A Brita filter =/= a survival straw. There ARE filters you can use to drink directly from water sources in nature that will filter out all contaminants but a Brita ain’t one.
Exactly, there are filters for tap water and there are backpacking or survival filters for filtering dirty water. I use both regularly, but wouldn’t ever take my filter pitcher hiking.
The most common cause of symptoms like in OP’s story are multicellular organisms. While still microscopic, they are plenty large enough to get caught in a filter. The filters are usually good enough to catch bacteria too.
They clog and you do need to rinse them, and running (clean) water in the opposite direction is a common way to clean them.
They do eventually degrade or clog to the point of being unable to function and then you have to replace them. Usually they fail such that it gets slower to filter the water rather than letting dirty water through, although that’s not always the case. One time I had a cracked filter, and the symptom was the filtering went suspiciously quickly. I think I drank some only partially filtered water before I figured it out (didn’t get sick though).
A Brita filter =/= a survival straw. There ARE filters you can use to drink directly from water sources in nature that will filter out all contaminants but a Brita ain’t one.
Exactly, there are filters for tap water and there are backpacking or survival filters for filtering dirty water. I use both regularly, but wouldn’t ever take my filter pitcher hiking.
Imagine using the right product for the right job
You must be new here?
Do those straws also take out pathogens? I thought you’d still need to boil the water pre filtering.
The most common cause of symptoms like in OP’s story are multicellular organisms. While still microscopic, they are plenty large enough to get caught in a filter. The filters are usually good enough to catch bacteria too.
I was just about to say you are wrong. Lifestraws don’t filter out things like lead.
Just learn new ones do though.
I always wondered: does these filters degrade?
If they filtering stuff that small, do they clog? Do you need to rinse them? Run water in opposite direction to remove what they blocked before?
They clog and you do need to rinse them, and running (clean) water in the opposite direction is a common way to clean them.
They do eventually degrade or clog to the point of being unable to function and then you have to replace them. Usually they fail such that it gets slower to filter the water rather than letting dirty water through, although that’s not always the case. One time I had a cracked filter, and the symptom was the filtering went suspiciously quickly. I think I drank some only partially filtered water before I figured it out (didn’t get sick though).