Disinfecting Drinking Water with Sunlight :)

Hey guys! Hope you are all well and happy :)

I pulled the following from Wikipedia, and have read it in many survival books as well:
"UV radiation can be an effective viricide and bactericide. Disinfection using UV radiation is commonly used in wastewater treatment applications and is finding an increased usage in drinking water treatment. Many bottlers of spring water use UV disinfection equipment to sterilize their water. Solar water disinfection is the process of using PET bottles and sunlight to disinfect water.

James took this beautiful shot of Swans on Water- JamesToth.com

New York City has approved the construction of a 2 billion gallon per day ultraviolet drinking water disinfection facility.[27] There are also several facilities

under construction and several in operation that treat waste water with several stages of filters, hydrogen peroxide and UV light to bring the water up to drinking standards. One such facility exists in Orange County, California.[28][29] NASA has examined the use of this technology, using titanium dioxide as catalyst, for breaking down harmful products in spacecraft waste water.[30]

It used to be thought that UV disinfection was more effective for bacteria and viruses, which have more exposed genetic material, than for larger pathogens which have outer coatings or that form cyst states (e.g., Giardia) that shield their DNA from the UV light. However, it was recently discovered that ultraviolet radiation can be somewhat effective for treating the microorganism Cryptosporidium. The findings resulted in the use of UV radiation as a viable method to treat drinking water.

Giardia in turn has been shown to be very susceptible to UV-C when the tests were based on infectivity rather than excystation.[31] It has been found that protists are able to survive high UV-C doses but are sterilized at low doses.
Solar water disinfection[32] (SODIS) has been extensively researched in Switzerland and has proven ideal to treat small quantities of water cheaply using natural sunlight. Contaminated water is poured into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours. The sunlight treats the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: UV-A irradiation and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures rises above 50 °C, the disinfection process is three times faster."

You don't have to do it this way.. It was just a fun photo shoot ;)

This is good if you are stuck in a situation where there is no clean water available, but the water must not be muddy for it to work properly. The light has to get through the water.

Of course it doesn't get rid of the fluoride if you live in a place that mandates fluoridation of your drinking water. And chlorinated water should evaporate if left in open-top glass jugs in the sun for a 24 hour period (which is what I do). There are filtration systems that eliminate chlorine and fluoride though and there are many that are easy to install yourself that don't seem to be that expensive. So do what you can to drink pure water. We are made mostly of it, right? Have a beautiful day!

ps.. Here is a very interesting documentary about harnessing the powers of water as an alternative energy source! Very good :)