Originally Posted by
Papa Tom
You more-serious touring cyclists will probably know this.
I am doing a three-day "credit card" tour, but I want to be able to refill my water bottles from a tap if I need to. Hotel water usually tastes horrible, so would it be worth it to buy some of those water purification tablets that campers use and use them to remove the taste and toxins from tap water?
Probably not. Water purification tablets are for addressing biological problems by killing those organisms…you are drinking dead beasties! Ick! They usually accomplish this by adding chlorine compounds to the water the taste of which most people find objectionable.
A filter might improve the taste and remove toxins but only if the filter has a carbon function in it. Hollow filter filters won’t remove anything other than objects too large to pass through the pores of the filter. If water will pass through it, any toxic materials will pass through.