Storing water in Copper pots Kills Bacteria...

Found this info linked on the "Hacker News" site and thought I'd share it here for discussion.

I don't carry metal water bottles anymore but it's an interesting avenue to explore. For example, a copper flashed cooking pot would work in a pinch.

Copper pots Kills Bacteria : National Center for Biotechnology Information

What if you just stuck a piece of copper in one of your water bottles? How long would it take to decontaminate it?

I think it needs more research.

"When drinking-water (pH 7.83±0.4; source: ground) was contaminated with 500 CFU/mL of the above bacteria and stored in copper pots for 16 hours at room temperature, no bacteria could be recovered on the culture medium."

I'd rather not wait for 16 hours for a drink of water. Does sound promising, though.

Another one. Still is overnight.

It would be interesting to find the minimum time necessary and whether it works for Giardia, Crypto and others.

I'm curious about taste of water sufficiently treated this way. Once I was near about Mile 20 of the Ouachita Trail and found a signed spring flowing from a metal pipe and was so happy that I dumped my one bottle full of nasty tap water and filled it from the spring. It tasted like a mouthful of pennies. In a few hundred yards I dumped that and replaced it with very nice creek water. Now I taste before dumping old water.

Well that's a good line to follow.

I don't think it would flavor the water much. I've lived in houses with copper pipes and never noticed it.

If you filled a few bottles with creek water before dark and used them the next day the timeframe wouldn't be much of an issue.

Makes me wonder about the efficacy of a twisted wad of copper and silver wires left in a bottle?

99.9% pure copper

99.99% pure silver wire

We'd still need to determine minimum contact time.

That makes a lot sense. More surface area contact with the water and nasties in it.

Something like a steel wool would probably work pretty good.