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I understand that putting water in a clear bottle, nothing else, in the sun will eventually make water safe to drink but I don't know the details. Does anyone know the details? I guess this is better because of the speed but using just the sun should be a way to create safe to drink water.

Note: Here's an article I found. Who knew? https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/to-disinfect-water-c...

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Yes, the UV and heat will sterilise the water from bacterial or viral contamination. If you have chemical contamination it will not take that away.

https://akvopedia.org/wiki/UV_treatment_/_Solar_disinfection...

I was confused by this because I thought glass blocked UV, but apparently it lets UV-A through and only blocks UV-B and UV-C: https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q12082.html

I also found a study that suggests UV-A might not be effective against viruses (although at a guess they're not a common contaminant in drinking water compared to bacteria): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8701782/

As far as I know it's plastic bottle not glass bottle.

Borosilicate glass does let UV-B pass.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borosilicate_glass

Quite a bit more expensive, though. And even better would be pure SiO2, fused quartz/silica.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fused_quartz

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