The award-winning LifeStraw personal water filter can travel with you anywhere. Weighing just two ounces and measuring only nine inches long, LifeStraw is ideal for hiking, backpacking, camping, travel, and emergency preparedness. The straw-style filter design lets you turn up to 264 gallons of contaminated water into safe drinking water, filtering out protozoa and bacteria.

Colors available: Light blue with dark blue end caps

Weight: Roughly two ounces

MSRP: $19.99

Applications: Hunting , camping, emergency-response scenarios, any outdoor-style activity

Pros:

• Very affordable
• Lightweight
• Easy to use, with no moving parts

Cons:

• None that are readily apparent

Overall performance:
The LifeStraw is an amazingly simple piece of kit that can save your life. The human body will need clean drinkable water more than it needs food, and the LifeStraw has been proven by the United Nation and the Environmental Protection Agency to provide water that is 99.9 percent free of waterborne bacteria including E. Coli and Salmonella.

It will also remove 99.9 percent of all Giardia and Cryptosporidium while removing turbidity (suspended solids in water). If you camp, hike, hunt, or do any outdoor activity, then you need this. I have had friends who were hunting and almost died due to dehydration. They ended up contracting a mild case of Giardia from drinking out of tainted water sources. These same friends now pack a LifeStraw in their camp packs every time they go out. At a cost of $19.99, they make an attractive stocking stuffer.

The LifeStraw can be purchased here.

Featured image courtesy of Lifestraw

This article courtesy of Rick Dembroski of The Loadout Room.