4 Essential Ways To Ensure Safe Drinking Water
Access to safe and clean drinking water is essential for human survival. While water is life, you shouldn’t just consume water that hasn’t been purified, or else you’ll be exposed and end up suffering from serious waterborne diseases. Knowing this, you should ensure your drinking water has been purified to ensure it’s clean and safe from any contamination.
Therefore, learning the different ways of purifying water is vital, especially if you find yourself in an emergency and can’t access the purified water needed to survive. Unfortunately, this is a scenario where many homeowners find themselves in, not knowing what to do. According to this tank company, here are some ideas on how you can purify your drinking water to make it safe and clean for drinking.
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Boiling
Water usually contains germs and parasites that aren’t visible to the naked eye but still deadly to your wellbeing. The simplest way of removing these contaminants is by boiling the water at high temperatures for a certain period. These high temperatures kill the viruses and bacteria in the water, thereby making it safe to drink.
When boiling, all you need is a heat source and a metal container for holding the water. Because of its ease of execution and not needing numerous items, many people see boiling water as the ideal way of purifying drinking water.
The downside with boiling water is that it’s time-consuming as you’ll need to give it time for cooling down for it to be drinkable. Boiling water is also effective in removing chemicals from the water that evaporate due to the high temperatures. In addition, it helps in eliminating sediments that settle at the bottom of the container, and you can then easily filter out clean water.
For water to be safe for drinking, it needs to be boiled for 1 to 3 minutes, and this is usually longer if you reside in a high-altitude area.
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Ultra-Violet Light
The sun’s ultra-violet rays are also an effective way of ridding water of any microscopic organisms in the water. This method works by destroying the microorganism’s DNA within a couple of seconds. For this reason, you need to invest in a UV filter that produces ultraviolet light to kill any harmful bacteria in your drinking water.
The effectiveness of this water purification method is the reason why for years municipal has used ultraviolet rays in cleansing the water off from toxic microscopic germs. This is something that’s today been quickly being embraced even at the household level.
The microscopic organisms were destroyed when exposed to UV light. This includes parasites, waterborne viruses, bacteria, and molds. However, this purification method doesn’t remove physical impurities and heavy metals from water.
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Filtration
Another great way of purifying water for home use is through water filtration. This technique is appealing as it’s easy to execute and versatile. It entails both physical and chemical processes to remove small and large toxic compounds from the water that might adversely affect your health. You can find filtration systems in various sizes and forms, making it an ideal choice among many homeowners.
Filtration systems feature pores that are measured in microns which have a standard size of 0.2. This size is ideal as it’s small enough to obstruct both huge parasites like Cryptosporidium and heavy metals like copper and lead. They also incorporate activated carbon and charcoal and arranged them in a circular or cylindrical block to quickly absorb the water contaminants. The carbon does this by sticking to the contaminants and chemicals as the water is passing through it. This leaves the pure water to accumulate on the basin of the filtration system.
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Use Of Iodine Tablets And Liquid Iodine
Using iodine that’s available in liquid or tablet form also does a great job killing the viruses and bacteria present in drinking water. In addition, it’s effective at killing dangerous microorganisms in water because it’s a strong disinfectant.
When using iodine to purify water, the recommended quantity is five drops for every quart of water. But for cloudy water, the iodine to use should be twice as much to ensure the water has been completely purified. However, be careful not to add too much iodine as it can have fatal effects when consumed in high dosage and it gives the water an unpleasant taste. It would be best if you were also careful about where you store your iodine, as it becomes less effective when exposed to light. Therefore, it should always be stored in a dark area and a dark bottle.
Takeaway
You should drink at least eight glasses of water each day for your immune system to remain healthy and strong. But even in such instances, the drinking water needs to be clean and safe to consume; otherwise, you risk suffering from diseases like cholera and hepatitis B. If you didn’t want to find yourself in such a compromising position, this post has detailed the essential techniques through which you can confirm your drinking water is clean and safe for consumption.
