Unfiltered water

[Nick Gatel]

As I have gotten older I treat water more and more often with chemicals. More difficult to recover from sickness caused by these organisms.

[AK Granola]

When I was a kid, we used to drink out of the lakes in northern Minnesota. Always out of the center of the lake, not the lakeshore (was there any actual reason for that? I have no idea! that’s what they told us to do). In my 20s I didn’t worry overmuch about water sources and was lucky. Now I almost always treat or filter. Diarrhea sucks and it sucks more when you don’t have easy access to cleaning up. Why risk it? It’s so easy to avoid it.

I’ve worn a seatbelt most of my adult life too, even though I’ve never been in an accident. (didn’t wear them that much as kids)

Doesn’t seem controversial to me. If you want to take the risk, or don’t think there is one, good for you.

[Justin W]

I have always wondered how our ancestors did with all this?  I guess that was a big reason why beer and wine were developed, because they were safer in relation to pathogenic micro organisms.  But what about previous to that and in non “civilized”, more wilderness areas and populations?   There was a microbiologist on here at one point, Colin Krusor (or something like that), and he said that you can’t develop immunity to giardia because it mutates to much, too fast or something along those lines.

Don’t know, but if I had always just believed and trusted experts in my life, I would probably be in a very different state of being than currently as to especially physical health (similar for my spouse, who if she had listened to doctors would be on lifelong thyroid hormone replacement rather than just eating kelp and using nascent iodine, which got her levels back to normal).  Experience has taught me to listen to, but also question, all experts of all kinds.

Anyways, it is an interesting question and issue. I don’t have the answers.

I live on the east coast and filter my water when out here. If I was in a more pristine area, I’d consider not doing it, but would probably just end up filtering unless I couldn’t for some reason.  At our house, we have a fairly shallow well (which may have a spring that runs into it), and really, I should probably be filtering that. Not so much for organisms but for chemicals and metals.

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