Re: Thanks to Tom for being so helpful

Hello Ice4me,

The way these chemicals work is through CT values. C stands for concentration and T is the time needed to kill the pathogen.

There is some leeway in this, but if you reduce the concentration to the point where you need a very long contact time, the chemical may be used up by other things before it gets around to killing the pathogen.

For example: In wilderness water treatment, you add the chemicals to the water, let it sit for 10 minutes, then measure how much chemical is left in the water. If it is all used up, you need to add more. Once you get enough chemicals in the water to overcome the initial pathogen load, you can then go on with the purification process and let the chemicals work for the proper amount of time. The reason for the time is to allow the chemicals to penetrate and kill off the larger pathogens.

There are many studies that show the CT values for various pathogens on hard surfaces. Campylobacter has a CT of 15 where tuberculosis has a CT of 5000. While hard surface disinfection is well studied, there are no similar studies of what is needed inside the body.

PPM gives you the concentration. If you have determined that you need 16 PPM and use 8 PPM, your pathogens will not be cleared out. On the other hand, if you need 8 PPM and use 16 PPM, you subject yourself to excess chemicals and excess oxidative stress.

The "secret" to all of this is getting the right concentration of chemicals in contact with the pathogens for the amount of time needed to kill them off, and to do so without adding to the oxidative stress of the body.

Tom