Forum Index > Trail Talk > Is Water Filtration Really Necessary?
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Malachai Constant
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Malachai Constant
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PostSun Feb 04, 2018 8:30 pm 
wink.gif

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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nordique
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PostSun Feb 04, 2018 9:50 pm 
When I moved to Seattle in 1974, I ended up with a lot of hiking and back country/telemark skiing friends. Some of them were very easy-going about drinking from local streams while others of us brought our own water from home. The stream-drinkers soon ended up sick, all the time, and were unable to get well for the rest of their lives. On my hikes, I've only drunk water from home or filtered and have had zero problems--from water problems, at least!

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Gregory
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 6:14 am 
Fifty years old with forty years drinking Untreated/filtered water in the Olympics never got sick to my knowledge.I can not remember the last time I got sick of any kind, cold, flu anything. I do carry a Sawyer mini these days because of the number of people Enjoying the mountains.I remember doing the press expedition trail as a scout and hardly seeing anybody.Now It is hard to go fifteen minutes without saying hi.Hell it's not uncommon to hike up on people peeing on the trail.The Olympics offer an abundance of ground filtered water though.

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kbatku
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 7:46 am 
Yes they did. I also know a Native American woman who came down with "Beaver Fever" after drinking water at her guard station - not sure what that was but her co-workers were familiar enough with the symptoms to peg the source of the illness.

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Gregory
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 8:28 am 
The reason I add the "I know of" is that Usually I would have been at home for days maybe weeks before the symptoms would surface.Maybe I got sick and did not put two and two together.If I have picked up the bugs it has never been bad for me. I do have a friend that almost died from dehydration from the symptoms and excessive amounts of vodka.He lives on the Nisqually River and guided for Salmon steelhead out of a drift boat for a living.An alcoholic that refused to go to the doctor until he was almost dead.It is real where ever it comes from for sure.

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Foist
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 11:35 am 
The political trolling aside, I don't doubt the general conclusions of the article. But as Big Steve said, places where a lot of people camp or where there is grazing heighten the risk, plus you never know where there might be a dead animal nearby. I found a dead goat right in the inlet of Jade Lake only *after* I had camped there for two nights (although I had taken water from another stream flowing toward the lake higher up the slope). But the clincher is that taking a water pump has another benefit -- it makes it easier to get water out of very small streams, and without getting a lot of dirt into your bottle. Ultimately that is the reason I end up going for the pump (and the reason I opt for that over other solutions like the laser pen and tablets). If giardia were the *only* concern it would be a tougher call.

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whitebark
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 12:35 pm 
My two buddies got badly sick (non giardia dysentery) from drinking out of Boulder Creek, near White River. It was not a good idea to drink directly out of a major stream, but the weather was so hot and the water looked so clear! So the bugs are out there! I did not get sick, possibly because I treated my water with iodine.

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joker
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 1:00 pm 
This slate article has some problems, but there's a more comprehensive and peer-reviewed "literature review" style article like this one that includes more extensive references and more careful statements of conclusions and uncertainties (easily found via a search with "Google Scholar" which is a great way to search scientific literature), all without the political fluff of the Slate article. But the more careful piece also notes that a lot more research would be needed to really pin down the statistical risks of contracting giardia from various backcountry sources. My conclusion from reading it is that they're likely low for the most part but are non-zero and the number of other humans recreating near you have an impact on your chances, as do some other aspects of the water source. Kind of common sense but always nice to see some study bear "common sense" out... Nonetheless, it's clear, from many such threads here as well as a long thread this latest article incented over on the WH&C FB group, that there are strongly held opinions on the topic and nearly everyone knows for sure what everyone else should be doing. For my part, I'll keep bringing Purell along for "camp hygeine" (and will liberally share with party members) but I'll also continue bringing the rather light "squeeze" style kit because it's very cheap insurance and I really don't mind spending some time spacing out on the beauty around me as I squeeze off yet another litre of water. But I'm cool with whatever you want to do with your own water, as long as you don't share your fecal products with me!!

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joker
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 1:20 pm 
On a semi-related note, I have a good hydrogeologist friend who works for the WA state in a capacity that's given her some insight into quality levels of various piped water supplies around the state. She's noted that state parks tend to have water systems that are in the sweet spot of being small enough and run by "water system amateurs" (i.e. park staff that have many other jobs to do as well) that it's not rare to find things like e. coli in them. They do periodic testing but as I found out in a state park in OR that put up a sign warning of e. coli in the water (advising boiling of said water), they don't test super often. This OR state park tests monthly - the ranger I talked with, after I'd been drinking the water for two days and had come down with severe stomach cramps in the wee hours just before discovering the signs had been put up early that morning, told me their schedule and in an intriguing use of "logic" assured me that I should be OK because they hadn't gotten the positive test result just that morning (despite not having tested for the entire month before) and all the water I'd drunk had been on prior days uhh.gif . I had some good GI fun for a few months after that, and the GI doc I went to said that my symptoms were pretty classic for e. coli (fortunately this sort of e. coli tends not to be nearly as severe as the stuff that's infected some burgers at fast food chains etc.). (stool test ruled out some other possible culprits but IIRC it wasn't worth trying to get a whole lot more definitive on diagnosis given the tapering of my symptoms and the rather limited treatment options) Anyway, moral of the story is that if you're careful enough to filter from places like little high country creeks, you might also consider not drinking unfiltered water from state parks that aren't getting their water from municipal water supplies.

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treeswarper
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 5:36 pm 
State Park water usually tastes like chlorine to me, so that seems odd. It might be that I'm used to drinking water straight from a well.

What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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cartman
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PostMon Feb 05, 2018 7:20 pm 
I contracted likely giardiasis two years ago after drinking unfiltered water coming out the Foggy Dew Trail in the Chelan Sawtooth area, though it's also possible I contracted it by consuming food handled by my partner, who had no symptoms during or after the trip (which is not uncommon in chronically infected individuals). I did not get a stool test. However, a regimen of metronidazole (Flagyl) was very effective and halted all symptoms in under two days. As Flagyl is not solely effective against any waterborne intestinal parasite endemic to the mountains of Washington that I know of--including cryptosporidium, amoebic parasites, hookworm, or viruses--but is very effective in treating giardiasis, it is very likely the parasite was giardia. In my case, since giardia infection was very symptomatic and temporarily debilitating, I now filter all my water. I usually had done so anyway, but now I do without exception. Lightweight filters make this even more convenient. Selective filtering, such as filtering "down low" is no guarantee of avoiding an intestinal infection, as deer and other carriers of giardia and other intestinal parasites any place the specific parasite is endemic could defecate anywhere and potentially contaminate any water source. I've seen free-ranging cows--known vectors of giardia--at 7000' in the eastern Cascades! Of course, since human-human transmission may be a major cause, avoiding food/water from your partners would also be necessary to prevent infection. If you prefer not to filter consider the serious long-term complications of giardia infection of up to 1/3 of infected individuals in this article (scroll down to Long Term Consequeces of Giardiasis).
RumiDude wrote:
Each individual is different than the next person. We differ genetically. We also differ in how the environment has shaped our body functions. This means how one person's body reacts to a pathogen may be very different than another person's reaction to the same. It also means that how your body used to react to these pathogens may have changed. In the case of water borne pathogens some individuals seem to be virtually impervious while others are quite susceptible, and every possible variation in between. This is especially true in regards to giardia. In other words, just because the guy next to you has never filtered and never got sick doesn't mean you will have the same result. Some people can contract giardia by ingesting as few as a dozen. Some people are infected with giardia yet remain asymptomatic. Some people never seem to contract the disease despite exposure to many. Some people only get mildly sick, hardly noticing the disease while others can have months long battles with it.
All true. Giardia infection can be caused by ingesting as few as ten cysts. Overall health status and if the person is immunocompromised can also be significant factors in establishing an infection. Even the composition of the gut microbiome may play a role in pathogenicity. Interesting article on the treatment of giardia with different drugs here.

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Jack's Mom
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PostTue Feb 06, 2018 5:13 am 
Silly me, I've been drinking the water for years without treating it and I've never had a problem. Of course, I'm pretty careful as to where, I get the water....

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Sculpin
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PostTue Feb 06, 2018 8:33 am 
HitTheTrail wrote:
While hiking up in the Lucerne/Holden area a few years ago I happened to have a conversation with a couple of biologists who where working on the Holden Mine Remediation project and ask them if it was a problem to drink water out of Railroad Creek (flowing out of the Holden mine area). They said it is only a problem if you are an invertebrate.
The heavy metals in Railroad Creek are toxic to all forms of life. It is a heavily contaminated stream. That being said, there is no issue drinking from it. How can both be true? We are all exposed to heavy metals throughout our lifetime, known as "background exposure." If you lived next to Railroad Creek and got all your water there, your life expectancy would plummet and you would most likely die too young from something horrible like cancer or renal failure. There is a creek up by Monte Cristo with similar heavy metal concentration. But if you fill your water bottles in one of these creeks on a hike one day, the amount simply disappears into your background exposure. Filters for waterborne fauna do not remove heavy metals. I think what the biologists were telling HTT was accurate if you interpret it as "it is safe for you but not the invertebrates that live in it." Edit: Oops, I left out one thing. The big problem with heavy metals is that once they enter your bloodstream, your body has no good way to excrete them. This means that they build up in your tissue throughout your life. Lifetime exposure is the primary means of determining risk. This can be contrasted with toxins such as cyanide or carbon monoxide. If acute cyanide exposure does not kill you outright, you will more or less make a full recovery and your life expectancy does not change because the cyanide will be removed by your body.

Between every two pines is a doorway to the new world. - John Muir
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DigitalJanitor
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PostTue Feb 06, 2018 12:03 pm 
I will second Sculpin's analysis based on my limited remaining memory of studying heavy metal contamination in college. IIRC these are big molecules that can displace other naturally occurring smaller atoms (nitrogen or sulfur or ? someone help me here) in, say, protein strings. The bonds parking it there are very strong hence it's stuck there, and because it's bigger than the original atom the protein is structurally deformed. Misshapen proteins = all kinds of problems... DNA, enzyme processes, cell walls, etc all don't work right if they're not shaped properly.

~Mom jeans on wheels
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AlpineRose
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PostTue Feb 06, 2018 1:29 pm 
Jack's Mom wrote:
I've been drinking the water for years without treating it and I've never had a problem.
One more time. That actually proves nothing, since most people who have giardia are asymptomatic carriers. That means they are carrying it, but do not get sick from it. Ditto for all those other OPs and the folks they know (like that 70 year old MD) who have been drinking untreated backcountry water for years. Asymptomatic. Perhaps until something comes along to compromise your immune system. Then perhaps you will get sick, and "have" giardia with no idea where it came from.

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