I while ago I bought some 55 gal drums and will be filling them soon. I also got Aerobic 07. After this I remember seeing some questions raised about the effectiveness/safety of using the A7. I looked in the archives for some info on it but there doesn't seem to be any water threads with it in the title. So now I am wondering if I should use it or not. Have you used it? Is the jury still out?

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@water.question), November 16, 1999

Answers

Oh, it will work as well as any other chlorine product such as laundry bleach and plain pool chlorine. It'll cost you a hundred times more than those other products though. If you've already bought it, you may as well use it but you can do the same things for a heck of a lot less with fresh plain laundry bleach or plain pool chlorine.

.............Alan.

The Prudent Food Storage FAQ, v3.5

http://www.providenceco-op.com

-- A.T. Hagan (athagan@sprintmail.com), November 17, 1999.

Rob, besides obtaining negative opinions about this product from two or three people from the American Society of Microbiologists (or Am. Soc. of Biologists, something like that), I also managed to track down a couple of the endorsers of one of the AO brands. Now this was over a year ago, so please forgive my lack of clarity. One of the "endorsers" was chair of biology at SMU. He was VERY surprised to hear he had endorsed this product, asked me to send him the aadvertising, and told me bleach works better.

From what I have read (extensive), aid agencies recommend and use plain chlorine bleach for water purification. The variance in drops per gallon derives from whether the original source was referring to flood, wild or tap water. If you can detect a faint chlorine smell after administering the drops, you have enough bleach in the water. Apparently, chlorinated tap water does not require bleach treatment, providing you rinse out the container with a bleach solution beforehand.

Bleach begins to lose its effectivess after six months, I understand. At one year, it has half is original strength. The simple solution is to use additional amounts and perform the sniff test.

I can provide sources for all of the above if you REALLY want them, but the info is on my old, ailing computer and I'd have to dig for it. You nmight try searching on water AND Canadian AND Ministry AND Health (or Health AND Canada) and see what comes up. They had a great site with all sorts of good water info plus a table of bleach amounts for small to large quantities of water.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), November 17, 1999.

This is my first time on this forum, but I have an important water question. I have a large ornamental pond (6000 gallons) with lots of fish. I know about chlorine but what about using potassium permangante to get rid of the nasties. For instance I can move water to a 300 gallon container with lots of plants in it like anacharis, cover it to keep birds away and treat it with potassium perm. at say 25 ppm.

There is no ammonia, no nitrites but some nitrates in the water and the plants should absorb them.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this way of treating water for drinking. From some research I found that Potassium perm is used in water treatment plants.

jack mcneary

-- Jack McNeary (jmcneary@arborman.com), November 17, 1999.

In re. Potassium Permangante. I would post a new topic on it, since people may not read this one.

However, my thoughts on it. I have never seen any documentation done with Potassium Permangante on cysts like Giardia or Crypto. So if any animals could get to it, I'd be very leery about drinking it without a filter/purifier. Especially if you consider the fact that you have a lot of fish crapping in the water... :)

-- James Collins (jacollins@thegrid.net), November 17, 1999.

Jack, in all the reading I did of the major (and some minor) aid agencies and emergency services sites on the web, I don't recall seeing potassium permanganate mentioned once. I should imagine that if it were cheaper, safer and more effective than plain chlorine bleach, then aid and ES agencies would use it rather than bleach. I did see other chemicals mentioned but they were to be used only for very short periods of time and not by pregnant women.

You can make a water filter out of activated charcoal and sand but someone else will have to provide the URL for the site--I'm afraid I no longer have it.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), November 17, 1999.

Thank you for the responses folks.

Ol' Git, you are truly wonderful :)

-- (sonofdust@thanks.alot), November 17, 1999.