I know you can get sick from drinking the water in foreign countries, because you’re not used to the local bugs. But I’m wondering, would the water be safe to drink if you went back in time? Would the water in the same place have different strains present that the time traveler wouldn’t be accustomed to? What about going back to when standards of cleanliness weren’t the same as they are today? That could be less than a century, I’d guess. How about food? Would a time traveler from today get sick from eating the food during a time period when food safety standards weren’t as high?
It depends on where and how far back you went. But in general, I’d do what most people did before water purification became widespread – try to stick to beer and wine or other fermented drinks as much as possible.
No. It wasn’t even safe to drink by the natives back then. They drank beer or tea or coffee, all of which sterilised the water.
Depends where you are. The water in Lake Tahoe is probably safe to drink. Just boil it. It may taste like shit but you get rid of the nasties
This is an interesting question. We know that microorganisms can evolve incredibly quickly, literally within days as when antibiotic-resistant strains take over.
Large scale ecologies can’t change that quickly but they do change. It would be interesting to know of studies of people who go home after x number of decades to see whether they have problems with the local fauna.
When you go back you will still be vaccinated but I don’t know how much that will help since Measles, mumps, etc. may have been different back then.
I think this may be the explanation as to why water quality was not so good in former eras.
theoretical. someone has to actually do this and then we’ll know.
Interesting question… I’m guessing you want to know about drinking it untreated? Not boiling and kludging together an emergency carbon filtration system?
Drinking from a spring, probably. Possibly also from the middle of a large lake.
From a stream, or lake-shore, probably not… no way of knowing what’s flushing downstream or getting pushed to the shallows.
From a stagnant pool, or anything in close proximity to habitation, you’re pretty much asking to die painfully.
I’m in Finland, and most of the natural water here is actually drinkable (the geography provides a natural filtration system); the primary concern in those areas that aren’t tends to be one of two things, toxic algae or industrial waste. If the water looks like pea-soup, or you can see smoke… don’t drink it.