How to Save Money When Buying Chlorine Dioxide Water Purification Tablets

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Although I'm convinced that the need for water treatment in the Sierra is 90% urban folk tale, I still treat my water because there's no good reason not to. I use ClO2 tablets these days instead of iodine, since they provide some protection against cryptosporidium. They are somewhat expensive, however (about 43 cents/liter), and I'm interested in saving a little money by conserving them.

My usual style has been to carry two half-liter water bottles, and let the treatment work on one while drinking from the other. This means using half a tablet at a time. They tend to break apart cleanly into halves. However, I recently came across info on the web saying that they lose their effectiveness quickly when exposed to air. Oops! So probably it's been nothing more than a placebo for half of my water.

Does anyone know of a good technique for preserving a half tablet for later use? Seems like maybe I could pop the extra half tab into a spare glass jar of the type used for iodine tabs…? I would think that it would be OK to have a few seconds' exposure to open air, plus indefinite exposure to the small amount of air trapped inside the jar.

-Ben

Store the remaining half in a tiny ziploc type bag.

One question though: the water up in the Sierras can be pretty cold. Treatment time for ClO2 ranges from 30 minutes (room temp) all the way to 4 hours (water near freezing). With just 2 16oz. bottles, makes me wonder if you are given the tablets enough treatment time??

Yeah, I'm sure sometimes, you can drink the water without any treatment, but I am also thinking that if the cold water source that day happens to contain protozoa cysts (crypto, giardia, etc.) — popping in a tablet for an hour or two may be just a false sense of security??

Would it make more sense to go to 1 liter bottles? Treat 1 liter with one tab? Or you could go with chlorine in liquid form, MSR sweetwater is a fancy form of 3% bleach.

I don't like handling those tablets, they're kind of nasty. The expiration date on them should be heeded, the ones i have that are at the date have eaten their way through the packaging and are crumbly. I use them now to disinfect my dishwashing tub…

If there are plenty of water sources, OP is unlikely to want to double his water weight.

Here's another idea to save a bundle, increase safety — at very little weight penalty:

1. Buy whatever size supermarket water bottles with the standard .28mm (narrow mouth) opening.

2. Buy an Aquamira Frontier Pro filter ($19, 2oz. wt.) and screw it directly onto the water bottle.

3. Treat water with household chlorine bleach (3 drops per 16oz (half liter)) — wait 30 minutes to kill viruses and bacteria. The cost of chlorine drops is near zero!

4. Drink water through the filter's built-in bite valve. The filter will block out the much bigger and harder to kill protozoa cysts — as well as clarifying water (removing any particulates) and improving water taste (removing all traces of chlorine taste).

A lot cheaper. A lot quicker — 30-min. wait time regardless of water temp. Clear and great tasting water. And safer too.

Hi, all –

Thanks for the suggestions!

I don't want to use one-liter bottles because that doubles my weight of water carried. To give chemical treatment long enough to work, I need to drink from one bottle while waiting for the treatment to work on the other.

Benjamin Tang's method sounds smart. Rather than using the bleach method, I'd probably use iodine tablets, which are very cheap (16 cents/liter) and probably more convenient. I'd never heard of the filters that fit on the mouth of the bottle. Personally I've never been able to taste halogen treatments, but that's just me. I believe that people who can taste halogen treatments usually can't taste ClO2.

I've never used a filter before. Are there consumables that need to be replaced? Does it need cleaning?

Since the risk of getting sick from contaminated backcountry water is about the same as the risk of shark bite, I'm mainly focused on cost and convenience. ClO2 versus halogen+filter seems like a tossup in terms of convenience. Re cost, I guess halogen+filter would be a small initial cost that would eventually pay for itself in terms of recurring costs.

-Ben

"Rather than using the bleach method, I'd probably use iodine tablets, which are very cheap (16 cents/liter) and probably more convenient."

To me the iodine tablets are messy, more complicated (if you use the extra stuff that supposedly takes the iodine taste away) and still tastes and looks nasty. I love the simplicity of chlorine dioxide tablets, since I use 1L bottles.

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"I'd never heard of the filters that fit on the mouth of the bottle."

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/aquamira_frontier_pro_filter.html

cool little gadget but most people say it's too hard to suck through.

Ben:

You can get a whole gallon of bleach at your local "99-Cent" store — and at 4-6 drops per liter, that will last "practically forever". More likely, you already have a bottle sitting in your laundry room.

Chlorine also doesn't stain like iodine. Maybe I am biased, but I really agree with Evan. I can't ever drink iodine without the taste neutralizer — which is another step and a bit more cost.

As for using the FP bite valve and sucking water through — yeah, it requires more effort than drinking straight from a bottle — but not all that much. I've used it on my summit to Mt. Whitney without problems.

I had an interesting conversation — or rather, lack of a conversation — with Katadyn's tech support this morning. The person on the claimed that they were so tightly regulated by the EPA that they couldn't even talk to me about breaking a tablet in half and using the halves to treat two half-liter bottles *simultaneously*. When I asked her how quickly the tablets would lose their effectiveness in air, she told me that the tablets were for treating water, not air. The conversation went downhill from there.

But anyway, the amount of oxygen in my empty iodine vial is only about 1 mg, and the active ingredient in half a Micropur tablet is 15 mg. Therefore it seems like even if the O2 in the vial completely reacted with the tablet, it would be unlikely to have its effectiveness reduced by any significant amount.

Definitely a YMMV on this one, Ben, but that day about 3 years ago when it occurred to me just how much more I was paying for these tablets — versus how utterly cheap and easy and effective the combo method was (FP + chlorine) — I've never purchased another ClO2 tablet…

In a twisted way, it's good that Aquamira keeps mum on things that they are not legally allow to say. In many other parts of the world, folks are still peddling snake oil that will cure anything and everything…

Ike wrote: "Why buy expensive chemicals when bleach works the same?"
Bleach won't get rid of Crypto.

Although I'm the one who started this thread, I'll be the first to admit that the whole issue is almost silly. If you're hiking in the Sierra, water treatment is basically unnecessary. I only do it because it's relatively cheap and easy. ClO2 is not really a major item in my budget. I just don't see any reason to waste money gratuitously.

Anyone, on any budget, who hikes in the Sierra, should be spending 10 times more effort worrying about potty hygiene than about treating their water.

There are a few folks here that advocate using bleach for water purification. There is conflicting information out there about how effective bleach is in combating giardia and Cryptosporidium. Here is a link to the EPA's website on Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water. If you are looking at using bleach I would read the info on this site. Additionally a couple of other facts on bleach.
1) Heat will degrade bleach.
2) Bleach isn't as effective in colder water.
3) UV will degrade bleach so I would not store in a clear bottle on the outside of your pack.
4) Age will reduce the hypoclorite. So don't expect three year old bleach to be as effective as freshly produced product.
5) If the water is "dirty" the killing effect of bleach will be reduced.

As for full disclosure, I work for a company that makes bleach so I would love it if everyone started carrying a big bottle of bleach but there are limitations that folks should know.

http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw000/faq/emerg.html

Greg:

Thanks for the full disclosure. I believe most of us know that bleach — in a concentrate that we can tolerate drinking — isn't real effective against certain protozoa cysts. But then neither is iodine. As for chlorine dioxide — I doubt many of us really wait a couple of hours when treating/drinking during the day while on the trail.

Bleach isn't the perfect solution, but then, neither is any other single solution "perfect".

I read somewhere that 4-6 drops of bleach will kill viruses and bacteria after 30 minutes — even in very cold water. Your view?

"Dig hole, do business, clean with hand and water, then sanitize with a few drops of Purell. Leave the TP at home. Less weight, no mess, nothing to pack in or out. :)"

There's a reason that the Spanish term is "papel higiénico."

Do you understand that the risk you're choosing to take is a risk to your hiking partners' health, not to your own? Your body tolerates your own gut flora. Theirs doesn't.

Hand-to-mouth contamination is the cause of nearly all cases of backpacker's diarrhea, and backpacker's diarrhea is extremely common (risk of about 10-20% on short trips, >50% on through hikes). I wouldn't hike with anyone who refused to use toilet paper.