I would have to disagree with military report as there appears to be a bias for chemical treatments in the report. The report was for military use. The military does not care about long term health effects of using chlorine, chlorine dioxide and iodine based chemical water treatments on soldiers health. If the army was even the slightest bit concerned they would give their soldiers a way to sterilise water using heat treatment i,e a rolling boil. Instead the army gives exothermic chemical heaters to heat soldiers rations instead leaving the soldier no methods other than using chemical treatments for water sterilisation. Also, what soldier is going to wait around 4 hrs for a chemical treatment to do its magic i.e its 6 log reduction in bacteria(depending on the turbidity and temperature of the water). I suspect very few. The report does not mention the log reduction achieved by the micropur tablets for the intial 30s to 1 minute sterilisation time that the steripen can achieve. The steripen can achieve and does exceed EPA standards for non turbid (clear) water. For turbid water prefiltering is required. This caveat is made clear in the steripen documentation. And there is nothing sweet about the sweetwater system either. The army has different objectives in mind with regard to biological warfare criteria on the battlefield hence the bias towards chemical treatments. Drinking water that tastes like pool water rather than soldiers being infected by anthrax or plague, which has been sprayed on the battlefield is a worthwhile compromise for the army but it is not for me.

The Steripen can be trusted, folks just need to read the documentation and understand its limitations and its advantages.