Is it necessary to filter water?

[kneighbour]

This is probably a silly question, but I was wondering if it really is necessary to filter water in the bush? The water in mountain streams looks crystal clear - and many bottled water sellers extol the virtues of mountain water.

I can see the need (perhaps) if you are on the lowlands, and downstream of a dairy farm, but up in the mountains surely nothing is getting into the water to pollute it? I drank River Murray water for years as where I lived growing up was not on town water.

I am one of those people who think we are making our home environments too antiseptic. It is not healthy. I never drink bottled water at home, or even filtered water. Straight from the tap is just fine.

I happen to have a cheap water filter in case I come across non flowing water, of if it perhaps looks a bit murky.

[neilmny]

Bottled water doesn't come out of the ground and into the bottle.
Plenty of people get away with drinking straight from streams but if you do get hit by Giardia or some other bug out in the sticks you will be in deep poop....probably your own!
Giardia and such like is invisible to the naked eye and has nothing to do with water "colour".

[taipan821]

I have drunk from the stream, and I have filtered and boiled from the stream (Nth QLD)

both come with risks, by drinking straight from the stream you risk infection from all those nasty stuff, but not filtering/treating/boiling enough water might lead to dehydration. I'd recommend before you drink from the stream have a walk upstream, see what it flows through before drinking and if you are on your own treat/filter/boil regardless

just don't decide to carry 7 litres of water purified by reverse osmosis into the wilderness

[kneighbour]

Bottled water doesn't come out of the ground and into the bottle.
Plenty of people get away with drinking straight from streams but if you do get hit by Giardia or some other bug out in the sticks you will be in deep poop....probably your own!
Giardia and such like is invisible to the naked eye and has nothing to do with water "colour".

Obviously I know all this . I have drunk suspect and unclean water my whole 65 years, and never had a problem. I lived in Malaysia for 5 years and drank the local water (not that it is any worse there than anywhere else, I guess). I of course know that there is a risk in drinking/eating anything. I was more concerned about the amount of risk. Surely if you are drinking from a mountain stream in say, Green Mountain, Queensland, where there is nothing at all up stream, then the risk is virtually non-existent. Probably safer than drinking tap water in Brisbane.

I was perhaps also taking a bit of a dig at the current culture of only drinking expensive bottled water (which most of my family does), or even through expensive kitchen filter units (which we also do). Our environment is a bit too sterile and not healthy, I don't think.

[neilmny]

For sure, all this must be sterile life stuff is crazy although I don't personally know anyone that goes to that extreme. Your immune system has to deal with stuff to be a healthy immune system.
My message was really in the deep poop comment....you can decide if you want to chance that out in the sticks.....there is no real way of knowing the amount of risk.
I filter my water (as a young bloke I just drank straight from a stream) and these days use hand cleanser after a bog to save the water I'm carrying.
I don't use soap to wash anything in or near a stream.

[kneighbour]

I filter my water (as a young bloke I just drank straight from a stream) and these days use hand cleanser after a bog to save the water I'm carrying.
I don't use soap to wash anything in or near a stream.

I agree and do the same with the hand sanitizer and the soap. I don't wash/shave when I go car camping, so am not going to start now I am hiking/camping.

Will probably filter my water most times as well. After all, what other pressing matters do I have to attend to after setting up camp? Probably be happy to have something to do.

[walkon]

THIS is a pet peev of mine. Everyone who goes away for a weekend hiking and gets crook blames the water.
Even though they didn't wash their hands before they ate the food from takeaway shop/fuel or properly at toilet stops along the way up. How many dirty hands grabbed those door knobs/money/handles. Not mentioning the hygiene of your travelling companions.
Say they camp where there is a drop toilet. Even if they personally sanitise their own hands how many people don't. The others touch the hut doors or someone introduces you to one of these people and you shake hands....

Yet after all that the water is still blamed!!!

In the last four years I have only treated my personal water five times (twice on the AAWT, ditto Larapinta and another time in east vic) and I haven't been crook once from not treating it.

Yes I know there are limited areas where there is Giardia and the like present.

[GPSGuided]

Water purification and filtering has made a massive difference to public health in our history and currently out in third world countries. Draw your own lesson, especially when you have the options.


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[walkon]

Water purification and filtering has made a massive difference to public health in our history and currently out in third world countries. Draw your own lesson, especially when you have the options.


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Our water courses are markedly different and cleaner than from the likes of India, Africa, Asia and the like where pollution is rife

[GPSGuided]

Don't count on it. Africa and Asia are very big continents. It only take one poo from a wild animal to destroy the quality of the water and we depend on the volume of flow for its dilution effect.


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[Lindsay]

NZ and the more remote parts of Scotland are the only places where I have never treated water. Given the remoteness and the rapid water flow I never reckoned it necessary. In Australia though I almost always treat it. I have got away without it a few times but I would not make a habit out of not treating the water in Aust.

[vanNek]

I personally filter all my water on the trail & at home.

On the trail to remove the bug nasties & at home to remove all the added chemical nasties....


"No half measures......"

[Lophophaps]

With care, I don't see the need to treat or filter water. Some water is below farms , towns and campsites, and should be used with caution. Other places are fine. For example, I will not get water too close to Whites River Hut and Valentines Hut in KNP, and attempt to avoid staying in them. Go a little distance upstream and it's fine. The Murray at Cowombat Flat is a bit suss, but Pilot Creek should be okay. Being very careful about where pots and utensils are placed is another aspect, like Walkon's example above. There's no point keeping spoons off potentially dirty tables if your hands have touched a dirty door knob. I've never treated water, and filtered it just once when there was solid matter in the hollow stump. Too much cleanliness is bad, so it's a question of balance. Some years ago I attempted to find contemporaneous reports about water purity in the alps. None could be found.

[Stroller]

I'm with you OP. I think the risks are way overrated. I myself never do it in Australia. I have ridden my bike right across the top end of Australia camping alongside and drinking from running streams. Sometimes their has only been a tiny trickle. My theory is if its running its clean unless there is a sign telling you otherwise ie poisoned by a mine or something. Not all animal poop is going to make us sick. Its only if the bugs are in the water that we will be sick from it. Also the first floods of the wet season is a good time to avoid dirnking from streams. The first flow would probably be full of animal *&%$#! but once the creeks have been washed out, i don't see the risk.

Also i do not wash my hands with soap a lot of the time anymore when out camping. I don't use toilet paper and I often use the toilet practices of indians, having learnt from them when i was there. That is no more toilet paper. Just water. I used to always be assiduous with the soap but when you are travelling across the place with little water and such its hard. Of course i would never put soap in a stream. You don't need to go that far if you want to use soap anyway. I tend to keep my hands out of my mouth. With food preparation, i use cutlery so I don't think my hands get too much contact with the food between the cooking pot and my mouth.

I will use soap when i can and I try very hard to keep my body clean and my hands clean. Although i can see it does not sound like that.

I rarely get tummy upsets and when i do its always been very mild. But i haven't had this on my biking trips in Australia. I had it on a hike in Tasmania in 2003. I don't think it was the water.

I think what you should do should come down to how well you know your own body - if you are sensitive to bugs and catch every passing thing, then maybe you need to take more care than others. If you think the water you are encountering is likely to be contaminated with something then take precautions.

I will boil the water if its from a damn or shows some other problem. In india i drank from the taps and restaurants but wouldn't do it from rivers. In Australia, our rivers and creeks are generally clean.

But for those of you are convinced you are going to die of something, carry on doing what you are doing if it makes you feel secure.

I'm going to Africa in 2017. I will have to read up on the issues there and consider what I will do afresh. But as far we talking Australia, I"m not bothering. Also i believe that giardia is not as bad a disease as it has been made out to be. I have read that the risk of it is not that high.

[GPSGuided]

In Australia, our rivers and creeks are generally clean.

As you said, they are 'generally' clean. If only one can know exactly which ones are clean then we wouldn't need to even consider the issue.

[Gadgetgeek]

I guess its what you grew up with. Where I'm from every stream, pond and water course is pretty loaded with crypto, giardia, not to mention anything else that might be floating by (and that's before the cow turds fill it with e.coli.) I filter all my water. Whats the risk? its a little work, but what trouble am I in if it goes badly for me? Take Mt.Barney for example, not far from Brisbane, and a lot of people drink the water untreated. But not those who have gone looking up the river and seen the cliffs caked with human excrement. Only takes one backpacker upstream of you who picked up something two weeks, or two days before, and you could be in trouble. I think its harder to catch things from water than many think, UV and oxygen do a good job of killing stuff, but I'm not really a gambling man.

[slparker]

After having giardia in the NT I tend to filter or sterilise water when I am sourcing water at or downstream of campsites anywhere in Australia. Obviously water running from areas with no or little human toileting activity is much less risk and I drink it.

faecal bacteria have little respect for anyone's opinions on whether water is safe to drink or not.

[kneighbour]

The Mt Barney comment of "seen the cliffs caked with human excrement" is a bit startling. It has always been my understanding that you dig your cathole a long way from your camp and any water sources (100 meters or something). So am not even sure how even being down river from a known campsite should be a problem. I guess some hikers do not obey the rules?

[GPSGuided]

When there's a law, training, testing, licence and penalties, drivers in society still drink and drive, run red lights, run into other vehicles etc. How well do you think the 100m bush guideline gets followed?


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[kneighbour]

When there's a law, training, testing, licence and penalties, drivers in society still drink and drive, run red lights, run into other vehicles etc. How well do you think the 100m bush guideline gets followed?

Yeah, I guess so. I just assumed that the hiking community was a bit better than that. After all, the 'entry cost' to get into bush walking is not trivial. And I don't mean just the monetary cost, I mean the effort you need to make to get to these places is often substantial.

It is like flying - getting a pilot's licence is so hard and costly, it is unthinkable that anyone would break the rules. It is against the whole culture. But then again, I have been miles out in the bush and seen litter (empty coke cans, etc), so I guess you are right.

[GPSGuided]

We all come from the same cohort and residents of Australia. Bushwalking isn't just participated by saints.

[tom_brennan]

I used to filter water in my early days of walking, but after walking with more experienced walkers, I mostly stopped!

In Australia, I look on a map to check what’s in the catchment.

If towns or farms, then I filter or boil it. Even then, it might depend on how far away the towns or farms are. For example, I’ll drink the Colo River, even though there are farms 50km away in the Wolgan Valley (a tributary).

If the catchment is pristine, I will drink it as is. Exception here is around heavily used camp sites where I know there’s likely to have been poor toileting practices.

Overseas it’s a different story, but you need to take each country on its merits.

[Xplora]

Your guts your decision. It does not matter what any other person does or tells you to do. My partner is very sensitive to water giardia while other people are not (like me). These protozoa are carried by most native animals and where do they live and poop? Wild dogs carry tape worm. Cattle and sheep can pass liver fluke. The Cox's river and catchments have a huge pig infestation. One year this caused a problem with Sydney water as they could not treat it enough so everyone had to boil their water. Be informed then make a decision that is right for you. We only have rainwater for the house and we filter it to 0.5 micron. Why? Because we make beer and it only takes one bug to spoil a batch. That is the reason we give to people as it seems to be the one they can understand best. We have possums and they carry giardia. People from the city who visit are not used to untreated water and I do not want to be blamed for them getting sick either. We filter most water in the bush because we have no way of knowing what is upstream. That is our decision and it does not affect anyone else so we are happy with it.

[GPSGuided]

Giardia is not the only pathogenic organism encountered in waterways.

[Stroller]

I think there's a certain amount of cleaning that goes on in creeks that's why i'm not so afraid of animal droppings. I can't explain this scientifically but I've drunk from creeks all my life. In fact i grew up drinking from a mountain stream. My parents were from the city. In those days no one used filtration systems or chlorine. There were never any issues with the water for any of us. We lived on a cattle farm so cow *&%$#! might have got in the water. It never affected us. Sometimes there were huge floods. It never affected us. I'm not saying there aren't bugs out there in the places I go. I'm just saying, i don't think they are a major worry. At least not for me.

I should also note that I've had hepatitis shots and typhoid so in india and such places i'm protected from those diseases. But of course its only in recent years that i've had that protection.

I've also always preferred to drink from untreated rain water than treated when many others were treating them. I have found it completely unnecessary. In Tasmania i lived in a place where there were possums and of course birds. Teh possums probably didn't get on teh roof of htat house but there must have been bird stuff. I lived there for three years. No drama. I think its just back luck if you get caught out. One guy i lived with in Tasmania reckons he got Giardia from his watertank. Anyway, its not something I worry about.

For most of the towns life where i live the town water came straight from the stream. In recent years the pipes have been deemed to be dangerous so they've started treating the water with chlorine but many locals cheesed off about that. And of course there have been some gastro problems in people here but i think the cause is from the pipes not the moutain stream.

Bottom line is do what makes you feel ok.

[tom_brennan]

My partner is very sensitive to water giardia while other people are not (like me). These protozoa are carried by most native animals and where do they live and poop?

Source? (My bold)

[slparker]

I did a brief lit search on google scholar. The same Giardia parasite that infects humans is present in marsupial species in australia.
Whether they spread the disease or are simply hosts for parasites that are present in the water is uncertain.
If giardia in australia follows overseas patterns transmission from non-human animals is much less likely than transmission from water as the reservoir and humans as the primary host.

[GPSGuided]

At the end of the day, the risk of water born infection can vary and it takes experience and luck to manage that risk, but will never be zero. As such, it's a personal call as to how much risk one cares to take. As for all health advice, it's always appropriate to advise conservatively and then let the individual vary on their own accord.

[Xplora]

Would you have unprotected sex with a stranger? You may do it 10 times and all is fine so then you think it is OK to do it all the time.

[Snowzone]

Had a friend once that bypassed the water and let the possum clean his plate. Wasn't the smartest idea he had ever had!

I don't worry too much but then being brought up on a farm I think my immunity is a little better. And that is what it comes down to. Each to their own, plus a bit of common sense about where you take your water from. I carry chlorine tablets just in case but usually end up throwing them out because they are years out of date.