LifeStraw Escape Water Purifier Review: I Drank Swamp Water to See If It Works

When LifeStraw releases a new product, we usually give it a close look. The company focuses on disaster and humanitarian relief. And in both the lab and the field, its high-capacity filters are proven to provide clean, safe drinking water under extremely challenging conditions — including, at the time of writing, in Gaza and Ukraine. With natural and man-made disasters on the rise in the United States, those filters are proving useful here as well.

Most filters intended for home use, including Brita-type pitchers and undersink filters, do not remove bacteria or viruses, so they don’t provide disease protection during the boil-water orders that follow many natural disasters. Most camping-oriented filters remove waterborne bacteria and parasites (and sometimes viruses as well), but only a few address the man-made contaminants that are often present in floodwater.

Like all of LifeStraw’s products, the Escape contains a hollow fiber membrane filter. These consist of small porous tubes, and they work by physically excluding particulate contaminants — most notably bacteria and, in the case of the Escape’s filter, viruses (which are much smaller). It also contains an activated carbon and ion-exchange filter that removes many man-made contaminants. These contaminants are of particular concern in industrialized countries, because fertilizers, pesticides, and petroleum products make their way into water supplies during heavy rain and flooding.

Across several weeks of testing the Escape, I found it was easy to use, to clean, and to transport. And after filtering and drinking the water from a pungent local slough, I’m convinced of its abilities.

I personally vouch for its health-preserving abilities. For convenience, I did most of my hands-on testing using water from my garden hose — potable stuff that doesn’t actually need to be filtered. (I’ve tested it.) But that was just kicking the proverbial tires. To really test-drive the Escape, I used a sample from a stagnant creek. Rain had been falling for days, ensuring that the water contained plenty of runoff from the adjacent golf course/Canada goose landing strip, in addition to its usual load of cyanobacteria and marine fuel. I filtered a couple of gallons, drank 40 ounces of it over the course of a day, and came through completely unscathed. The water also tasted nice — without a hint of swampiness.

Fill, pump, and drink. Unlike many of its competitors, the Escape does not require a working faucet, and it doesn’t need a source of electricity. You just fill it with any freshwater that’s available — from a lake, stream, puddle, or rain barrel — and pump it by hand. It produces up to 20 gallons of clean, safe drinking water an hour, per LifeStraw.

After filling its 5-gallon tank, you just screw on the lid and then work the integrated pump handle up and down, pressurizing the tank. Water is forced through the filter at a claimed rate of up to 1.3 liters (44 fluid ounces, or 1.37 quarts) per minute. In my testing, however, I averaged just under a liter per minute, which works out to about 15 gallons per hour.

The pumping is not physically taxing. But you’ll want teammates if you need to keep the Escape going continuously (if you were using it to supply water for a whole neighborhood, for example). If you need water for just a single household, you can probably produce enough by yourself in 15 or 20 minutes. The CDC recommends a gallon of drinking water per person per day. A full tank weighs nearly 60 pounds, though, so moving it around is easier with a partner.

The Escape is robust by design. The tank is rotomolded as a single piece for strength, the way high-quality insulated coolers are. “You can stand on it if you need to,” said LifeStraw CEO Alison Hill. (I didn’t need to, but I stood on it anyway to check.) The only moving parts are the pump handle and a small pressure-relief valve on the lid. I asked about field repairs, and Hill said the Escape is designed not to need any: “When you send out a product with a repair kit, in an emergency situation, the repair kit immediately gets lost.”

Maintenance is simple. You can store the Escape for up to 30 days between uses by simply emptying it and letting it air-dry. For long-term storage, you flush it with a weak bleach solution, leaving about an inch of the solution covering the filter and sealing the tank shut with the lid. The membrane filter, which captures pathogens and fine particles, needs occasional backflushing to maintain its efficiency; the Escape comes with a large syringe for doing this, and the process takes only a few minutes. The membrane filter is rated to last for about 4,700 gallons, and the carbon filter (which neutralizes industrial chemicals) is rated to last for about 160 gallons. LifeStraw sells replacements for both.

Although the Escape is designed for emergencies, Hill told me it has been adopted by group campers and even construction crews (sometimes the only water source on a jobsite is nonpotable). You might find situations of your own where the Escape solves a problem. (I can imagine my parents using one at their first home, a cabin without running water in the West Virginia woods.) And if disaster strikes, you can use it as intended: to keep yourself and your friends and loved ones hydrated until your tap water is safe to drink again.