There are times that you need to disinfect water, like when you are travelling, camping or hiking, even when you have to use well water or maybe there is boil advisory in place. Disinfecting water is easy and there are basic methods you can use for making your water safe again. Here we will be talking about the three simple and most common methods.
Before we jump into the methods we would like to mention that there are methods like filtering that will help to separate the germs from the water but if you don’t have a filter or a UV light around the house, don’t worry you can still disinfect your drinking water effectively.
Boiling
Boiling is one of the most effective ways to kill germs in water, simply boil water for 1 minute (if you live in a higher altitude, above 1,000 meters (5,000 feet), boil water for 3 minutes), let it cool down and you will be safer!
If you can’t boil water, use the hot water. hot water is safer especially if the water stayed in the tank for a while. Don’t forget that pasteurization uses a heat between 60°C-70°C (140°F-158°F).
Using Bleach
Besides commercial tablets for water disinfection, you can simply use household bleach to disinfect water. Use unscented bleach that has nothing else inside (no colour enhancer, detergent or etc.) just add 2 drops to a litter of clear water (4 drops to cloudy water). For the people with the imperial system, just add 8 drops of 6% bleach, or 6 drops of 8.25% bleach, to each gallon of water if the water is clear, and if the water is not clear just double these drops. Then stir and wait for 30 minutes before using water.
Sunlight
When the water is clear using a glass bottle or a jar and the sunlight can disinfect the water during an emergency. All you need to do is just pour water in the bottle and use a reflective surface like a mirror under it, let it sunbath for 6 hours and voila! Water is drinkable again. Note that this method will only works if the water is not cloudy so that germs can’t hide in the shade! As a rule of thumb, if you can’t read a newspaper headline through the bottle then you will need to let this sunbathing continue for at least 2 days!
Please share with us your favourite method and also please check our weblog for more.
for more info please read:
1-World Health Organization. Boil water. Technical Brief. WHO. available here.
2-Bielefeldt AR. Appropriate and sustainable water disinfection methods for developing communities. In:
3-Backer H. Field water disinfection. In: Auerbach PS, editor. Wilderness Medicine. 6th ed. Philadelphia: Mosby Elsevier; 2012. pp. 1324–59.