RE: [Philmont]: Water Filters/Purifiers

> From: j.tavares@comcast.net
> If I remember correctly, there are traces of Crypto and of
> Guardia in Philmont streams and untreated water.
> Joe Tavares
>
Joe, would you mind cutting the extra text out of your replies (especially
three copies of the automatic info inserted by the message server)? It is
REALLY hard on those who take the list in digest mode, and just makes the
messages so unnecessarily big!

Anyway, when I asked at Philmont in 2005 about what they have found, I could
find NO ONE who could say to me that there was EVER ANY Cryptosporidium
detected anywhere at the ranch. They were VERY reluctant to tell me about
the results of any of their water tests. I think the lack of detection is
something they don't want to advertise to avoid having campers get careless.

I also asked about levels of Girardia detected and was told that it had only
been detected in a very limited number of water sources. I asked about the
concentration and they could not answer me. I would be willing to bet it
was at levels no higher than most anywhere else, such as tap water in a
City.

As a study written up in Backpacker magazine pointed out, it is very rare
anyone seems to find concentrations of Girardia in the wilderness any higher
than in city water. Where water gets bad with girardia appears to be pretty
much limited to farm and ranch land (so Philmont backcountry may be okay,
but the "ranch" portion of the ranch may be a different story). This study
also found that on a per capita basis, there are far more occasions of
Girardia related deseases occurring from consumption of municipal water than
from untreated wilderness water.

I'm still waiting for someone to point to some reliable studies to the
contrary. I'll still treat, but it sure is sounding like so much FUD to me
(Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt).

Don Roberts
Fullerton, CA
Eagle class of 73
Philtrek 03, 05

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Received on Thu Mar 23 10:51:26 2006