A Thirst for Knowledge: A Hiker’s Inquiry into Water Purification

At LifeSaver, we pride ourselves not just on our products but also on our ability to educate and inform our customers about water safety.

We recently received a query from Allan, a UK resident and hiking enthusiast, who had clearly done his research and impressed us with how much he ‘got‘ what sets LifeSaver technology apart from our competitors.

We thought it would be beneficial to share our exchange (with Allan’s permission of course!), as it sheds light on common concerns regarding water safety in the outdoors.

Here is Allan’s email to us:

Hello,

Your water products look excellent. I have been looking into water purification for hiking reasons mainly. So that if I were in the countryside in the UK and needed to take water from a stream or river I could do so as safely as possible.

I have looked at a few websites besides yours, including other products by Water to Go, Grayl and Lifestraw.

It seems to me that your concept of Failsafe is very important. That when the filter becomes packed with contaminants the drinker cannot get any more water. This is one of my concerns with other water filter bottles.

Lifestraw lets viruses through. Apparently the Grayl and Water to Go products have pore sizes of 1.25 microns and 0.7 microns respectively, meaning viruses get through when the other technologies they use fail. Your pore size is 0.015 microns, which is ‘virus-blocking’.

Since your filters block all microbiological contaminants, including viruses, then one has to consider heavy metals, chemicals, pesticides etc that may be in UK river water.

Our immune system can cope to a certain extent with low amounts of contaminants, but if one regularly drinks filtered water, will the tiny amounts of heavy metals or other things build up and lead to illness years later in life? Should one only consider distillation as a way to completely remove every possible contaminant?

I suppose my most important question is, if I had to regularly drink filtered water from a UK river or stream for 3-6 months, would I be at any major risk of health harm, or should I just use filters as a short term solution to get out of a lack of access to clean water?

Apparently UK tap water does contain what are called ‘safe’ amounts of heavy metals and pesticides.

Thanks for any advice.

Allan

From Allan’s message we could see he had already understood the two most important pieces of information we try to put across:

• Protection from viruses is important
• LifeSaver technology is FailSafe

However, Allan’s primary concern was about the safety of drinking water from natural sources like streams or rivers during his hiking trips. He wanted to ensure that the water he consumed was as safe as possible, not just in the short term but also in the long run. He raised a valid point about the presence of heavy metals, chemicals and pesticides in UK river water. While our immune system can handle low amounts of such contaminants, Allan was rightly concerned about the potential long-term health risks of regularly drinking filtered water from natural sources.

Here is our response to Allan:

Hi Allan,

Thank you for your message. I can see you’ve done some excellent research and have really understand the strengths of LifeSaver’s technology.

To address some of your concerns:

Drinking distilled water only is a bad idea, as you actually need some minerals and salts from the water for the good health of your body. Without these you could end up with certain deficiencies.

If you had to regularly drink from a source like a river or a lake, we would advise you to carry out a water suite test on a sample, to check that there are not dangerously high levels of any minerals or chemicals that you shouldn’t be digesting on a long term basis.

As you rightly say, in the short term (1- 2 weeks), this wouldn’t be an issue, but long term it could cause harm. Lead is a good example of this. Raised lead contamination in the short term will cause no harm as your body deals with it. But long term ingestion at high levels could be very detrimental to your health.

LifeSaver ultrafiltration technology takes care of all the microbiological nasties and our optional Activated Carbon Filters reduce chlorine, taste & odour, chloramines, lead, nickel and chromium, amongst other chemical / heavy metal contamination.

Tap water usually has safe levels of vital metals, minerals and chemicals. You can check what’s being measured in your tap water on your water providers website. Here’s where you can look up your provider:

http://waterquality.anglianwater.com/map.aspx