People who enjoy hiking and camping are never sure of the quality of water they will have to drink or use during their outings.
Since carrying large quantities of bottled water is totally impractical, many seasoned campers and hikers carry portable water filters with them to deal with the water at each site.
Just because you don't have an air cooler doesn't mean you can't have a water filter! Everyone wants clean water to drink, but it is especially important to stay hydrated when you are out in the woods and trekking around; you really want to be sure your water is pure when you are drinking so much of it.
Even a very pretty, clear stream may not be safe drinking water because so many of the contaminants in water are completely invisible.
Tiny bacteria and microcosms cannot be seen and you should try to filter them out or boil the water to destroy them.
Even if you are not hiking or camping, but just taking a long bike ride, you want to make sure you drink plenty of water.
But how much could you possibly carry on your bike? A distance biker should carry a water filter and in this way, any source of water he comes across can become clean drinking water in minutes.
There are some systems that are built right into water containers, or the biker can carry a system that filters the water before it goes into the bottle.
The last thing a biker wants to do is get sick from dirty water, out there in the woods.
One of the most popular ways to purify water is to use electrolysis, and that is the usual system used by the filters that are built into the bottle.
But even the simplest filtering system that forces the water through a filter to remove particles and impurities will be beneficial to the drinker.
Just make sure the filter material is not too large; it will allow too many particles to pass through it.
Many times these portable water filtering systems consist of a pitcher attached to the filter.
Water is poured into the pitcher, and the enclosed filter willremove unsafe particles from the water.
The bacteria that is most threatening to health are larger than one micron, so as long as a water filter is able to filter to that degree, it will remove harmful bacteria.
Reverse osmosis filters use smaller and smaller filters in the process to get to the smaller bacteria.
Water filters will remove all sediment and most bacteria from water, but don't expect it to necessarily remove all of the smells.
Even the most expensive filters may not be able to remove some sources of water odor.
It may be necessary to have this kind of water treated professionally by purification.