Water Filtration Systems

Let’s face it, water systems across the country are aging and try as the water companies do to make our water safe, by the time it travels through miles of old pipes and comes through our tap, it’s filled with a cocktail of unwanted and undesirable ingredients.

Lead, arsenic, chlorine, chlorides, nitrates, fuels, pharmaceuticals, pathogens and even micro-plastics are just some of the over 80 contaminants found in many of our public water systems today.

Flint Michigan’s lead contamination made the news, and brought our water problems into the light, but “Thousands of other cities and small towns across the country are serving water with lead or other contamination problems to millions of people.” states Lynn Thorp, national campaigns director for the nonprofit, Clean Water Action. (1) 

Most bottled water hasn’t tested to be much better, in fact, studies found more contaminants and micro-plastics in bottled waters than in tap water. (2)

A NRDC study tested three samples of more than 100 bottled-water brands and found a third of the bottles examined had bacteria or chemical contaminants that exceeded industry standards. (3)

These contaminants can cause a wide-range of serious health issues, both physical and behavioral.

Lets take a quick look at just one of them, Chlorine. Many city water departments use Chlorine to kill any bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens in the water.

Chlorine dries your skin and hair but in the low doses found in tap water, it’s harmless to humans.

Chlorine makes your water taste bad, and smell bad, but it’s pretty much harmless otherwise.

Serious health concerns started arising when it became known that Chlorine is binding with other active minerals in the water and creating dangerous compounds like trihalomethane (THM).

Can you say that last one three times fast? Me neither.

All of these Chlorine by-products are classified as Cancer Group B carcinogens (shown to cause cancer in lab animals).

So a disinfectant used to keep us safe from pathogens and parasites, instead created other chemical compounds that are dangerous to our health.

As a direct result of these dangerous Chlorine by-products, some water systems and cities are beginning to use and test other disinfection processes like ozone, and ultra-violet (UV) light.

Las Vegas NV recently switched from chlorine to using ozone.

Here in Riverside County California, our water systems use Chlorine as their primary disinfectant.

As a plumber, I can tell you that Chlorine also eats away at the rubber seals and gaskets used in faucets and toilets and causes leaks.

So we barely examine just one of the eighty plus contaminants in our water systems and there’s all kinds of issues already.

There’s potentially up to 80 more commonly found contaminants in our water.

Which is why since 2017, the bottled water industry has become the biggest beverage industry in the United States. (4)

But bottled water doesn’t protect you in the shower or bath, you probably aren’t cooking with it, and it’s often tested to be just as bad or worse than tap water. 

Thankfully, there are filtering media technologies that can remove the great majority of these unwanted contaminants.

Once a water test reveals exactly what’s in your water, a multi-media filter tank can be filled with several different types of filter media to target those exact contaminants.

Safe, refreshing, and great-tasting drinking water should never be taken for granted.

And we shouldn’t have to to pay 300 to 500 times the price of tap water for it!

The solution is to filter, and soften if necessary, the water you use everyday at the delivery point – your home, where you use the water.

Sources:

(1) https://www.nrdc.org/stories/whats-your-drinking-water

(2) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chemicals-in-tap-water-could-cause-100000-cases-of-cancer-in-u-s/

and https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/bottled-water-vs-tap-water

(3) https://time.com/5686811/is-bottled-water-safest-best/

(4) https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2018/06/01/Bottled-water-takes-top-spot-in-US-in-2017