Do I have any other option for a water purifier a part from the Steripen and Sawyer models?

"Can I use a coffee filter as a pre-filter, along with the Steripen and will it work ok with water bottles/hydration reservoirs and pan/pots or would I need some sort of adapter for it?"

Hi,

My name is Ian. Not only am I a subject matter expert in crapping my pants, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

The Steripen will work ok in most situations but not all. I have a steripen opti and have had no problems with it. As previously mentioned, in turbid water you can't rely on the UV light to kill all the pathogens. Coffee filter works ok for getting the floaties out but doesn't remove any of the pathogens.

I've been sick a few times from food and water borne pathogens, one time resulting in hospitalization. My experience has been rarely will the Dr. diagnose the pathogen and I suspect most people just guess that they're sick with giardia than actually know.

My anecdotal experiences/observations and reasoning behind my recommendation of using a Sawyer Squeeze Filter followed by a chemical treatment or UV treatment:

Experiences:

Every time I got sick it was either from bacteria or protozoa.

Of the many people I know who've been sick from a waterborne pathogen overseas, to our collective knowledge, none of us were infected by a virus.

Observations and reasoning to recommend Sawyer Squeeze and Chlorine Dioxide:

There are concerns that chlorine dioxide and uv light may not kill or sterilize ALL protozoa.

Many areas in Latin America receive frequent rain which results in water looking like chocolate milk more often than not. As previously mentioned, this is not ideal for UV treatment. It’s not great for a filter either but you can mitigate this by letting the water settle overnight and pre-filtering with a coffee filter or other device.

While improbable, there is a chance that you may be exposed to a virus in your drinking water.

Sawyer claims that the Sawyer Squeeze and Sawyer Mini will filter out, for all intents and purposes, all bacteria and protozoa provided that the filter never freezes and you follow their instructions. In my opinion, this will take care of 98% of the pathogens you'll encounter in your drinking water which will be protozoa and bacteria.

Follow up treatment of the water with Chlorine Dioxide will kill any virus. If by some chance your filter has failed due to freezing or you unknowingly cross contaminated your water, then it's highly likely the chlorine dioxide will kill any protozoa or bacteria that found its way into your filtered water.

I own and use both the Sawyer Squeeze and Sawyer Mini. Both have a good flow rate, are compact, very inexpensive, have no moving parts to break, no batteries to die, no electronics to fail, and can be back flushed in the field.

Aqua Mira Treatment drops can treat 30 gallons of water so you're looking at $15 per month. Steripen Classic and AA will be about the same or a bit less.

Assuming you filter and chemically/UV treat every drop you drink for the next year, your finanical obligation is roughly $200 not including shipping. I can assure you that every time I was sick with dysentary or whatever the bug du jour was, I would have paid triple that not to be sick.

I wouldn’t buy the Sawyer filter .02 because I would not want to rely on just a filter (in case it freezes), I’m unfamiliar with it, it’s expensive, it looks bulky, I suspect that its flow rate will be much slower than that of the Sawyer Squeeze/Mini, and I suspect that it's more susceptible to clogging (again just an assumption since I've yet to own one).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterborne_diseases

Note: I have added a space after 3 “9s” for easier parsing.

The RapidPure
Removes 99.999 9% viruses and 99.999 9% bacteria
Removes 99.998% of 3 micron spheres [crypto and giardia]

RapidPure Testing

Looking at the Sawyers as a comparison –

The Sawyer PointONE filter (Squeeze) –
0.1 micron absolute
Removes 99.999 99% of all bacteria, such as salmonella, cholera and E.coli;
Cannot claim effectiveness on viruses
Removes 99.999 9% of all protozoa, such as giardia and cryptosporidium.

The Sawyer PointZEROTWO Purifier –
0.02 micron absolute hollow fiber membrane purifier
Removes 99.997% of Viruses, 99.999 99% Bacteria,
Removes 99.999 9% Protozoa/Cysts

From the SteriPen Home Page –
It destroys 99.999 9% of bacteria,
99.99% of viruses, and
99.9% of protozoa.

Katadyn Hiker Pro –
0.3 micron filter
Bacteria and the big guys –

The US EPA Purifier Requirements are –
99.999 9% of bacteria
99.99% of viruses
99.9% of protozoan cysts

[Garnered from web available sources. I’m not a lab tech. YMMV]

Just to add some experience to what Ian wrote: WE (my wife and I) have both been hit by water-borne viruses. We were both 'out of it' for 24 hours, with medical attention.

OK, it was a special case: unknown to us we were downstream of a town sewerage treatment plant which was not functioning very well. We were using a Katadyn filter which took out all the bacteria and protozoa, but their filters do NOT stop viruses (despite some optimistic but uneducated claims you see in some places).

Cheers

"OK, it was a special case: unknown to us we were downstream of a town sewerage treatment plant which was not functioning very well."

Unfortunately that's pretty common. Also common in my experience is that the sewage isn't treated at all and dumped into the water.