Safe Drinking Water: Water, water everywhere but is it fit to drink?

Safe drinking water is essential to sustaining human life itself. Personal hydration is a critical planning factor and absolute necessity for disaster preparedness and response. The lack of safe drinking water during a disaster hits both victims and rescuers equally hard. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there was water, water everywhere, but none was fit to drink. Municipal water supplies were hurricane damaged and non-functional. Both urban water sources and many outlying areas with ground water wells were compromised with sewage, human and animal feces, salt water, and chemicals. Couple a theoretical regional disaster [of any type] on the scale of Hurricane Katrina with the current heat wave being experienced here in the USA and elsewhere in the world, and add the lack of clean drinking water and you now have the conditions for a Perfect Storm [disaster] of epic magnitude.

97% of the water on earth is saltwater found in the oceans, and roughly 2% of the remaining water is frozen in the polar ice caps. The remaining 1% (give or take) is fresh water, but that does not mean it is fit for drinking. Good drinking water is clean, clear, colorless, and odorless, has a pleasant taste, and is free of sickness-causing micro-organisms.

While local government Public Works, Homeland Security, emergency management and disaster response agencies focus on strengthening drinking water and waste water treatment infrastructures, you need to plan and allocate resources to insure that clean drinking water is available to you in the event of disaster. This plan should not include running out to the local grocery store when you hear the alert tones from the local television station or All Hazards NOAA Weather Radio. Others who have also not prepared will have the same brilliant idea and store shelves will be empty…

Planning
At the planning stage, determine your “real world” drinking water requirements, taking into account numbers of people, pets, emergency duration, environment, and available storage space. When making your emergency water plan separate your drinking water needs from those of personal hygiene. Personal hydration is a priority over hygiene, however good sanitation practices such as cleaning your hands, is certainly important.

Water is heavy at 8.34 pounds per gallon and thus not easy to store or move around in large containers. Use container sizes that can easily be handled and carried. Drinking contaminated water at best will make you very sick and at worst will kill you! Drinking contaminated water exposes you to diarrhea, typhoid, amebic dysentery, and a number of other seriously nasty parasitic organisms.

In the Home or At the Office
In the home, the bath tub is a good storage reservoir for water as long as it has been cleaned before use. Recently, the local Red Cross chapter made us aware of a plastic water storage bag made to fit right into a bath tub. This is an excellent way of storing clean water. Additionally, the hot water heater is the next potential source for clean water; however sediment in the tank could compromise this source. Lastly, consider the toilet water storage tank, if toilet bowl cleaners have not been used inside the tank. Be careful of any water that smells or tastes foul. It may well be undrinkable and needs to be treated, purified and or boiled before use.

If you choose to utilize bottled water make sure that you develop a rotation schedule and don’t store this precious resource in locations subject to extreme temperatures. In low temperatures, bottled water freezes, expands and can burst the bottles. In high temperatures water in some plastic bottles can take on a bad taste. Only use bottled water that is sealed and unexposed to the open air. For more information on bottled water, visit www.bottledwater.org.

Long Term Water Storage Solutions
If you are going to go the route of long term storage of tap water, there are established methods and procedures that need to be employed to chemically treat the water so that it remains drinkable over long storage periods. There are several companies that produce chemical treatment products that can allow you to store large quantities of water for extended periods of time; however, do not use this process if you cannot or are unwilling to follow directions! Errors or omissions of treatment steps can compromise your entire drinking water supply, or that of your family and co-workers. Bacteria and microbial organisms can grow in the water and make you sick after drinking, and getting sick during a disaster only makes an already bad situation worse! For a more in-depth read on this subject you may find this paper entitled Safe water treatment and storage in the home: A practical new strategy to prevent waterborne disease an informative read.

Chemical treatment processes sanitize and disinfect fresh water and take a specified amount of time to take effect. Chemicals utilized include chlorine, iodine, silver, chlorine dioxide and antichlor. Explore your options here as some agents work better than others for given applications and water storage periods.

Pre-packaged sterile water has a stable shelf life of five years and typically meets stringent US Department of Homeland Security and US Coast Guard standards. The technology that goes into manufacturing and sealing water containers that are safe and drinkable for five years is reverse osmosis and pasteurization. This type of water is supplied in small hermetically sealed pouches and multi layered boxes in quantities of around 4oz and larger 1-liter sizes. It is extremely temperature stable and frankly is the ultimate solution for conveniently sized packaged drinking water.

Stay tuned next Monday for “In-Extremis Water Solutions” part 2 of Safe Drinking- Water Water, water everywhere but is it fit to drink?

Be sure to catch Part II of this article! If you found this post informative please feel free to forward it along.