Egypt Travel Answers

In Cairo, you can almost smell the chlorine in the tap water. Boiling continues to be the best approach, with chemical disinfection with iodine the second best. I was told by my travel medicine doctor that pure mechanical filtration is not good enough. He also suggested a device called a Steripen (UV process) as it does not affect the taste of the water. We used a steripen on a recent camping trip to Southern Africa, and do not seem to have had any problems. Proper battieries were the only issue we encountered with that approach.

Not only dont drink the water...dont brush your teeth using it...dont swallow any whilst in the shower...dont eat any salad or veg that you think may have been washed in it...peel all fruit before you eat it...I dont see the need to buy a filter which wont filter out the bugs and bacteria anyway or to add tablets to disinfect the water as they all leave a taste thats VILE so you cant drink the water after all...just make sure you drink bottled water and use it to brush your teeth also...check the seals on all bottles immediately and simply refuse any with a broken or open seal...I get the mother earth problem with all the plastic bottles but on a more serious note you could fall very, VERY ill on your travels if you dont take some simple precautions just because you want to avoid plastic bottles...you cant save the world if you are dead.

There are also sanitabs you can buy as used by the welfare people these can disinfect water to use as a cleaner or sanitizer and to wash food in..not to drink ...there are potable aqua tablets for making water drinkable but these need about 4 hours to work usually and make the water taste like chlorine..and also Straws of life...this might be your best option and you can buy them easily online here are some details en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeSt...

On a light note: you made it all sound like Egypt has one of the most dangerous tap water supply. I'm sorry to say that. I'm just wondering if the locals who cannot afford to buy bottled water to brush their teeth or water filter system to have a safer water don't get sick? Or how many percentage of the population in Cairo getting sick everyday from accidentally gulping a spoonful of tap water? With 4 visits now in Cairo or Egypt in general, we buy bottled water and we use the tap water in hostel/hotels we stayed at for brushing our teeth, so far we're ok. It can be that we belong to those having a tougher stomach tourists group? I believe there are people who are really sensitive with tap water but most travelers (if you want to be called a traveler) - some way or another - already got (in various degrees) used with using tap water for use, except drinking of course. But I don't discount that too, because I heard of some people who do. No pun intended ... Just saying.....

I suspect that the locals immune systems are more attuned to the local conditions and can fight infections better than those of us who are used to living in places with higher sanitary standards. I remmember chatting with the head off the Singapore water works during a flight. He was bemoaning the fact that Singapore had become so developed that people had to take the same precautions as westerners do. I had a similar chat with my travel medicine doctor prior to a recent trip to Namibia. The best solution is to boil the water (a rolling boil) for at least a minute. Cheap and no chemicals requred. He strongly recommended against pure filters, as they did not remove all bacteria and none of the viruses. He suggested a combination of filtration and iodine treatment in situations were we could not boil the water. One of his other recommendations was something called a Steripen (something another VTer had suggested as well). Advantages; portable and works quickly (a few minutes for a litre of water). Disadvantages; uses AA batteries, but you can't use the ones you find in every store. http://www.steripen.com/ The Steripen is the route we ended up following and had no issues at all during the trip (which was mostly camping in really remote places). We had used iodine on our trip to Egypt years ago, but it did make the water taste funny.

Oh no June Egypt is not the most dangerous water supply but it certainly isnt advised for non locals to drink...there are much worse places out there which reqire even stricter measures to ensure you dont make yourself sick on your trip