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Donβt use unsterilized tap water to rinse your sinuses. It may carry brain-eating amoebas
(www.sciencenews.org)
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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One PPM of chlorine is enough to kill most amoeba in about 10 mins.
If amoeba can survive in tap water where you are at, you probably shouldn't drink the water without filtering and boiling it first anyway.
Also, get some multi-chemical water test strips as well. While those don't tell the full story, they can be useful if deciding to have your water tested at a lab. (Test strips a decent enough at detecting chlorine, some metals, salts, etc. I don't know if they exist, but detection of disolved gasses, like natural gas, would be a huge plus if you live in an area that has a lot of oil drilling.)
Everyone should spend at least a few bucks to know what they will be drinking at home on a regular basis, IMHO.
Lab testing is going to be a waste of money for most people not using well water, unless you have a strong reason to suspect something is up aside from test-strip reaults. Especially seeing as how the water chemistry is going to change at least twice per year when the water provider switches from chlorine to the chloramines and vice-versa. And pretty much all providers will give you a report of exactly what's in the water on a monthly basis if you ask for it.
Lab results would be useful if you're serious about homebrewing beer and don't want to build up the water profile from scratch or really into baking, though. Just don't do it in the early Spring/Fall, because that's when the treatment chemicals switch and the results aren't going to be representative of what the water is really like for that time of the year.
My stomach is super picky and I drink a ton of water. It doesn't take much to mess me up.
Even perfectly clean water will trigger my acid reflux, but that is more of a mechanical issue with my stomach, from what I understand. The bigger moral of the story here is not to be a raging alcoholic for many consecutive years...
I even get monthly water reports automatically due to the number of lawsuits my town has had because of water quality. Needless to say, my trust level is not set at maximum even for third-party reports paid for by the city.
You ain't wrong, but the redundancy makes me feel better.
I've heard, and read, that the test strip approach isn't very accurate.
But it's good enough for regular people. Very accurate test equipment costs tens of thousands of dollars and you have to recalibrate it every few months using very expensive consumables.
Nah. I paid $43 for my lead test via Virginia tech, as that's a concern I have with my new (very old) apt building: https://leadkit.hbbf.org
If you need to test for the common 9 dangerous items test, it's $160: https://mytapscore.com
That's one single test and you don't get equipment. You're just sending your sample to the lab, which has all the stuff. I mean that's a great option, but you're not getting accurate testing devices for that price.
Not interested in having the equipment. Not sure where I said that either.
IMHO, it shouldn't need to be. With test strips, my only intent is to see if there is something drastically off kilter. pH tests are likely the most reliable of any of them. If tap water pH is wildly off, there is likely something else wrong.
Excluding some cases, just a taste of the tap water should tell you volumes more than what a test strip might.
Hah. I've been swimming in freshwater lakes, rivers, and reservoirs for about 65 years. Ain't nothin' takin' me down.
Also a former water treatment plant operator, so I should probably not be quite so complacent. :)
Some places are worse than others, from what I understand. Also, I haven't had an issue with my brain being eaten after years of swimming in freshwater sources.
The above paper was about a place in Pakistan, so who knows what their water is like..
Some streams in some U.S. national parks advise against submerging your head in the water for the risk of getting brain eating amoebas.
Warm still water specifically as I recall.
I have only had to take extra precautions in costal areas. When I was a kid, I remember some fairly strict warnings about amoebas in places like Florida and up the East Coast to North Carolina. Honestly, I don't remember that many details since that was about 35 years ago. (Maybe it's about water temperature or water chemistry, or something. Dunno.)
Reminiscing aside, all fresh water has risks for one reason or another. If you are ever lost, stranded or even on a super long hike everything becomes exponentially more dangerous anyway. (Small risks become massive risks, basically.)
If there is anything you never fuck around with in the wild, it's a water source. Not only can it host a ton of things that can kill you or just make you sick, it also attracts other, bigger, critters. Nevermind that we need a fuck ton of water to drink ourselves and need to stay near water sources.
Nature is brutal.
I'm more concerned about e coli levels than amoeba. But Lord only knows what gets into the South Saskatchewan River system and what grows vigorously once the water slows down in Lake Diefenbaker.
At least I've stopped swimming in the runoff sloughs in cattle pastures. (Kids are all kinds of stupid!)
I miss being a kid in the country, sometimes. The stupidity was never ending and the risk->reward function always paid massive dividends.
TBH, we had super clean water where I grew up and there were bigger risks than getting covered in cow shit, which did happen on occasion. (My best friend at the time got his hands on some blasting caps one weekend. We probably weren't much older than 12 or 13 at the time....)
Sorry for the tangent. This conversation kicked up more nostalgia than I expected.
No problem.
Heh! You had blasting caps, we had carbide (my grandfather was still running an acetylene generator in his welding/machine/mechanic shop).
What's PPM in this context? Like, one drop in a bucket?
"Parts-per-million"
Ok but what about in this context?
1 mg of chlorine per 1 litre of water
1 mg or 0.001 ml?
And I know 1 liter of whater is 1kg.
PPM is an American way of saying mg/L because they're all allergic to SI units.
Thanks! I knew what PPM was, but I was having trouble visualizing how much chlorine was that in, say, a liter of water.
And there you go. 1 mg per liter does the trick, and it's standard!