ELI5. After a hurricane if everyone had a “life straw” could they drink the ground water?
In: Biology
perhaps, but the inability to drink local water is not a significant cause of death in the US following a hurricane
depends on the product, they seem to sell some filtration aparatus that they assert can filter out pretty much everything.
However, it depends on the cause of the flooding, as what it cannot do is desalination – make drinking water from seawater. Much of the flooding in a Hurricane is tidal surge and not freshwater.
You also have to consider water is not just for drinking. The most effective filter they sell (in terms of number of contaminants removed) is a jug that does absolutely 300ml per use. That’s not going to cover cooking and cleaning for a family.
There are reverse osmosis filters that can remove chemicals. The problem is that they are expensive and require power. Lots of people have them setup on faucets or whole house, but that doesn’t help when power is out.
I couldn’t find any that were portable and meant for disasters. My guess is that cheaper to store water at home or distribute water. Would also need to distribute solar panels and batteries. It might make sense if water is out for long time and have to use stream.
Let’s put it this way. The more you can do to sanitize your water, the less likely you are to get sick from it.
The lifestraw is a filtration device, and is going to be useless right quick if you’re trying to pull muddy or oil laden water through it. So you’d want to first collect your water in a clean container and give it a day or so to sit. And pour off the top and bottom layers that collect, so you get as much clean water as possible.
Then, if it’s clean enough, you could filter it. Or you could use something like chlor-floc, a military water sanitization product that contains a deflocculating agent. This will cause dirt and other particles to fall out of suspension and to the bottom of the container.
Then maybe you want to filter it.
And if you wanted to be extra sure you could also treat it with chlorine or iodine or potassium permanganate or something similar. But better and more accessible is just to boil it. You don’t need to boil it for a certain amount of time; just bring it to a boil and that ensures it’s been at a high enough temperature to kill anything in there that might make you sick.
You want your water clear, and you want your water dead.
Oh- and if you’re dealing with saltwater, you’re in a tough spot indeed. In that case you’re going to need a desalinating device which are either extremely expensive and complicated, or it means distilling the water, which is going to take equipment, time, and fuel.
Absolutely not.
Flood water is tainted by everything it encounters: not only pathogens, but contaminants as well. Petrol, diesel fuel, industrial solvents, lubricants, the list goes on and on and on. No filter is going to remove those. The only way to drink flood water without also drinking acetone, battery acid, kerosene, and lithium grease is to distill it.
No, because floodwater is a mix of a lot of things that lifestraw isn’t designed to filter out (saltwater, gasoline, oil, etc)
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