We have e. coli bacteria in our water; how do we stay safe?

Question

The water system in our town was contaminated when a sewer was routed into the water supply. What is safe? I have purchased water for drinking and cooking and doing dishes. What about doing laundry and taking showers? They say it will be a week before we can safely use the water again; is that true? My dishwasher has a sanitizing cycle. Will that work for dishes or should I boil the water and do them by hand? They say we can use the water if we boil it for 1 minute; is that true?

Answer 1

If it's boiled for a couple minutes, it will kill all of the bacteria.

The Health Department don't want the liability of killing you so they won't tell you anything that's not true.

Answer 2

For washing your dishes, use bleach in your rinse water, for cooking boiling the water usually will kill any live bacteria, you can also use vinegar in your laundry to kill germs. Water is the one source of life that is being contaminated everyday,
Water is mad, thats why we have so many bad storms lately.
I don't know if you are a believer in positive thoughts and actions or not, but scienctists have prooved that if you bless your water beffore you drink it, it can change the molecular make up and actually purify it. before you drink your water, Ask for it to be blessed and thank water for its part in keeping your life alive.
Water is a live substance, it is life force. with out it we would die, so appreciate what you have and get rid of the bad stuff in it,Use a filterized water supply. yoiu can buy one at wal mart for about $50. to $100.00 buckes but it is well worth it.
buy one that has the system where you buy the filtered water bottle that you buy already filtered, this saves on buying filters all the time.
the hotter the water the better it is for killing any thing that is also alive in it.

Answer 3

boiling the water will indeed kill the bacteria in it, but it has to be for five minutes not one minute, ecoli is hard to kill. You can safely shower in the water as long as you don't open your mouth and ingest the water while you shower, doing laundry is fine, most soaps and bleach will kill the bacteria as well. Your dishwasher's sanitizing cycle should do a fine job on killing any bacteria present, to be safe, adding a teaspoon of bleach to the rinse cycle is a good idea.

Answer 4

i think it only applies if you are drinking the water.. so drinking and cooking need to have clean water just to be safe.. doing the dishes is ok since you let it dry out as well as doing laundry... shower would be risky since you might drink some... boiling the water helps since it makes the water clean...keep it at the boiling stage for maybe 5 mins

Answer 5

You probably would be safest boiling water. That's what I did here after Hurricane Isabelle blew threw and knocked out literally everything.

Another thing you can do is drink cranberry juice: Research has been done that suggests cranberry juice is able to somehow make e. coli bacteria less dangerous.

For laundry, you might want to ask a friend out of town to let you borrow her washing machine.

Good luck!

Answer 6

E Coli is a yucky bacteria that comes from poo and sewage related stuff.

Boil your water for a minute and all shall be fine!
if not then get water purifying tablets.

For laundry and dishes this may be more feasible.
Not sure how much they cost.

But it's better than getting gastro!

Answer 7

In South-Africa we often had polluted water. We used to boil the water in the kettle then poured it into buckets and covered it with clean dish-towels. We are all still alive today.:)

Answer 8

yes boil the water that should make it safe and boil water to sponge bathe with it til they say the water is safe

Answer 9

Yes, boil it. 1 minute at least.

Dishwasher santitizing will work too.

DO NOT DRINK IT even if you boil it (just to be sure). Use bottled water for drinking and cooking.

Answer 10

For sure and safety u should go for boiled water.