While a wilderness source may seem perfectly clear and clean, it can carry microscopic pathogens—harmful, disease-causing organisms that are invisible to the naked eye. The only real way to verify that your water is safe to drink is to treat it. And the effort it takes to treat water is minor compared to the complications of illness.

Purchasing a water treatment device can be tough. From the various technologies available to the numerous claims by manufacturers, it can be hard to understand what you’re even buying—and why. To help with this, we look at one of the most common claims water filters make and how you can decode it.

Just about every water filter out there requires that you clean its cartridge to flush away filtered-out material and restore its flow rate. As a bonus benefit, cleaning your filter regularly will also extend its lifespan. Giving your water filter a quick backflush will keep it running at its optimal rate.

Water is our most important resource, but you never know when a disaster could compromise your local water supply. We’ve put together the information you need on some clean water solutions to help ensure you have access to water that’s safe to drink during all kinds of emergencies.

The best way to greatly minimize the risks of infection is by treating backcountry water with a filtration or purification system (more on that later), but you should also educate yourself about the wilderness water contaminants that pose immediate threats to your health, and the backcountry “zones” in which you are more likely to encounter them.

We developed this series of water treatment articles to help you make an informed decision. Each overview links to a deeper story on the subject. The information presented here is founded in peer-reviewed science and communicated by the experts at the Mountain Safety Research water research lab.