To make matters worse, there appear to be dozens of potential heavy metal contamination vectors. There is at least a half-dozen in your own town right now.
Many heavy metals will not be removed at all by ordinary portable water filters, which otherwise do an excellent job of eliminating biological and chemical impurities. This is a major source of concern for preppers.
Many people are concerned about removing bugs and bacteria from their water, as well as solid sediments, but few have a solution for the heavy metal problem.
It’s time to pick up your game and get serious about removing heavy metal from your water sources.
In this article, you’ll discover more about the problems that heavy metals cause, as well as three methods for removing them from your drinking water.
Effects of Heavy Metal
These heavy metals have nothing to do with music, and, contrary to common perception, are not created by humans. Heavy metals are elements that are present on the periodic table and have densities at least five times that of water.
We could put on our science glasses and go into a lot more detail about how they are opaque, fusible, ductile, and glossy substances that transfer electricity and heat, but that isn’t relevant to the discussion at hand.
As a prepper, all you need to know is that, with the exception of a few heavy metals in very small amounts, they will all make you very sick and cause a variety of long-term ailments.
Several of them are fatal in high enough doses. As it turns out, you don’t need a lot of metal in your body.
A few essential heavy metals are also renowned for building up in the body too quickly and becoming harmful. The following are some of the worst offenders you’re likely to come across in your drinking water or via other means:
Silver, Lithium, Mercury, Lead, Tin, Antimony, Arsenic, Cadmium, and Beryllium.
Any of the metals listed above will poison you, causing nausea, vomiting, cramps, headaches, and vertigo. Even tiny amounts used over a long period of time might cause serious health problems.
These effects vary by metal and can be mild or severe depending on the concentration, your current health, and your age. If you listen to too much heavy metal, you can expect to experience the following:
Loss of bone marrow
Tremor
Problems with memory
Failure of the kidneys
Problems with the nervous system and other concerns
Diseases of the heart and blood vessels
Depression…as well as other issues.
If heavy metals are present in your drinking water, you should be concerned, even if everything else in your life is going swimmingly and there are no risks on the horizon.
Filter Heavy Metals Out Of Drinking Water
# 1 Distillation
Distillation is a well-known and preferred method for purifying water among preppers. Accept no substitutes if you require truly pure water.
Distillation works by turning water into steam and then condensing it in a separate container to separate impurities from the water. Because anything else in the water has a lower boiling point than water, it is left behind.
The only key is to keep the water at a boiling temperature without allowing additional impurities to evaporate. A little heat management can go a long way.
Distillation is commonly employed in labs and enterprises where absolute purity of water (or any other solution) is necessary for operation success. To perform your own distillation at home or in the countryside, you don’t need a fancy laboratory or a group of eggheads.
You can use distillation as a purification procedure if you can boil water and catch the steam before it condenses. A simple distillation apparatus of beakers, tubes, and burners may be put together quickly by handy DIY types.
# 2 Reverse Osmosis Filtration
You’ll need to boost your filtration game if you want to get the metal out, and the best way to accomplish so is with a reverse osmosis filter.
These devices are often huge and cumbersome, and they are frequently installed beneath one sink in homes. Only these have the capability of removing nearly every type of metal that may be found in the water.
The reverse osmosis technique, in layman’s words, uses an unimaginably small filter, one with pores less than a thousandth of a millimetre in width, to trap pollutants at the atomic and molecular level.
# 3 Cilantro Treatment
Yes, you read that correctly: cilantro. Cilantro, of the garden variety. Believe it because the evidence is overwhelming. In 2001, mice were used in a study.
For a month, lead was added to the water of laboratory mice. After the first week of lead dosing, they began giving the mice cilantro every day for the rest of the month.
The mice were subjected to extensive testing, with shocking findings. The mice’s lead intake was far lower than expected, and they showed very minimal damage to their kidneys, which is a major concern associated with lead poisoning.
The conclusion reached by scientists was that cilantro is a type of chelating agent that binds metal in the bloodstream and permits it to be released in waste.
Before you object, this has been confirmed with humans on an ad hoc basis. In 2013, scientists in Mexico City conducted studies on local water supplies with cilantro and discovered that the cilantro effectively eliminated lead from the water.
Heavy metal contamination is a serious problem when it comes to your drinking water and it is not easily dealt with via conventional methods.
You’ll need to rely on advanced filtration, distillation or the innovative, organic cilantro treatment method to remove heavy metals from your drinking water. A professional and licensed plumber can help you with this.
