I’m fed up with traditional water filters.
Are any of the too-good-to-be-true innovations worth trying?
If so, leave a comment below this post.
MSR Miox Water Purifier with Batteries – Amazon
iStraw – official website
SteriPEN products – official website
(via Darren Barefoot)
besthike.com 
We interviewed backcountry water quality expert Dr. Robert Derlet in the WildeBeat edition #98, What’s in Sierra Water: http://www.wildebeat.net/index.cgi/2007/08/09#E098
One of his points was that there is no one-kind-works-everywhere water treatment device or chemical.
Here’s a bit of that interview:
STEVE: Of the pathogens you know that seem to be the most common, the ones you’ve actually found present, do you feel that the commercially available treatments would be effective on them?
DR. DERLET: The commercially available treatments area widely variable in what they can do. Even when you use halogens, many of the bacteria – E.coli- are highly sensitive. Polio virus, which hasn’t been found in the Sierra in a long time, is exquisitely sensitive. When you move into areas such as the protozoa, for example giardia or cryptosporidia, they’re much more resistant to halogen treatments, and in fact, cryptosporidium is almost entirely resistant. The way around that, these are larger organisms, protozoa, and can be more easily filtered out. And so I think most filters available commercially are effective against the protozoa. One would have to read the fine print to determine how effective against the different sized bacteria they are.
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I’ll be doing one or more follow-up shows on the subject of water quality and treatment. It’s all a matter of coordinating time with the experts to get them recorded.