For smart DUers--would reverse osmosis purify the water in West Virginia?

[panader0]

Would it work on the kind of chemical that was spilled?

[Cooley Hurd]

1. By no means am I qualified to answer this succinctly...

...but I'm guessing the sheer volume of contaminated water makes this impossible?

[panader0]

2. I mean just for personal use.

These poor people can't bathe or even wash their hands.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. Good question. I will defer to those who stayed awake during Earth Science...

[marions ghost]

4. Probably

they'll just let it go on down to the Mississippi and degrade the river environment.

But the Q makes sense. One blogger (not an official source) says this:

"Boiling water wont remove the chemical. Best thing that residents can do is drink bottled water if available OR filter the water with a high quality Reverse Osmosis drinking water system. Activated carbon, carbon and ultra-filtration aren’t suitable for filtering this water."

But I don't know.

I will bump this thread in hopes of a water quality chemist coming along....

[MineralMan]

5. Probably, but there's just too much of it.

It sounds like once the stuff is thoroughly washed away downriver, and the water system thoroughly flushed, things should return to normal, eventually. But, it will take considerable time, and the flushing of the system will be complicated.

All in all, it's a major disaster for the folks who live there.

[mpgalloway]

6. Reverse Osmosis is useless against this chemical

I am a Reverse Osmosis dealer in Arizona for 25 years. In other word an expert on the subject.
A reverse osmosis membrane can filter 99.9% of solid particles out of the water. It can not filter
DNA spliced chemical molecules or was ever designed to. Reverse Osmosis is only for potable
water sources. That means water that is already fit for human consumption.

No chemical plants or storage of toxic industrial waste should ever be allowed anywhere near rivers or lakes it's
that simple.

Common sense seems to be lacking here. Maybe this will get a few more people aware of whats parked next
to their lakes and rivers before the next one happens?

[TheKentuckian]

7. Some of it is an eternal negotiation to make such damage "not so bad and fixable" so

nothing has to be done to stop such things in the future and use up precious political capital, seem unfriendly to business, or to avoid hurting profits.

[theHandpuppet]

9. In some ways WV's fate was sealed ages ago, by geography

The state is so mountainous that until a few short decades ago the only way to transport anything was by rail or barge. Transportation -- as well as places people could actually establish towns or cities -- had to be established next to waterways because they were the only places with narrow stretches of flat land to build. For many years when I worked in Virginia I had to take Route 60 through the mountains of WV to get home. Try that during the winter and you'll find out pretty fast why towns and commercial areas are located on the banks of the rivers. Of course none of these huge chemical plants that line the banks of the Kanawha should be there but there was (at least at one time) a very practical reason for it and unless these companies are given some financial impetus for moving their operations, they're not going anywhere.

[Zorra]

8. If we do it to coal mine owners and their corporate executives, for sure. nt