"David P" wrote in message
...
On 05 May 2006, "nightjar" nightjar@insert my surname here.uk.com
wrote:

A kettle does not boil water long enough to disinfect it. Why not
put less water in the kettle to begin with? If you do this
regularly, you should have a fair idea of how much water you will
need.

Colin Bignell



Seems that there is some debate out there about the period to boil
for.

This makes a reference to 5 minutes and 1 minute.
http://www.high-altitude-medicine.com/water.html

This seesm to back it up
http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/dw/boil_...dures_cons.asp

But others disagree
http://www.oas.org/dsd/publications/...ea59e/ch23.htm

The WHO guidelines to disinfection techniques recommend a minimum of five
minutes.

We need to be careful about "sterilise" which is killing all germs
and is not needed here and "disinfect" which is killing sufficient
germs so that the remainder is not a problem.

Even sterilisation does not guarantee to kill all germs. It only gives a
known probability of doing so, if the initial bioburden is below a set
level.

Colin Bignell