Butyl Acrylate Everywhere But Not a Drop to Drink

United States. Yeah, James, what's what's it? What's what's what's happening? Well, and ever things are happening, right. I think should probably emphasize at the start that water contaminants have been affecting people outside of like the kind of colonial core for a very long time long and and uh, legacy corporate media, whatever you want to call it, hasn't given it a solitary fuck about it until it affects people inside the colonial core. So what we're seeing right now is in

two places. East I believe it's pronounced Palestine, right, I believe so too, Yeah, yeah, okay, East Palestine, Ohio. And in Philadelphia I believe it's pronounced phil A Delphia. Okay, they did like someone's name, like Phil. It was named for Phil a Delphia, the founder of the city Phil from Delphia. Like the oracle. I see, he predicted that one day there would be a spill from a PLC chemical plant near the Delaware River, and famously he was right.

We've they built a city there anyway. Yeah, yeah, and for years they've been so angry about not having a chemical plant, they've just climb lamp post and throwing batteries at a boasting football teams. Yeah. And I feel really good about starting with such heavy jokes about this thing. Yeah. Yeah,

it's three million people, I think anyway. Yeah, if you're in philadel we do want to express solidarity with you, I guess as you wonder what the fuck to do about your water supply, which is currently contaminated, as we understand, by something called beautiful acrelate, which is a chemical that

is found in paint. And the reason that there is a paint chemical in your drinking water if you live in Philadelphia is that a PLC manufacturing chemical plant called I think it's trinso tr I n SEO had a leak, and that leak when it's a storm, drain that storm drain went into the Delaware River, and that river feeds into the Samuel s Backs to water treatment plant, and obviously that water treatment plant feeds into the tap that you turn on to drink water when you live in

your house. And this has, as it always does when there are like these somewhat bungled announcements of chemical contamination in drinking water. Caused people to shout to buy bottled water, which is an understandable response if you think you're not going to be able to drink water, which is caused people to wait in long lines to access sometimes like

a limited supply of water. And what we wanted to talk about today a little bit was not so much like what to do if you're in Philadelphia right now, but how we can better prepare to be ready for water emergencies, water shortage, is water contamination, things like that, which is why Margaret has joined us, because she is the prepper anarchist queen and knows a lot about these things.

So yeah, Margaret, should we I think you said you wanted to break us down by like bad things it could be in your water, and things you can do to get those bad things away, right, Yeah, Although I will say only a minority of this information directly relates to people who are dealing with toxic chemical spills. So if we're I have a lot of information about general water safety, it's long term storage of water, things that you don't want in your how to get those things

out of your water? And I know you have a lot of experience with that stuff too. Um. But the very specific thing that people first in Ohio and now in Pennsylvania are dealing with, um of chemical stuff is worse than other stuff and way harder to get out, especially on a DIY level. UM. So I don't know what what feels best like, should we do an overview or should we try and first talk about the chemical stuff and then talk about like the fun easy stuff

like not getting giardio when you're camping. Yeah, let's maybe start out with the kind of this is the scary you know, you can't buy a LifeStraw for this, fear first, fund later, Yeah, because people might be listening and they might be afraid of they might be concerned that they might be in one of these places. Right, Michigan, we still haven't fucking fixed the water, Yeah, And so yeah,

let's start fucking flint Michigan. What a just disasters incompetence. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's it's extremely sad that the country that is as rich as any country has ever managed to be in human history is still poisoning people with water. But yeah, let's start with that. Let's let's start with what to do when you get a reverse nine or one phone call tending you know, to drink from your tap. I mean, honestly, going out and getting bottled water was

the right move. Or also since people did have a heads up that their tap water was safe for a period of time, storing water in various containers is the right move, because once your water is contaminated with chemicals, it's really hard to get it out. The main method that well on an industrial scale, the thing that someone can use the way they treat wastewater with beautile as late, I didn't write down the name in my notes acrelate, Oh like acrylic. That makes sense because slate text paint.

It's something called a fluidized bed reactor, which Frank I did not know about until I started doing this specific research for this specific chemical. People who are like more at a high science level will know more about this. This is basically like you're using different bacteria to eat and I don't know, fucking clean out this shit. This is not what's going to be happening in your kitchen

sink anytime soon. This is not going to be part of your Brita filter anytime soon, ironically, And this is not how am I going to say this. Don't drink this chemical water if you have any possibility, right, if you can get other water, do that. And I believe in our current society it is a better and safer bet to get water from elsewhere if you were in some situation, which I suspect most people are not. I

suspect most people could access supply lines. If you're in some situation where the only water available to you has these types of chemicals in it, the most likely guess about a way to deal with it is activated car and charcoal, and is actually the home filters that a lot of people use. Is your Brita filter, is your burkey. Although I'll talk some shit on burkey in a little bit, and and when we go over the more like nitty greedy details about each filtration method, maybe we can we

can talk more about this. But basically, it is like it is not tested to do this. No one has ever been like, man, what if we get a bunch of budle accrelate in our water, will our britta filter it out? No one is running tests on this because it is not a thing that normally is in the

water historically, although clearly it is often in the water now. However, the method of filtration of the various home level acts various home level methods of filtration adsorption is what it's called with a D instead of a bee, is the method that is perceived as most effective at reducing chemicals in water. However, again we're talking about like maybe this reduces some chemicals, maybe not. Oh you run this through

this and now you're fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's if there's a lot of things that could get no water right that we don't really have like any any like decent

research on how to get them out of a water. Yeah. So, Margaret James, is there is there a say, say, you're not living in a place where you get a text letting you know that in Tuesday at three pm your water will not be safe to drink, which is really just uh, is there a home testing kit or a water testing kit that that is accessible for for most individuals, or what resources can people use to understand their water at home because you want to I'm not really going

to trust the government on that. Yeah, And Margaret, do you want to take that I only know about I do not know about testing for beautiless accrelate. I think that this is the kind of thing that they are not people are not prepared for, like at a society level,

I don't. I believe I could be wrong. All of the water testing that I have done has tended to be around like I live on a well, right, and so there's a lot of testing things that are available to tell you the acidity of your water, the hardness of your water, which is how how many dissolved minerals, whether or not your water contains things like lead and arsnic heavy metals which we'll talk about in a little bit, and also bacteria, right, like all of the stuff that

we normally prepare to filter out of water. There are home tests available to you that you can use to determine. I don't know, and I wish I had done more research ahead of time. There's like some talk about like possible smells and stuff for some of these, but I

don't feel confident. Yeah, I mean, I know there's the eat wg's like website where you can put it in your your your zip code and get more information on if there's been contamination or anything like that, but like that's you know, reported things, not necessarily on an individual level for testing. Um. Yeah, I'd definitely do that. Anytime I have moved anywhere, I'll type in my zip code

and then I go, ah, that sounds bad. Um, I don't like that, but yeah, you can find out, you know, once you put in you can find out who who, Like you put in your zip code on This is just ewg dot org. You put in your zip code and you can put who you pay for water, and then it goes in and it tells you. You know, it's really it's really fun. Four In my mind, I read four e w E Health Guidelines fourteen contaminants. Oh yeah, I think a combination or two it's probably your best bet.

Like unless you happen to do a laboratory like because there's stuff coming like if there is like lead like in between the water mains and or like you know, wherever the EDWD is getting its information and your tap, then you're still risking like heavy metal contaminants, right, or if you're on a well, you should test that it. I think it's every year, right, you're supposed to test your well water probably should. You know, You'll be fine,

you'll know. But yeah, I think it's important that, like you, I have definitely got super sick from water that looks super clear, had no odor, looked fine, And I have drunk from turbit as fuck stagnant water and not been sick. Like at your nose is not going to tell you, and you do need some kind of help. Yeah, let's talk about storing water first, and then we'll talk about the more sort of established solutions so that the more

expected contaminants. Yeah, how would you go about Let's say you're not in Philadelphia right now and you want to prepare for something that could happen in your area, how would you go about storing water? So the easiest ways that you go get bottled water, if it is sealed, and you keep it out of the sun, you keep it out of the heat, even though you're it's supposedly good for a year or two whatever. I feel like really nervous on this, like this is what's safe, even

though it's not safe, right, but you can. Water itself doesn't go bad. That is a thing that is worth understanding. Left to its own devices, water does not go bad. Water goes bad when there's like something in it that replicates, like bacteria or something like that, or when something leaks

into it. The main reason that you want to keep your water out of the sun and out of the heat is because if you're storing it in plastic, that can eventually kind of leach into it as the plastic degrades, and that I don't know, there's probably long term health effects. But like I would drink a water bottle that has been in the vaccinat in my car for a year before I would drink beautile acrelate water, And which is I mean, it's I guess that's just plastic or plastic

pick your poison. But but yeah, so bottled water is generally very safe and it is sealed and it has no particular reason to go bad. You don't want to store it next to kerosene or gasoline. Like if you are the kind of person who keeps five gallon jug of gasoline around, you want that a different place than your water. Usually you want the gasoline outside your house in a outbuilding. Everyone lives on acreage in the rural areas the country, right, so many outbuildings around here, Yeah,

everyone's outbuilding. Just go out to my urban bond, Yeah exactly. So okay, well, okay, Then the other thing, if I'm actually preparing go out and get some five gallons cherry cans. You're going to pay between twenty and fifty dollars and you'll get a little bit of different quality depending on that. You want something that is BPA free, you want something that is opaque, and you want something that is like not really bigger than four or five gallons because it's

clumsy and unwieldy. Yeah. You also don't want to stack these things unless they specifically say this one is stackable to such and such depth. Like most stackable containers are also only stackable one or two high, well two or three high, and I don't know, I mean, like frankly, on some level, that's what there is, okay, And if you're going to fill your own water containers. There are a couple of weird things about it. One, people argue about how often you should rotate it. I rotate in

mind about once a year. You should theoretically rotate them somewhere between six months and a year or something like that, depending on how you store it. The other thing is that if you are I actually think living off of well, you should probably rotate it more often. If you're on a municip municipal water, don't run it through your britta before you store it, because that britta is going to pull out all the chlorine, all the bleach. And people

are like, whoa, I don't want to drink bleach. I listen to that punk song Dead Dead milkman um whatever. People don't want to drink bleach, right, you actually do want to drink tiny amounts of bleach. You want medical solution. Yeah, it keeps bacteria from growing. So if you filter out all of that and then you put it the water in the thing, if there's the tiniest little bacteria that got through, it's like sweet, the defenses are down, you know.

Um So, But yeah, honestly, story and water, like people like they're gonna sell you lots of products, and like prepper sites are full of people selling you shit. Um. But it's just a matter of like finding containers and filling them with water and then rotating them every now and then, and it's not actually that big of a

deal or super complicated. That's my take on it. UM live off of I used to live entirely off grid and then had to just drink water out of fifty gallon drums, and I just I didn't even you know what, I'm not going to say how bad my practices were because I don't want anyone to emulate me. I was gonna say, if you are, like, if you're storing on a scale, I don't know why they'd say you live on a compound in the desert. You know you can get big water tanks, right, I just looking at moving

out to the desert a couple of years ago. I didn't, but yeah, you can get big water tanks are pretty cheap. You should some place at a dollar a gallon. Last time I looked for like a fifteen hundred gallon tank. Yeah, I found them cheap, like gov sp plus ones as well. Pretty often. Oh really, Yeah, we'll talk like, yeah, yeah, well I'll send you some send you some links, but you might want to check it. At some places you

actually can't legally have those. It's getting better now with that stuff, but you do want to check on that. I think if you or you could get like a water buffalo, which is an industrial device for shipping water, Um, you can probably pick up those pretty cheese. It's an animal. I don't want to. Don't dehumanize it calling it an industrial machine. It's an animal, has feelings, Yeah, it does,

and you just keep that in your backyard. And then what that does is attack anyone who comes after your water. So it's quite effective. Yeah, they are toughest nails. I've had some runners with buffalo um animals. Okay, another thing, I guess that like, if you're like going hardcore on this and storing thousands of galanto of water, maybe you could invested something like a chlorine maker and that way, if you do like mess up with your storage, I guess that that could maybe give you some leeway in

terms of purifying afterwards. Who's out fair to say, Margaret, Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Like chlorine maker is the next step up from basically because like bleach itself does go bad and if it's not a shelf stable for I don't remember how long it lasts, Um, it's not indefinitely shelf stable, and so people often especially in places of that access to clean water and stuff. I will

say though, when we get into it. Chemical treatment is really good for the main stuff that people normally worry about, such as protozoa, bacteria, and viruses. But once again, isn't going to do shit for some stuff that goes bad? Yeah? I think it might. There's one thing, maybe cryptosporidium. There's something that chlorine specificitally doesn't work for. Oh, that's right. Actually, yeah,

it's actually not very good at protozoa. It's weirdly good at viruses, and then whereas most of the filters are not good at viruses and are good at bacterium protozoa. So we should probably explain these different things right right, ways, you can treat your water. Okay, there's a bunch of stuff that you can be in your water that you

don't wish was in the water. The one that is like kind of off the top of my head, the one that I think about the most because if I had to deal with it and it sucked, are protozoa. The two big ones are Giardia and Cryptospidium. And these are tiny little animals in the water. If you can look at pictures of them, they're really cute, and they make you shit a lot forever, sometimes until you die,

mostly immunocompromise folks, but everyone really unhappy. And if you're in a survival situation already, diarrhea is like no laughing matter. Your inability to keep in fluids and nutrients will dramatically affect your your chance of survival. So that's protozoa. They are the biggest of these things and therefore sort of the easiest to actually don't know whether they're bigger in bacteria or not. Then there's bacteria, which it can also

be in water and do bad stuff to you. And then there's viruses, and viruses can be in the water and do bad stuff to you. Largely in the United States, and people don't worry about viruses and water. And that's not because our heads are in the sand. It's because we don't have as many viruses in our water. Then there's chemicals you can have in your water. We don't like them. There's dirt that can be in your water,

which is just like not fun. There's heavy metals like lead and iron that can have deliterious effects on your health. Some people want to get water hardening minerals like calcium and magnesium out of their water. But you actually don't want to get rid of all of them. That's the catch. That's what we're gonna have to talk about, because your body wants some of those things. They mostly just like make your house has all the all the plumbing breaks.

That's like the main stuff. There's also things like nitrates that I don't understand well enough to talk about. How

we get rid of things. The most common way that like backpackers and stuff who are a lot of the people who diy this on a regular basis use is something called filtration, or I'm going to call filtration first use you screen your water as in, you get out the large chunks usually people use like a bandana or a sock or just some piece of cloth, right, and you want to use that so you're not gumming up your filter and then it goes into something where it's

forced through a membrane with micropores. These used to be ceramic, but these days they're like a bunch of tiny little tubes like the internet, and most of these are basically la tubes have holes in them that are so small that it stops protozoa and bacteria from going through it. That is it's like main claim to fame. It is very effective at it. Now that they're not ceramic, you don't have to clean it like every fucking gallon. And these are really good top brands that I am not

sponsored by our sawyer and life Straw. They're going to use slightly different methods. People have opinions about them. I'm not going to offer mine right now. And they're measured in the size of the holes. Anything that's like one micron is small enough to stop most protozoa. Most of these ones are either point one or point two. These don't block viruses, so they make ones that have even smaller holes that can deal with viruses. And this also

blocks microplastics, but you know whatever. Then there's chemical treatmentchemical treatment. The two most common ones are bleach, chlorine or iodine. And there's also like chemical tablets that you can buy that are like worth keeping around. They weigh almost nothing. Whatever. Um, I am not going to give you the chart of how much bleached to add your water, and don't just go listen to me and add bleach to your water. Fucking look it up. Uh, do not use color safe bleach.

Do not use scented bleach. It's just disinfected bleach. But it will probably either come in six percent or eight point two five percent sodium hypochlorite chlorite. Um, and sounds so grosss just that those commination Yeah, it's what they sent it with. Uh, the blood of I don't know, my god. Yeah, poisoned blood. That sounds so gross. I used to wear a lavender all the time. I actually I stopped for two reasons. First, I stopped when I was in college because like my girlfriend was like, you

smell like soap and was like really mad at me. Um, if you're listening whatever, I don't care. And then I stopped get what in Hugert go on off? Looks good? Look at me now? Yeah, thanks for turning me on the lots of cool stuff. Um, that was much healthier than I would have been. I'm proud of you. And then uh, um, the other reason I stopped wearing lavenders. That attracts ticks if you're out in the out in

the woods. Um anyway, okay, so that's chemical treatment. Chemical treatment is really good for bacteria, viruses, It's not great for parasites. It is a really good backup system, right. Um. Actually, I'll go over the fucking king of all of them for for bacteria, vias and parasites. You want to get rid of it, you fucking boil your water. Um the

like classic way to do with it. As you boil your water, and it only needs to get above sixty degrees celsius, which is like one hundred and forty something in regular human um. And I actually don't know the conversion. I actually know when you're talking about qui fahrenheit. Okay, fahrenheit is really good about humans because zero is cold and hundred is hot. Yes, celsius is really good about water. So we're we actually are talking about water right now.

So celsius is the proper scale because it goes from zero is freezing to one hundred is boiling. Yeah, um, go ahead, Yeah, it's uh, you know we should do before before we talk about about water. Do you know what will not make you shot yourself to death? Reagan coins? Yeah, it probably is Ronald Reagan coins. Again. All right, we're back, Thank you very much, Uncle ron to continue to pay for my healthcare and interlude needs. So, Margaret, we were

we were talking about boiling fuck boiling water, that's it. Yeah, yeah, so how long do we need to boil stuff for change? Depending on what we got. It does but not really. It's like all of the main and do do the actual instructions. Overkill is better than regular get killed, right, um, but most shit dies off at sixty degrees celsius, which

is below the boiling point of water even at high elevation. However, basically the deal is at you want to boil water for one minute at sea level three minutes above five thousand feet um or five kilometer No wait, no, go on, it's not a thousand feet okay um And yeah, So so boiling water is actually the one of the main things you can do. It doesn't get rid of everything. It gets rid of those three things protozoa, bacteria viruses very effectively. And that is most of the time what

most people are treating water for. A lot of the other stuff is like long term health effects like heavy metals and chemicals. Right. Yeah. Other methods that you can use. The other like kind of gold standard, which isn't as good as it seems like it should be, is distillation. Distillation gets out lots of stuff. Distillation is basically you evaporate the water and then let it run down into another container. You're moonshining your own water, and and you

can do this DIY fairly well. And there's like solar stills that are really cool. I've never actually built one, I've always wanted to. The downside is if you'd live off of distilled water for a long time, it gets out the magnesium and the calcium, It gets out the minerals that you actually want in your water, so it can have negative effects on your long term health if

you only drink distilled water. The main thing that distillation does that I think no other method on this does besides a reverse osmosis, which I'm not really going to get into it. Desalinates water go ahead. That's a big deal, right because like if we look at long term water insecurity, like certainly where I live, we live in a place where people like to play golf in the desert and that has become an issue as far as water supplies go,

and so desalination is often proposed. It's like a way to deal with our water crisis in California and the fact that the Colorado River is getting lower and lower and we rely on it. But like you said, lots of these methods aren't going to pull the salt out of water, right, didn't let you drink seawater, right, But this one does. And so I mean, actually, I don't really care about the health of golf course. I have

actually negative feelings about the health of golf courses. But theoretically, maybe water in your lawn with the desalinated distilled water and then drinking the water that actually has minerals in it. But then again, like maybe the plants need that shit too, I don't fucking no, m so. And in distillation, it's very good at getting out heavy metals also like iron and lead, and it the reason it gets out the bacteria and viruses. It is not because they can evaporate,

but because they die getting boiled because you boiled distill. Yeah, and some pesticides are filtered out if their boiling point is greater than the boiling point of water. Benzene and too lean which I don't know what is. I don't know too lean is. These are examples of things that do not get distilled out. Then there's a couple more. There's adsorption. Adsorption rules. This is the thing that I always misspell and so that's why I emphasize the ad absorption,

and I don't really understand. Go ahead, how do we adsorb? Is that just like absorption with adverts? You know? It's like, yeah, it's like I took three years of Ladin and all I remember is that ad means towards, an ab means away from, and maybe a gorkoli is either farmer or farmhouse. Yeah, I got poor poor re sum sum aramat aramasama saratta. I remember that one. Now. Yeah, great, Yeah, there you go.

You've something today. Yeah. I wish that my school had made me take Spanish instead of letting me take some bullshit like Latin. H Yeah, exactly. So adsorption is good for pesticides, heavy medicals, heavy metals, chemicals, viruses, and bad tastes. It's the only one of these things that I'm aware of that actually use can get rid of bad taste, because this is pulling out all the weird stuff in

the water. And what it is is it uses activated carbon, which is basically just some shit that's fucking burned and then crunched up real small. It is a huge surface area because it's like little powder, right um, and then the water passes through it and then by some weird science shit. The bad stuff tends to stick to the carbon um. This is great. This is what your Brita filtered. This is what your burkey does. This is what You're

pure filter does. It. It's not as good, I believe for bacteria and stuff, and specifically the biggest problem with these things is that bacteria can grow on them, and so some people, I mean, that's why you replace it every so often. It's not because it's like slow or clogged. It's like literally unhealthy. And so sometimes what people do is they treat for bacteria with UV or some other method, bleach whatever, all the other shit that we talked about.

We haven't talked about u V yet. After it goes to the carbon filter. I'm really excited about like kind of learning more about these because you can theoretically diy

carbon right, Yeah, yeah, you're definitely could. Right. I know that it's not the same as this, but one of the things you can do if you're in the back country is like if you have water with a lot of turbidity, which is stuff in the water, right, if you can't see through the water, you know, if it's got a lot of cloudiness, you can use white ash from a fire, and that will increase the rate of which it deposits a sediment if you see what I mean.

So you how interesting because yeah, it sticks to it and then slowly filters through the bottom of them. I think the gold standard is a loom, which is something using canning that increases it even quicker. But yeah, you can use white ash from a fire if you're dealing with I think that's I don't think that's activated coup but I think that's a different mechanism. Yeah, no, I

don't know. UM. And then one of the methods that is actually mostly done on an industrial scale that actually is like I think the main way that people filter water in this world is through sand, and I didn't do enough research about um. There's both slow sand filters and fast sand filters, and some of them like literally depend on certain bacteria, good bacteria, like having a healthy culture of them that like eat the bad stuff and things. I used to know more about that than I do currently.

And then the last one I'm going to cover, Okay, then those reverse cosmosos, which you might have a kitchen thing that does and it also removes minerals. It's a very effective method of filtering out lots of stuff. It also, I don't know, causes wastewater, and it's complicated in some ways. And then there's UV disinfection, and this is like one of the ones that gets touted as this like this is going to save the developing world or whatever, right,

And uvy disinfection is cool and good. Basically it uses UV light to kill off bacteria, parasites, and viruses. Again, these three things that are the main things people are usually going for. The biggest downside of UV disinfection, there's two of them. One is that it requires low turbidity water. Thanks for introducing that term clear water. It has to be fairly clear water because it's about light, right, that makes sense, and because you have to be careful to

do it right. You just have to like actually get all of it with all of it. Yeah, So this is why I haven't, like, for a moment, I got really excited about these things, and then in the end I was like, I like my water filter that I already have. Yeah, I think with UV filteration as well, it's been big and the outdoor world kind of relatively recently. You have to be conscious of storing it in a opaque container afterwards because the bacteria can UV like reactivate.

Oh yeah, I f that's like any of it that it doesn't get is like fuck, yeah, it's my time. Yeah, because it stops them reproducing. That's how it interest still in there. But they don't so it doesn't really matter. You drink them and then you pass them through your system and it's fine. But if they reproduce, that's when

you get sick. So somehow they can UV reactivate. So like if you have a you know, the classic like like through hiking thing, it's to use a smart water bottle, right because it's cheaping, it's dirty, and but if you are UV filtering and then travling in your smart water bottle and then putting that in the back of your pack and hiking all day, you might get some difficulty. So yeah, I know it's not Yeah, I haven't really messed with it much like like, yeah, I have my

comfortable setup and that's what I'd like to use. And I will say that like something that people who don't go camping much might not be aware of. There's almost nowhere in the United States that you can be confidently drink wild water without it without risking something like giardia. Um, there are places where you can directly from a spring

is the most likely to be good. Um. People used to say that you can you can drink high elevation water if you're up in an alpine area because there's like no calves or whatever, because like giardia, and I believe also crypto, but I'm um the other poop transferred crypto, the cryptosparodia, not the not the multi level marketing scam. Um. They it's it's passed in the fecal oral tradition. What's

the word here? Uh uh, there's a word here forget yeah, pathway yeah, and so um, because it's passed that way. It's like basically the fact that there's livestock everywhere is the reason that's not safe to drink the water. And so people are like, oh, if you go up high enough, you're safe. But there's still animals up there. And there's

also like more and more hikers up there. Almost anywhere you're going to be hiking, someone else is hiked, and someone else is hiked, and they have drank the water without filtering it because they're not thinking properly, and then they've shit in not in a hole, but just shit somewhere on the ground, because they're also a bad person

in that way. Yeah. Um, And so they've like tested a while ago in the high Sierras that there's garda everywhere, which doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make you sick, but it can make you sick. So it's just like

worth knowing that. This is the reason that backpackers know so much about water filtration, although again they don't know as much about chemicals filtration, which is why I had to go and learn more about that, less because I'm a backpacker and more because they used to live off grid.

But yeah, they're different, Like, like, there are definitely a lot of products out there that are very affordable that work for like that specific specifically they giardia concern, right, which is the one that most people have, And that's probably if you're like if you're in a place where you hear there's industrial water contamination and you go to RII and you buy a sawyer make a tap filter,

for instance, it just clamps onto your tap. It probably won't work for the stuff that you're concerned about, but it will work if you're yeah off a while. Then you have giardia or something. Yeah, and it also won't work for like lead, which is one of the reasons why the carbon filters are the more common ones at home, because city water that is a higher you know, if you live in some cities, you're gonna have lead in your water, right, Yeah, because we used it in pipes

for decades. Yeah, but I don't know. Oh, let's talk shit on Burkey's really quick. Yeah, let's do it. What's up with Burkey? Why are they bad? So? I was like, I personally the other day after this thing, because that's my fun joy of being a prepper is going to Twitter and being like, here's what I know about that thing. You know, whenever a thing happens while like safe on my mountaintop and drinking out of my well, which whatever has its own problems, I'll take those problems anyway, Okay.

So um, so I post about this, and then I pointed out that like, overall, there's like the different filters that you can have her home, and then the only one that seems to sort of do it all is the Burkey. It's this very expensive brand. You've probably seen them in your hippie friend's house or you're the hippie, and there's one in your house, there's one in my house. And it's a big silver canister that looks like it comes from the fifties or whatever, and and it's a filter,

and it's somehow filters more than everything else. And the way that it does that is by lying or rather, I don't know what using the way. Yeah, the way it does it is it says it can do these things, and it is not certified to the what is it a NSF slash ANCI standard that all of your other filters are testing themselves too. So everyone else is saying we have passed this following certification, and Burkey is saying, oh,

we tested, and it does all the stuff. All the other ones probably do kind of all the stuff too, but the only things that they're actually certified to do or what they say they do. And so Burkey basically charges a mint in exchange for using their own testing standards instead of the testing standards of other people independent testers. Google Burkey wire Cutter and you'll find a good article

that where people conducted a bunch of tests. And it's a shame because it would be nice to have this sort of all in one filter because it's very annoying. If you want to filter something out of your water, you have to go, Okay, what's in my water that I don't want? And then you have to go find the filter for that, and it's not going to be the same as the other filter. Is not gonna be same as the other filter. Like, oh, you live some

more leading your pipes. You can't buy a regular britt You've got to buy the lead pipe Montreal special Breada, you know, and like, you know you want an undersinc water filter? Well, do you want this one or this one or this one? It would be nice if there was a yeah, like buy once, cry once, Yeah, yeah, go to Amazon two days later you're fine. Kind of situation. Yeah, but there isn't one new I was going to go over, like just in case people are curious more about the

back country stuff. I guess I have three different levels of stuff that I use for back country. If I'm just going out and I don't think I'm going to filter water, I just take a stainless steel single wall water bottle and some iodine or another chemical purifier. I didn't works really well, but you don't want to be using it long term. It's not good for you long term for your thyroid and then I'll filter it through like a buff or a kaffir or something to get

the tability out and use that. If it's a trip where I'm just in the back country in America, I take a squeezy filteration catedine beefree is the one I tend to use. And you want to have a dirty bag and a clean bottle, right, so you're squeezing from

the dirty water into the clean water. And then if I'm going somewhere for work where there are virus risks and where it might be like what you'd call like a non permissive environment, at place where you don't want to hang around near a water source for a long

time because it's dangerous. I have this thing called an MSR Guardian, which is not cheap, and you probably don't need it for what you're doing, but if you are concerned about viruses, it has a dirty bag and a clean bag, and it's a hang filter, so you can fill up three liters of water, bugger off to somewhere safe, hang it up, and let that filter from the dirty bag into the clean bag, and then you're not standing by the water filtering or pumping. I'm a few seconds

a pretty fettied. Situations have been fine. And I'll say that the thing that I used off grid as they used a sawyer, just a regular sawyer water filter. They're like thirty bucks. And I attached it to a five gallon bucket with some hoss and then I gravity fed it and I just left it drip in from one five gallon bucket to another. And that's for a stationary place in the United States. That worked for me. Yeah,

I can see that working really well, Margaret. Do you want to think where can people learn more about prepping? Would there be a podcast they could listen to? You mean one that just went weekly, Live Like the World Is Dying. I am one of the hosts of Live Like the World is Dying. The reason it went weekly is now there's more hosts and you can listen to that wherever. You listen to podcasts every Friday, and soon

you'll be able to hear James on it. But I don't know when you just have to listen to all of them. Yeah, where can people see you gloating on Twitter from your mountaintop? Magpie killed Joy until I finally get sick? Of Twitter, which is increasingly likely every single day. Hell so yeah, yeah, thank you very much, Margaret No, thanks for having me informative. You are welcome. All right, Ali everyone, Maybe it could Happen here as a production

of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeart radio app, apple Pot Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzone meta dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.