Personal Water Filters - Test Article

I'm not a scientist, but this looks like a pretty solid article on selecting a personal water filter for hiking or survival.

https://www.wideners.com/blog/water-...-for-survival/

I like the Sawyers very well. As teufelhund1918 pointed out, alternate methods available is a good idea. In my experience when temperatures get below freezing any of the filters start progressing from a hassle to keep going on down to useless and can even be damaged by freezing.

The mention of gravity filter bags (like Sawyers) being difficult to fill im shallow water is 100% legit. Really need a separate container to dip water out to fill the bag. So far my favorite is an MRE bread pouch since it packs to nothing, but is tough and can be opened up to act as a scoop.

Good information in that article. I have been using a PUR Hiker (now Katadyn) for over 20 years as a backcountry water filter and have been happy with it. If I needed something for a more urban type filter I would definitely get something else.

Thanks for sharing this article; for international travel I'll make sure to bring a filter that can handle viruses, instead of the Sawyer I have.

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Lots of good info in this article! Learned a bunch about just what these devices are actually doing...

Very interesting article. I was surprised and a little disappointed that they didn’t test the General Ecology First Need purifier.

This purifier gets glowing reviews (but I’ve never seen a scientific analysis and test of their claims). It supposedly remove all the nasties that might be alive, including viruses, as well as some chemicals, pesticides and reportedly radioactive particles (according to a news report following the reactor damage in Japan after the earth quake / tsunami a few years ago).

I am skeptical of all these claims, however, and General Ecology once told me that the canisters have a shelf life, but as there is no manufacture date on the canisters, it’s rather difficult to know when your canister has reached this shelf life.

It also has a rather large pore size of 0.4 microns. However, if the canister actually does what they claim it does, it should be one of the better units on the market.

Again, I wish they had tested it.

I never noticed or paid attention to the lack of virus filtration in so many of these filters.
Wonder if I should rethink the life straws in our cars.

I keep a few of the Life Straws in our bug out bag since due to their overall performance and size that fits our bags. My home system has RO and a Propur system with 2 sets of replacement filters as a backup during SHTF.