Treatment of Potable Water Using the
Eagle Spring® Mission Filter
by Ed Giordano

Since the earliest times of our civilization, people realized there were differences in the quality of water from various sources. Water from some sources would have differing tastes, odors and clarity. Some were believed to bring risk of illnesses – such as fever or diarrhea. But it wasn’t until the late 1800’s that scientists clearly understood that disease often spread through contaminated water supplies. Contamination occurs when human or animal wastes find their way into streams, rivers, lakes, or into groundwater that is not adequately treated before again being consumed.

In England, the cholera epidemics of the 1840’s and 1850’s killed over 250,000 people. In the US, the early 1900’s saw as many as 100,000 people per year dying from waterborne disease. The most common causes were outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and infectious hepatitis.

The scientific discoveries of microorganisms as the cause of these diseases and that chemical agents could kill or inactivate these microbes led to establishing the basic principles of water disinfection. Today it is well understood that disease-causing microorganisms (pathogens) can be largely eliminated by way of a combination of filtration and disinfection processes.

Chlorination is by far the most universally used method for disinfecting public water supplies. This is attributed to its convenience, economics, and well documented performance as a disinfectant, which has been established and proven through nearly a century of use. It has been so successful that freedom from epidemics of waterborne diseases in the industrialized countries is now virtually taken for granted. As stated in Drinking Water and Health (National Academy of Sciences, 1977), "chlorination is the standard of disinfection against which others are compared." Water disinfection is, without a doubt, one of the greatest advances in public health of the past century.

The effectiveness of chlorine disinfection is well known. Inactivation or destruction of microbes is proportional to the contact time between the microbes and the chlorine disinfectant. Numerous studies performed since the 1940’s have characterized its ability to provide multi-log reductions (e.g. >99.9%) of bacteria, viruses, and cysts under various water conditions.

Despite the knowledge we have accumulated about the importance of disinfection in keeping populations healthy, there remain economically depressed or remote regions that do not have the infrastructure or economic means to provide safe, disinfected water to the general population. Also, natural disasters often see even the best water supply infrastructure suddenly shut down. In these cases, the Eagle Spring Mission Filter is an economical and simple-to-operate means to provide safe water and peace of mind.