Jim Humble suggests that to purify a gallon of water, removing fluoride, heavy metals, and pathogens, you should use 1 drop of Miracle-Mineral-Supplement . It is preferred to activate the single drop, but if you let the water stand overnight it will be ready to go after that resting time.

The question comes to mind that if 1 drop can purify a gallon of water, why do people need to take 15 drop doses 2 - 3 times a day for several weeks. I have been hiking in areas where the water has a lot of pathogens in it, and while this is not a totally fair comparison, the scale of it leaves me wondering.

I think Jim Humbles suggestion may be fine for tap water that has already been processed, but not for raw water.

Let's look at some numbers...

1 drop of Miracle-Mineral-Supplement is about 0.06 ml. In one gallon of water, this ends up with a solution that has about 2.5 PPM available chlorine dioxide. The proper way to treat water is to use hydrochloric acid as the activator and release all of the available ClO2 at once.

Using the Miracle-Mineral-Supplement activation method, I get about 1 PPM free ClO2 in 1 liter of water using 0.06 ml of MMS. This means that in a gallon of water, the free ClO2 will be about 0.26 PPM.

With raw water, we are worried about cysts (cryptosporidum). Studies have shown that you need a contact time of about 1200 to kill cysts. With a concentration of 0.26 PPM free ClO2, you would have to let the water sit for about 77 hours to get a complete disinfection. This is slightly longer than overnight...

If we released all of the available ClO2, the contact time would be about 8 hours with the one drop dose. This is in contrast to Jim Humbles thoughts that the water would be ready in 2 - 3 minutes.

I am disappointed that Jim Humble doesn't understand how to purify water using a chlorine dioxide solution...

In an emergency situation, or when hiking you can purify your drinking water by using 0.176 ml of MMS (about 3 drops) and activate it with the same amount of 50% citric acid . In 1 liter of water you will end up with about 10 PPM free ClO2. Let this sit for 2 hours and you are ready to drink. At very cold temperatures, below 35 F, you may want to wait an additional half hour or so to make sure all of the cysts are dead. At the end of the 2 hours I usually have some free ClO2 left and I add a little Fruit Fresh to completely use up the ClO2 left in solution.

Since we don't know what the pathological load is on the water, I feel it is always good to have a little extra ClO2 left over. That way I can measure it and know that I have killed off all of the bad stuff in the water. The Fruit Fresh does an excellent job of using up any left over ClO2, and you end up with excellent tasting water.

In an emergency situation, good drinking water is essential. If you have to take your water from streams or lakes, you will need to add more than 1 drop per gallon to purify it. On the other hand, if you are just getting water from your toilet tank, 1 drop per gallon may be all that you need.

Tom