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Comment by bitxbitxbitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Is the hypothesis that there was toxic algae present in the water that the family presumably only filtered before drinking, not boiled?

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Boiling doesn't help with cyanotoxins.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-11/documents/ha...

> CAN I BOIL MY WATER TO MAKE IT SAFE TO DRINK?

> No, boiling water will not remove cyanotoxins and may increase toxin levels.

Thank you for the information. Though, I do wonder: how can boiling increase the toxin levels? Or does it simply increase the concentration because some water has evaporated?

> Or does it simply increase the concentration because some water has evaporated?

Yes, this.

Will increasing the concentration matter? Obviously I know nothing on the subject, but drinking 10ml of poison in 100ml of water must be as harmful, and thus toxic, to me as 10ml of poison in 50ml water, right?

Or we're assuming they don't drink all the water, in which case 20ml of the first solution will be less toxic than 20ml of the second.

Higher concentration may mean higher rate of absorbtion. If detoxification happens at a constant rate, then a quicker accumulation of toxins may bring you over a threshold you would not’ve gone over had you consumed a poison of lower concentration.

You are seasoned drinker or scientist.

I need to drink 3-4 liters of water a day. That's fairly fixed. If I'm drinking water with twice the concentration, that's twice the poison.

I might be wrong but I don't think boiling would work for chemical toxins ether. Unless it's life and death you should avoid collecting drinking water from stagnant sources always look for flowing water. If you have to collect water try and collect it from deep bellow the surface and far from the bottom.

Is the idea behind this recommendation that these algae blooms have a harder time to grow on moving water? Or that moving water upstream will dilute any concentration of toxins?

Thanks!

Broadly speaking algea wants to be stationary. You see it floating on the surface in stagnant water, or sometimes attached to rocks in moving water. Dilution is also a factor, but if at all possible you want to avoid taking from anywhere with significant algea even if the water is flowing. Prominent algea likely indicates high level of agricultural runoff (maybe fertilizer, maybe manure).

If you have to and you can afford to spend ~$30 buy Aquamira. It's mainly advertised for reducing the oder of stored water, but it's also commonly used by backpackers to purify water. Anecdotally I've used it to drink stagnant water (when no better options, of course) repeatedly with no issues, whereas I and others I know have gotten sick from clean moving water we put through a filter (Sawyer squeeze). Aquamira is just a way to make bleach on the spot in the right concentration.

If you can't afford Aquamira or don't have access to an outdoors store that sells it you can get the same effect with household bleach. It's crucial you buy bleach that only contains chlorine, not any scents or additives (for example to make it thicker and stick to walls). See https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/emergency/making-water-safe...

AFAIK, neither bleach nor boiling help with cyanotoxins in the water from algea.

After more research it seems you're partly right. Depending on the PH of the water and the type of cyanotoxins bleach might not be effective. It is effective in some cases, but not reliably.

They simply have no time to accumulate in a moving water.

A water in the pond will be there for months.

Not entirely true. You can have toxic algea in moving water if the situation is bad enough. If you go hiking on agricultural land you'll see this.

How about distillation? There are emergency water-distillation kits that people bring on desert hikes. (I guess it would depend on whether the toxin forms an azeotrope with water.)

Drinking too much distilled water is bad for you because it is hypotonic (it's missing salts), so it pulls salts out of your cells.

If they are "avid hikers" like the article suggests, they would have brought water. Also doesn't explain why the baby died (don't think you'd give a 1 year old stream water).

Being an "avid hiker" is open to interpretation nowadays. A lot of my coworkers would call themselves "avid hikers", but they only hike stuff like Mount Si and Lake 22. For those unfamiliar with Seattle area hikes, those 2 are way more crowded than city parks and are in no way risky for anyone less than grossly unhealthy. I've been on hikes with them and their preparation involves bringing a single nalgene of water. They had never heard of "the 10 essentials."

Did you mean little Si? Mt Si proper is a pretty tough hike with a scramble at the end that can be somewhat tough/dangerous depending on conditions.

It’s a train of people up Si with a slammed parking lot… I think that’s the point. It is difficult, but it is also highly pedestrian as far as trails go in WA. We are lucky to have such high standards here where even the most accessible and trafficked trails are incredible

> Also doesn't explain why the baby died (don't think you'd give a 1 year old stream water).

A one-year old is going to be heavily reliant on its parents actively taking care (in the short-term, most critically) in of hydration and heat management in the wilderness. If they are incapacitated by a toxin, that's quite plausibly fatal for the baby.

Avid hikers are more likely to travel light and source water on the way.

Me I’d rather lose a couple of kg of weight and carry it in water instead.

if the parents died, the baby would have died from exposure in pretty short time

In a few rare cases people and dogs have died from just swimming in water contaminated by toxic algae. So not intentionally drinking it, but it's easy to accidentally swallow a little bit.

I doubt they would have given a 1 year old water from a stream.

Hypothermia overnight may have taken the child if it was waiting for the parents to wake up.

It's so sad to even think that's a possibility :(

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