Actually, I’m teaching Environmental Science, and I’m wondering what we can do to treat dirty water. A bleach shock should get rid of biological concerns, and activated carbon should do a decent bit. I’ve talked to a salesman from a reverse osmosis company, though, and he said that we still won’t have dealt with heavy metals or petroleum products.
Does anyone know of something more homegrown than RO that would remove these types of things? I’m trying to be cheap just for the money, and also show kids something commonly available and practical.
It looks like even Clorox says that boiling is best for killing parasites and microbes. I suppose the choice to boil or to use bleach depends on what you have: fire/electricity or bleach.
Run it through a filter that has a layer of charcoal, sand, and cloth. Then you can use ozone from a tesla coil to kill bacteria. Or you could boil it.
Interestingly, the Pur website neatly sidesteps that question by posting a bunch of water bourne bacteria, but never claiming if the filter removes them.
However, I did find this article about homemade filters:
I’m aware I can bleach it or boil it, guys (plural). I specifically asked about the petroleum products and heavy metals. And we already did coffee filters/sand/activated charcoal/clean old t-shirt. That worked pretty well, but as I say, supposedly this misses two categories.
I did visit that link, but the author mentions that “chemicals, pesticides, and heavy metals” can be removed with activated charcoal, then provides no list or examples in any way.
To purify water with industrial pollutants, you need to distill it. I use a home water distiller here. It’s broken right now, so I’ve been boiling, and there is a thick layer of horrible scum building up on my water pot.
Or you could boil it.