Do Micropur tablets really take 4 hours to work?

inconceivable b/c of how much it narrows the use case for a high profile commercial product.

For aquamira anyways, 4 hours is for worst case water (cold and dirty) and for clyptosporidum(sp). It’s 30 minutes for most nasties.

If the chemical making up the product is the same the wait time is the same no matter what the trade name of the product is.

Yes. 4 hours. If you get a little straw filter then it’s more like 30 minutes. Aqua Mira is 4 hrs too, though they are hazy about publishing that.

Yup.

Nope.

4 hrs is for crypto.

If you don’t want to worry about that everything else is much quicker.

Viruses are minutes, for giardia 15 min is enough (1000x reduction). Water treatment is about probability, is highly unlikely you get water contaminated with a thousand cyst per liter plus in the backcountry if you’re taking from good clean water sources.

Same as AM,  once the tablets are dissolved. No one worries about crypto.

Makes sense. I was struggling to understand how the same chemical could take 4 hrs in pill form when it takes 30 min as drops. (at least that’s how long I wait for my AquaMira drops, so far so good in years of use)

As a bit of a tangent, why does no one worry about crypto? Its just not there in US backcountry?

Well that’s a good question.

Because the worst Municipal outbreak in the US was cryptosporidium in Milwaukee in 1993.

And you’ll occasionally find other Municipal outbreaks of crypto.

But rarely will you hear of anything in the backcountry being attributed it to it. It’s always giardia. Even when it’s likely not.

What we do know is AM users are not getting sick via crypto, so it probably is not a huge concern.

Only people I’ve ever seen wait 4 hours plus, are Boy Scouts. They will tend to get the water in the evening and let it sit overnight it camps without good water

Try and filter as much of the fine and coarse stuff from the water naturally so the wait time is as short as practicable I still use my old Millbank bag but lately I have been using the fine nylon filter socks sold for use in swimming pool filter baskets; just wash them first

Before my Steripen, I used many tablets and drops. So I took these with me on the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (which involved many portages. on the upstream sections.)
Needless to say, I got sick as a dog when I returned. I was sick for six weeks with a bad case of diarrhea and cramps. I had been using the premix, but after crossing Lake Champlain, I must’ve lost the b ottle somewhere. Anyway, I dipped some water on a hot day and added AM drops. After the usual 20 minutes or so (likely closer to 15, I was *thirsty*) I drank several bottles of water. I continued for a couple weeks not paying any attention to my water (as usual.) It could have been from the Dead River or from the Missisiquoi River. Never used chemical since except for overnight in some situations. No, I don’t ever want to repeat the experience, thank you.

I’ve written this before.  An AquaMira rep told me that Frontier Pro straw will remove the big stuff (Giardia, Crypto), and AM drops/tablets quickly kill the small stuff (bacteria. etc), in a few mins.  Thus if you use AM, wait a few mins, then drink through the Frontier Pro straw you should be fine.  I’ve done this with no problems, but more recently I’ve been using a Steripen.