The old ‘just boil it’ idea has been around for a while.
People think that you can just take your heavily polluted tap water and just give it a boil and then you will have skipped the need for any kind of filtration whatsoever and it can go straight into the water cooler.
This idea I think came about form us being told to boil water if we think it is unsafe e.g. if we are camping and we need to drink from a fresh stream etc.
Water Coolers: Boiling Water vs Bacteria
It is true that boiling water can kill bacteria as they do not exist happily at the 100 degrees of hot boiling water. But there is something that we are all forgetting – you cannot just ‘bring water to the boil’ as happens in a kettle.
No, bringing water to a boil does not effectively kill the bugs; it just makes them temporarily uncomfortable. If you want to use boiling as a method to clean you water you need to boil the water for up to 20 minutes and at least the very least for three solid minutes.
If you do this you will be getting somewhere. Now bugs are nasty and some can give you a very upset stomach when camping but at home they are not the main problem in our water – as it comes pre chlorinated which deals with a lot of the bugs – but not all.
Water Coolers and Inorganic Particles
No, the bigger problem for us at home drinking form the tap is the inorganic particles in the water – think bits of metal etc, these will not be bothered by any amount of boiling, also the chlorine itself you cannot simply boil it away. Not to mention the hundreds of chemicals that may be present.
The fact of the matter is that if you want to have safe clean drinking water - and bathing and showering water too – then you need to forget the ‘just boil it up’ method unless you are out camping and it is your only option as you have forgotten your filter.
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