water purification tablets

Any one know where I can get water purification tablets in either blister packs or small strips? The Porta-Aqua bottle (small tho it may be) is a tad to big for my PSK.

Thanks!

PA can be decanted into smaller, teflon capped vials. Doug and a few other forum members have gone htis route for there PSK's.

this post brings up a good point. Those little bottles are hard to find. I called the company that Doug describes and the bottles are cheap, but shipping is about twice the cost of the bottles. I have been on the search for a container that fits in an altoid tin and I found one at the Container Store (go figure). It is a small translucent box, about 3/4 of an inch square (maybe smaller) and it fits into an altoids tin just right. Its not water proof, but you can tape the lid closed and that should solve the problem. It cost 39 cents, so I bought a few for the kits I am building for some family members.

Plus they come in all kinds of colors, so you can pick which ever is you favorite.

Garrett

If that box is plastic of any sort the Potable Aqua iodine will penetrate it and destroy either the box or the kit's contents over time. In any case the tablets will be ineffective and your kit may be damaged. Glass containers with teflon lids are required to properly store Potable Aqua.

I do not carry the tablets in my kit at all. Too many problems and too few tablets to be of much use. I carry a full bottle of PA in my vest pocket and consider this to be nearly inadequate (25L of purified water ain't much).

I was unaware of this. I have used plastinc to store the pills before, but I will re-evaluate what I am doing!!

Dont PA lids have paper inside the lid as a seal? I dont think its teflon.

Garrett

I have not looked closely at the lid seal. I do not want to open my vest pack today, but will look at the opened one I have at home. My guess is that this seal is a teflon film covered product. Iodine vapor is very corrosive to metals, and can easily penetrate most plastics or paper seals. Many plastics also allow water vapor to slowly penetrate the container which degrades the tablets also.

There are some old threads here about various attempts to package the iodine tablets in other than glass containers. I cannot remember the results of all, but someone had used a cutoff Bic pen and I think a test was arranged to see if the tablets after a certain amount of time still contained active iodine. Foggy mind here.....need another old hand to chime in.

Plastic drinking straws, metal tubes, plastic wrap etc have all been discussed in the past. Great reading from inventive minds, try a search with the parameters set to "All Posts" on iodine....that should give you some idea of the attempts and experiments done by others.

I continue to carry mine unopened in their original packaging as my best plan. My primary reason to do this is my belief that if I need to chemically purify water, I will want the capability to do a bare minimum of 3 gallons....~12L which is 24 tablets. This can be added to a small kit in a small bottle, but I have chosen to double this and carry the whole original bottle.

Potable Aqua is only one way to purify with fairly limited volumes. My preference in my larger kits is a mechanical pump backed up with pure iodine crystals (Polar Pure), these together will treat hundreds of liters of water. With a decent fire kit and a boiling vessel I am in fat city. My vest kit, consists of a 1/2L bag and the 50 PA, which I would hope to be able to backup with my larger kits or boiling.

I have done searches for iodine and storage possibilities, but I guess I havent read through them as closely as I thought. I recently changed my pill case from a plastic pill box to a bison products aluminum capsule and the plastic container was fine. I may have to go back a re-examine it for damage this weekend. I have searched and called around looking for a one dram glass bottle but have found nothing. I may just do what you do, and not carry them in the PSK. THat would free up some room I guess, since I have just about done away with the fishing gear. But my kit is constantly in a state of flux.

thanks again for the inof and I am going to do another search right now.

Garrett

Well I feel like a fool right now. You know I even responded to some of those threads that talked about the danger of packaging iodine in plastic and aluminum? I see your point about the bottle of pills in your vest, I have a bottle in my day pack at all times. Maybe I will just have to take the pills out of my PSK and add the full bottle back into my day pack. Darn I feel like a fool right now. I may even have a time bomb sitting in my garage right now!!

Garrett

The bic-pen idea was mine. I still carry some that way but haven't tried their effectiveness. I think that Paremedic-Pete offered to test them but I didn't take him up on that. I also carry a filter in my car kit so I don't worry overly much about it.

I have found some glass container sources online -

glass vials

Green Glass vials

green, brown, blue vials - caps sold separately

clear and colored vials

Some of these only sell in bulk but you can usually talk a salesman out of a sample or small sample order of a handful. If you are forced to buy a dozen or two you could probably unload them here without much trouble. Certainly the postage on such a small item will be more than the cost of the item.

Mandatory disclaimer: I haven't used any of these merchants so cannot vouche for their service or integrity.

If you're looking for glass vials you should check a "Head shop".It was mentioned in another post and I found it to be true.I do not condone what they promote or what they sell them for but they had the glass vials I wanted.I even found a real cool "tobacco" tin with a dragon paint job on it <img src="images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Chuckle...Never though of that. Good idea though...I like the idea of putting crack vial to good use:)

Thanks! I am looking now. Probably buy next month. If I have to buy in bulk I will post again to off load some of them.

If it doesn´t have to be iodine you might try Micropur. It´s silver based and comes in blister packs. It requires more contact time than iodine though.

garrett,

There is so much info on this site that it is easy to either forget, or be unable to read it all. The iodine/aluminum reactions used for magic campfires are using pure elemental iodine and powdered aluminum, large quantities of each. The amount of iodine vapor coming off of the PA tablets is small in comparison, so I do not believe you will see this huge exothermic reaction take place in an aluminum pill fob. I do think you may see metal degradation, particularly if the anodized surface is scratched, so storage in a glass vial is good practice both due to the potential for damage and the more insidious potential that the tablets are worthless when you need them.

I also forgot to look at my opened bottle to see if I could determine what sort of liner the cap had...old age memory issues.

I just looked at Micropur MP1 tabs. They seem to be a little more effective than Iodine. What do you all think?