Does Boiling Always Make Water Safe To Drink?

Description

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Can boiling always be relied upon to make water safe to drink? In this video I run through the considerations for dealing with pathogenic organisms and other water pollutants. In this context I look at the effectiveness and reliability of boiling in producing potable water in back country and wilderness areas. This video will be of value to hikers, campers, back country and wilderness travellers and anyone visiting areas where the water may be contaminated (pretty much everywhere there are people) or the cleanliness of the water may be uncertain.

This video forms part of a series of 20 FREE videos I've made to help people with wilderness bushcraft, survival skills and general outdoor life.

To get the other free videos right now, please visit http://paulkirtley.co.uk/free-tips-and-advice/

Tags: Boiling,Water,Safe,Safety,Sterilisation,Purification,Drink,Drinking,drinking water,backcountry,back country,wilderness,outdoors,bushcraft,survival,camping,pathogens,Bacteria (Organism Classification),Virus (Organism Classification),Protozoa (Organism Classification),heat,United States Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (Biosafety Facility),Pathogen (Taxonomy Subject),Giardia (Organism Classification),Cryptosporidium (Organism Classification)

Video Transcription

hi there i'm paul kelly founder of the award-winning frontier bushcraft and author of poor kelly's blog the leading source of wilderness bushcraft advice and information on the net now one of the things people ask me about a lot is water purification and in particular people ask me how long do they need to boil their water for is boiling enough to make their water safe to drink there's lots of pathogenic organisms out there there's Cryptosporidium there's Giardia there's hepatitis a there's loads of bacteria there's all this stuff in the water that can make you ill or you know even kill you in extremists so is boiling enough and if so how long you need to boil for well that's what I'm going to share with you in this video and you'll go away with a very clear understanding of what you need to do this stream here may seem like an unlikely source of drinking water it actually looks quite clear though but it's small it's muddy bottom there's lots of insects in it lots of little shrimp swimming around in it and there's dragonflies and all sorts of things and also there are lots of deer in this area and just over here there are deer prints where the deer have clearly walked through the the stream so we can safely assume that this is not safe to drink but how do we make it safe and the key question is is boiling enough to make this safe well provided the waters visibly clean and doesn't have lots of turbidity in it we don't need to filter any of that particulate matter out and we can simply then just boil the water and that will kill all the pathogenic organisms in there including things like Giardia and Cryptosporidium any waterborne viruses such as hepatitis A as well will be killed by that hepatitis A is one of the viruses which is considered more heat resistant than some and anything like ecoli Legionnaires disease cholera all those nasties are going to be killed by heat the Center for Disease Control in the States they recommend one minute of rolling boil and if you don't know what rolling boil is in the context of your own home a good example is what your kettle does if you use an automatic electric kettle what your kettle does just before it switches itself off when it's bubbling around vigorous boil

that's a rolling boil and that's what you're looking for most pathogenic organisms will be killed a lower temperature than that but obviously you can't visibly tell the temperature particularly if you're camping just by looking at it so if you bring it to a rolling boil and let it bubble away for a minute that conforms with what's considered to be best practice now if you're working at a higher elevation if you're working at altitude then it can be worth boiling your water for longer because water boils at a lower temperature as the air pressure drops as you go up in altitude that will mean that water will boil at the temperature below 100 degrees Celsius and therefore again sensitive Center for the Disease Control and they recommend around 3 minutes of rolling boil above 2,000 meters or

two kilometers so that's best practice bringing water to a rolling boil let it bubble away for a minute at sea level a little bit more when you're higher up and that will kill all the pathogenic organisms which you're going to cause you any sort of trouble whatsoever so there you have it it really is very simple long as you bring your water to a rolling boil you're going to have all the clean drinking water that you need all this is perfectly drinkable as long as you bring it to a nice rolling boil the CDC recommend one minute at sea level as best practice and if you're over 2,000 meters in elevation then three minutes just to be sure and that's all you need to do it really is very simple so I hope you find that useful if you like this video please go over to my blog where you're going to get 20 more free videos like this one full of lots of useful tips and tricks on bushcraft survival skills and things that will enhance your outdoor life and that's over at Paul Kirtley cote UK and of course if you have friends that would find this video useful please share it with them too thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next video you