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Iodine, Water, and Bacteria
Name: Lara G.
Status: Student
Age: 20s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: May 2004
Question:
I work in a wilderness program; my shifts are eight days
on, six off. We drop all our water with iodine- eight drops per gallon.
I drink at least a gallon a day, so I figure give or take I drink 64
drops of iodine every shift. Does this mess up the bacteria in my body?
Replies:
In large enough doses, everything is toxic. Here you have to balance the
risk of iodine toxicity vs. the consequences of being infected by a
water-borne pathogen or parasite (in the wild). I would vote for iodine every
time!! An approximate calculation (below) suggests you are quite safe: 1ml ~
20 drops. You take 8 drops.
Let us make that 10 drops to be conservative. So you ingest about 0.5 ml. of
iodine solution. I do not know what the concentration is, but lets say that
it is 1% active I2. So your 0.5 ml (assuming a density of 1 gm/ml, close
enough) contains about 0.005 gm I2 or 5 mg/day. The toxicity rating for
iodine for humans in the literature is 28 mg/kg. Estimate a body weight of
132 lb = 60 kg, which places the toxicity level of I2 at 1680 mg = 1.7 gm.
So you are well below any toxicity concerns. Iodine is rapidly metabolized,
so unless someone had a thyroid disease, its use should be quite safe in my
estimation.
Vince Calder
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Update: June 2012
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