam.
- davidw 9y agoThe Crooked River near Smith Rock is downstream of a lot of land, including the city of Prineville, a couple of reservoirs and a whole lot of rangeland. BTW: like patio11's standing invitation, if you're ever in Bend, say hi and we'll have a beer.
- ceejayoz 9y agoGiardia is carried by deer, as well, so you'd get it even without the cattle. There's always poop in the woods, even in remote, untamed areas.
- projektfu 9y agoWhile giardiasis is considered potentially zoonotic, human origin is considered to be the overwhelmingly predominant source based on genotyping. http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/giardiasis.pdf http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/giardiasis.pdf All bets are off for other protozoans and bacterii.
- wyager 9y agoBears, deer, and other animals make this an issue even in the absence of cattle. US natural water sources are actually relatively very clean. We don’t have any issues with viruses or chemicals, which means we can safely use ~0.2 micron filters while some regions require more expensive ~0.02 micron filters.
- poulsbohemian 9y agoFirst rule of the Wallowas: Don't tell anyone else how awesome it is there, we don't want an influx of people. ;-) Having grown up backpacking the Wallowas, it really depends on where you are as to the safety of the water. Down in the Minam where the cows are grazing everywhere? Yes, definitely filter. Way up in the high country, running water? Not a problem. But, I don't blame you for filtering wherever you are. The risks in general aren't worth it.
- refurb 9y agoIgnoring cattle for a moment, doesn't every other living creature crap in the wilderness? I've always been taught to filter/treat water regardless of location.
- jon_richards 9y agoThe primary reason to always filter in the United States is that giardia is everywhere. You can drink from the clearest mountain stream far above any cattle and still get it. Giardia used to be very rare in some places like Europe, but I think that may have changed over time.
- Amezarak 9y ago> He was from that area and told me that ranchers will let their cattle graze where ever they want, even on protected federal land, polluting pretty much every water source and everything downstream. They were very right. We saw cattle feces everywhere. It was very unsettling. Maybe this is an ignorant thing to say, but before cattle, there were massive herds of buffalo everywhere doing the same thing, right?
- _lflx 9y agoAnd the average human lifespan was like 50 years, so maybe they were dying of contaminated waters.
- Amezarak 9y agoAverage human lifespan was dragged down by infant mortality. Where we have good data, people lived to about the same age as today - or even longer.[1] See, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ [1] Obvious caveat that particularly awful periods of history in some locations had bad life expectancies - wars that killed a third of the population, the Black Plague, genocide, etc. The idea that human life expectancy has improved over time is a myth - unless you start counting in 1900. It's gone up and down throughout history, but ours is nothing special.
- floren 9y agoA Sawyer filter is quite small and costs $20, there's no reason not to filter.
- twothamendment 9y agoFrom the article “There is no good epidemiologic evidence that North American wilderness waters are inherently unsafe for consumption,...” Right - and there isn't any evidence that wilderness waters are 100% safe either. I don't gamble in Vegas and I don't gamble with what I drink. Water can look fine, but is there a dead deer just upstream? No thanks. Filtering is cheap and easy, a great insurance policy.
- sna1l 9y agoYeah I'm not really getting the reason for caring whether it is likely to get sick from unfiltered water or not. Why not just always filter? (Assuming cost is low)
- loeg 9y agoThe main reason people don't like filtering is because it takes time.
- marcoperaza 9y agoWhich isn't a problem with a Sawyer filter, because you can just screw it to the top of the water bottle and drink through it.
- gao8a 9y agoI feel like drinking unpurified water out of desperation is a tale you'll eventually hear from people that've been outdoors a lot. It will either end unpleasantly or with extreme emphasis on how lucky they were that it didn't end unpleasantly.
- hprotagonist 9y agoI think i heard this on "Survivorman", but also from many thru-hiker friends. Dying of dehydration is a whole lot faster than giardiasis. If you're in a survival situation and are reasonably sure of a rescue in less than 14 days, go ahead and drink that water! Otherwise, don't.
- loeg 9y agoYep. If you're dehydrated because you didn't bring adequate water or a filter, and drinking unfiltered water will get you to civilization (trailhead, car, etc), it is better to have giardia (in a few hours) than to be dead.
- omnius19 9y agoThis is also why Imodium is included in most thru-hikers first aid kits. It decreases the effects of diarrhea to keep you hydrated long enough to reach civilization if you get giardia in the backcountry.
- Avshalom 9y agoSure drinking it out of desperation is a tale. A shit ton of us grew up drinking water on the philosophy "clear+fast=safe" it's just that "I was a kid and half a mile from my house and thirsty" isn't much of a story to tell. Not that I under the impression that it's inherently safe just that none of the umpteen millions of us who surive and don't think it's a story.
- ghaff 9y agoI think that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’ve certainly had some untreated water from time to time and never had an issue. To be clear I don’t advocate putting yourself in a position where you have to do so. But I also don’t think it’s extraordinary luck to not get giardiasis because I end up swallowing a mouthful of water whitewater paddling or because I’m dehydrated and have no water treatment.
- georgeecollins 9y agoAnecdote is not data, but ok, here is an anecdote: When I was a boy scout growing up in the Bay Area we would camp in the mountains for a weekend or even as long as a week. We filled our canteens in any clean looking fast running stream. Everybody did that and they were fine. Sure it is possible this has gotten more dangerous but I am inclined to believe the paranoia has increased faster than the danger.
- taeric 9y agoAnecdata like this is also a prime candidate for survivor bias. :)
- 49531 9y agoThis seems weirdly inverted to my boy scouting experience (in San Diego). Our training put a huge emphasis on filtering our water before we drank it, it was considered fool-hearty to drink water from a river or stream before filtering. Anything from garbage to a rotting deer carcass could be up stream.
- mastax 9y agoAnother anecdote: When I was in scouts, two separate groups of us went to Philmont, on different trails. Both crews had a variety of purification methods but ended up using a specific model of filter the most because it filtered really quickly and didn't taste off. Halfway through the trip one crew became seriously ill. That was when we realized that the 'fast' filters were fast because they were assembled incorrectly and weren't filtering at all. So yeah, backcountry streams can be totally fine. If you want to play the parasite lottery, be my guest, but know that it is a lottery.
- marcoperaza 9y agoThe risk is somewhat correlated with elevation, since higher elevation water is less likely to have been contaminated by humans or animals. But it is no guarantee and not something you should rely on. Filtering water is extremely easy with products like the Sawyer Mini ($25), which you just screw to the top of a standard water bottle and drink through. It’s stupid to take the risk when the precautions are so easy and so cheap. It is unfathomably irresponsible to let other people’s children, in your care, drink straight from the stream.
- wildmusings 9y agoI hiked over 600 miles of the Appalachian Trail last year, and just about everyone filtered their water. Bacteria and protozoa[1] in the water can make you very ill, and even cause longer term health problems if you’re unlucky. Filtering water in the backcountry is extremely easy with products like the Sawyer Mini ($25), which you just screw to the top of a standard water bottle and drink through. It’s stupid to take the risk when the precautions are so easy and so cheap. And it’s unbelievable that people in civilization, with abundant access to clean water, would actually pay a premium for dirty water. Yes, primitive people drank water straight from streams. They built up resistance to a lot of the pathogens, but they also had lots of parasites and diseases, and didn’t regularly live into their 80s, so I’m not sure why you’d model your food and water safety on theirs. [1] Viruses are a problem in much of the world too. Thankfully, streams in the US don’t generally have viruses in them, and the most popular filters for hikers don’t filter out all viruses. But for the extra careful, chlorine dioxide drops and some pump filters do.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoThere's a bit of a trope about how in history everyone died in their 30s from war or disease. http://www.hormones.gr/211/article/article.html http://www.hormones.gr/211/article/article.html concerns Ancient Greece, so not primitive. But, I think you should be cautious about declaring primitive people as having their lives markedly shortened by waterborn pathogens; at least cautious enough to be able to cite some strong evidence?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marcoperaza 9y agoThe Ancient Greeks filtered their water and sought out purer water sources. I didn’t claim that people died in their 30s or that waterborne pathogens were a major cause of shortened life. The latter certainly seems plausible though. My point there was only that basing your water sanitation on the habits of primitive people is obviously misguided.
- braindongle 9y agoFrom my pithy mentor: "There are no randomized controlled trials demonstrating the efficacy of parachutes." Similar logic here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mitchtbaum 9y agoAir too.. Cheaply: Indoor water feature and ultrasonic fogging with electrochemically activated "acid" cleaning water.
- cdnsteve 9y agoLifestraw is a decent emergency filter to have around. You can also use a SteriPen UV light - which is great. It's light, fast and you can use it on the go. Scoop up a full Nalgene bottle of untreated water, then treat with SteriPen. Used both many times camping and on long portages with great success.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jsloss 9y agoBig fan of the lifestraw. It's easy to use, effective and they do amazing things for folks in areas with low water security. I live in the city and keep one in my earthquake preparedness kit.
- prawn 9y agoI use the Sawyer Mini. Had the SteriPen for one trip but didn't like the reliance on batteries, worrying about getting them recharged, etc. Had one hike where our batteries went dead in the cold overnight and we had to rely on meeting someone on the trail and borrowing their filter.
- macNchz 9y agoI carry a steripen for primary purification, plus some chlorine tabs as a backup if something were to go wrong with it. I find that single-use AA lithium batteries in the steripen are very long lasting and the device itself has stood up to many trail miles knocking around my pack. Between pumping, backflushing and protecting filters from freezing I really don’t mind the reliance on batteries/electronics and the need to carry a lightweight backup. Plus I usually have a stove should it come to that.
- jcoffland 9y agoI use a SteriPen but spend the extra money on non-rechargable Lithium batteries. They are way lighter, pack more power and hold their charge for years. I bring two sets in case one runs out which has yet to happen on my week long backpacking trips.
- fitzroy 9y agoAlways boil the water. Source: Binge watching 7 seasons of Naked and Afraid.
- davidw 9y agoThere's a reason that "You have died of dysentery" is a thing.
- wand3r 9y agoBecause heroes travel the Trail at a grueling pace instead of steady which runs down the party and increases the chances of illness.
- Hasz 9y agoBetween the effectiveness of chlorine and the simplicity of a pump, there's just no way I'm going to save ~8oz for the risk of explosive diarrhea. Having both diarrhea and having to walk back t the trail head to get help would be an awful combination.
- ghaff 9y agoPumps may be simple but I’ve heard experts in outdoor gear question whether filters are reliable. They can develop micro cracks and therefore invisible failure modes. Now, low failure rate plus low incidence of ineffective in the water multiply to low risk. But they’re not perfect. It’s also very easy to get a degree of cross-contamination. Personally I mostly use iodine and boiling though I do have a pump. I’d consider getting a steripen though.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y agoSimilarly: wear your seatbelt. Almost every single car ride I have been on didn't need it, but you don't know you needed it till it's too late.
- Jtsummers 9y ago2 stories: A friend's grandfather never wore his seatbelt. He was in fine health. One day, they rear ended someone. He was in the back seat and died because he was essentially thrown underneath the driver's seat. Had he been wearing a seatbelt he may have been injured, and given his age it may have been severe, but he would have lived. No one else in the car was seriously hurt (all wearing seatbelts). Two weeks ago a driver decided to do a U-turn from the right lane. I was in the left lane. I was spun around from the impact. While I am injured, because of the seatbelt it's just whiplash and other soft tissue injuries. If I hadn't been wearing my seatbelt I know I would've been tossed around inside the cabin, or I would have had to tense up more to maintain my position in the seat. Either would have resulted in more severe injuries. These are relatively uncommon events. You cannot control the driver of your vehicle screwing up and hitting someone. And as a driver you cannot prevent others from hitting you in every case. Seatbelts may be uncomfortable (though after 35+ years I don't notice anymore), but 20 minutes or a few hours of discomfort are worth it to prevent life changing or life ending injuries.
- derekp7 9y agoI've had that happen to me a few times (no collisions, fortunately, but close calls) where a driver makes a u-turn from the right lane. What on earth possesses someone to make that decision? The best I can figure is that they need the width of the entire road to do the u-turn, and they don't check the lane properly.
- Zigurd 9y agoI can tell you firsthand that seatbelts prevent injury. I was recently in a wreck where the driver overcooked a turn in the wet on the off-ramp from the Mass Pike to 128 We hit the guard rail on the inside of the turn once or twice, and the concrete barrier on the outside of the turn twice, including head-on at the end of our spin-out. Either the driver or I or some object hurled forward between the seats folded my phone in half, which was sitting in a narrow pocket in the center console. I sprained a finger on the door handle. I would surely have hit my head more than once on the windshield and side glass had I not been belted in. Once out of the car we could tell it was quite a wreck: the engine was pushed in and the whole front end crumpled. The front wheels were destroyed. Both sides of the back were rounded off. The doors opened with some difficulty. The smell of airbag propellant makes me think it must be similar to model rocket propellant.
- natecavanaugh 9y agoI missed seeing the mentioned article, but I wonder if this is an inevitable result of the natural fallacy that has taken over Western culture. Let's all get back to the Earth and live the way many of our ancestors did: dying off in our youth or dealing with either preventable and crippling diseases or even just wandering around with weird diseases that just make life far less enjoyable. On the one hand, if we were to take this approach, it would speed up natural selection for us and whatever germs develop to kill us. But for chemicals and things we do for purification of water supplies, we can at least control the chemicals and how often we use them, and I have yet heard of a any really serious bugs that can survive chlorine or just pure heat. I guess I just can't grok the way people claim to wish to live in the past, but what they're really describing often is similar to how we would describe living in a third world. Unless you really believe our feces is cleaner than most, that unfiltered water your drinking could very well contain the feces of someone ignorant enough (or a pranking trollish person) to drop a deuce into the local stream. And I have a great appreciation for just how blunder headed we can be, so it wouldn't shock me if and when that'd happen. And ultimately, what's the real goal of the original article? Is it to make sure people increase their risk? Or to provide some confirmation bias to those who will do it either way?
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago> I have yet heard of a any really serious bugs that can survive chlorine or just pure heat. prions. not sure if you consider them "bugs" though.
- kleer001 9y agoOne could think of them as edge cases in the "program" of protein folding and therefore a 'bug' of sorts.
- Retric 9y agoHeat will destroy prions, but you need far higher temperatures for longer periods than normal.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
- ecpottinger 9y agoMy cabin was on a very clean lake, but one year my friend canoed to the far end of the lake to find a dead deer in the water. The deer was not there the year before but anyone drink the water that year better treat the water first.
- djrogers 9y agoOne dead deer in a large body of water is not enough to worry about - imagine the biomass of dead fish in the lake by way of comparison...
- darkerside 9y agoI have to imagine that deer would be picked clean inside of a month max
- toomanybeersies 9y agoIn my experience, it all depends on location. I know people who have been drinking unfiltered stream water for 20 years with no ill effects. The key is to make sure that the water doesn't pass through any human inhabited areas.
- w8rbt 9y agoThere may not be humans or cattle around, but all sorts of wild animals defecate, urinate, procreate, etc. in water. Treat the water (boil, filter, pills, etc.) before using it and you'll be OK.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoIt's a case of balancing risk I guess. If I'm in an area where there aren't poison drops and where there is no human interference, I'll take the risk. Outdoor activities are inherently risky.
- yathern 9y agoJust because there is an inherent level of risk involved in an activity doesn't imply you shouldn't mitigate some risk if you can. Driving is inherently risky - but I still wear a seatbelt.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI've come close enough to dying in the outdoors in other ways that I'm not concerned about getting the small chance of getting the shits from drinking from a stream that I'm 99.9% sure is safe.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- survivorship 9y ago> I know people who... First of all, anecdata doesn’t count. > ...have been drinking unfiltered stream water for 20 years with no ill effects. Yes, typically people who suffer ill effects are much too dead to tell you about them.
- ars 9y ago> ..... caught chronic giardiasis ..... weightloss.... Wait, so you're telling me I can loose weight by drinking unfiltered water?
- freeone3000 9y agoYep! All your body weight will simply leave through your anus!
- toomanybeersies 9y agoYou can also lose weight by becoming addicted to drugs. It's generally considered that the harms outweigh the benefits though, like giardiasis.
- p3llin0r3 9y agoA few months ago I spent a week hiking through the Cordillera Blanca mountain range with 6 other people. We ALL got diarrhea at some point, it was absolutely brutal. I'm going to continue filtering my water.
- tannhaeuser 9y agoNot to mention the alarming levels of antibiotics in animal feed such that you get in contact with resistant bacteria by merely swimming in lakes. In fact, even Colistin and Colistin-resistant mutants were recently found (Colistin being put on the RESERVE level by WHO, to be used for humans only, and as last resort).
- hammock 9y agoAnecdote, we drank unfiltered water from a melt pool on a glacier and were fine. Glacial melt pools are probably some of the only places on earth anymore where you can do that. Two days later, only 2000 feet below the glacier, a girl with us drank unfiltered water from a river and got sick
- BurningFrog 9y agoYeah, melting snow is basically pure rainwater.
- hammock 9y agoActually melting snow via solar radiation on tarps, we still always boiled it before consuming. I'm strictly talking about glacier water that is pretty much untouched
- jcoffland 9y agoHave you ever seen that pink bacteria that grows on snow at elevation? Snow melt is likely safe but definitely not bacteria free.
- scrumbledober 9y agoi'm curious if that's in any way related to the pink bacteria that grows in showers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jcoffland 9y agohttps://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/wonderful-things-dont-eat-the-pink-snow/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/wonderful...
- jschwartzi 9y agoI wouldn't categorically rule meltwater as safe. People can and do dump garbage and human waste into glacier crevasses. What gifts you leave for the glacier, the glacier eventually returns.
- oblib 9y agoI still drink out of some of our creeks and springs in our NF areas when backpacking and hiking in the Ozarks. You have to know the terrain and what's on and around it to do that though. I've never gotten sick from that here. I did the same back in the `70-80s in the Sequoia NF. I was taught by old timers there when I was a kid to take your water where it was running clear over rock and sand, not from still pools, and take a good look upstream and around you for carcasses or other contaminants. I've still never seen a carcass near where I decided to take a drink, but I always look.
- jdminhbg 9y agoI don't drink unfiltered water, but I am a little skeptical of all the stories about unfiltered water making people sick: What percentage of them actually got sick from improper personal hygiene? How many tainted water cases are actually self-inflicted E. coli cases?
- pfarnsworth 9y agoDoes this have anything to do with that "raw water" nonsense from 2 weeks ago? The idea that you wouldn't want to clean your water is absolutely insane to me.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoWhat gets to me with the "raw water" thing is that people are willing to pay so much money for untreated water, literally thousands of times what it would cost public water, and there's millions of people all over the world who are suffering and dying because all they can afford to drink is "raw water". There's something so perverse, so fucked up, about the elitism of the people drinking this (literally) shitty water.
- dannylandau 9y agoI go hiking in Conundrum in Aspen, and never filter water once I'm above a certain elevation. As long as there are no beaver dams above, I feel safe to do so.
- bdhess 9y agoHopefully above the hot spring that everyone bathes in? Still that trail has way too much human traffic for me to consider drinking unfiltered.
- rusbus 9y agoThe thing I found hilarious: "You'd need to drink more than 7 liters of it to get sick" That is a completely reasonable amount of water to drink on a camping trip...
- mod 9y agoI drink more than 2 liters per day as a remote tech worker, so I can definitely agree here.
- akvadrako 9y agoIt said in one sitting.
- hvidgaard 9y agoMy issue with this, is not so much the number, but if I can get sick from 7L, I can get sick from a single sip as well, it's just not very probable.
- diebir 9y agoNot necessarily "filtration" but rather "treatment". There are a number of various chemical treatments that can be used. For clear water I use MSR water treatment tablets (chlorine dioxide?), for seriously muddy and dirty water I rely on my partner's filter. We walked over 500 miles of desert in Utah and Arizona, the water tends to be very hard to come by and what's available is often contaminated by cattle, etc. Water treatment is a must.
- deadghost 9y agoI caught giardia and who knows what else while I was in India for a year. I had diarrhea 10+ times a day for over a month, vomited a few times, bloated and lactose intolerant for over a year, and two years on I'm still not feeling 100% even after taking over 100 pills to nuke everything. You might be lucky and not be too affected by this stuff but it's not something to mess around with.
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoSo, it seems to me that Slate's contrariness might be an opening to a big lawsuit if someone acts on it and gets a debillitating infection.
- Mc_Big_G 9y agoThe original article suggesting to never filter water is just plain idiotic. Decisions about safety can come down to a risk vs. reward analysis. Risk: Horrible diarrhea for possibly months (worse consequences for children) Reward: Save 5 minutes of time and $1-$30 not filtering water and you get to act superior to people who filter Seriously? Not filtering is just stupid.