Would a water filtration system catch this?

[keep]

Remember the elk deaths in NM that no one could figure out what happened. Well, they figured it out and it was a neurotoxin from blue green algae. Would the water filtration systems most of us use catch this?
http://news.yahoo.com/culprit-mysterious-elk-deaths-found-175716999.html

 

[Darren Best]

The algae, probably, the neurotoxin they produce, I very much doubt it.

I would be suspicious of most any filter that claims it could remove it.

A carbon and ceramic element is required at the minimum.

 

[Colo4x4XJ]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15812023

I would've thought the UV pens were effective but I guess not. I am perplexed as to how the uv filters can eliminate viruses but not neurotoxins. One more reason to filter from moving water I guess

 

[Darren Best]

All the UV pens do is flip a switch on live organisms and make them unable to reproduce, they don't filter anything out.

 

[Colo4x4XJ]

UV pens work by killing viruses, bacteria and Protozoa with low levels of radiation. You're right, technically they don't filter, they purify

 

[birdman1]

Portable water filtration systems wont filter this. You need to chemically treat blue green algae. I build water treatment plants and sometimes a town or water coop gets it in their reservoirs and they have to stop production of water until it can be chemically treated. A bio filter system with UV treatment isn't enough.

 

[2ski]

So is aquamira enough to kill it? Since its a chemical?

 

[ftballman125]

Neither Aquamira nor water filtration would be enough to rid the water of the neurotoxin proteins fully if they are like typical algal toxins... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralytic_shellfish_poisoning

 

[elkmtngear]

You can kill the organism; but you can't "kill" the toxin because it's not alive, it's just a chemical produced by the organism.

If it were positively or negatively charged, you might be able to remove it with an ion filter.

 

[Where's Bruce?]

Nope...everyone stop hunting in NM. I promise i won't hunt there either. I swear!! TRUST ME!