Clean drinking water is essential for good health, but it’s not always clean at the source and almost always needs to be filtered. Since not all contaminants make water look dirty, you can’t assume that clear water is safe to drink. That applies to bottled water, too. Even if you get your drinking water directly from a natural spring bottled at the source, it’s crucial to test your drinking water periodically to ensure it’s clean.
Unfiltered water isn’t safe to drink
You’ve probably seen those memes floating around social media making a point about how kids in the 1980s and 1990s grew up drinking water from the hose and survived. That may be true, but it doesn’t mean they never got sick from drinking contaminated water, and it doesn’t mean tap water is safe to drink today.
Tap water can be contaminated with a wide variety of harmful chemicals, including arsenic, copper, lead, nitrate, and radon. That doesn’t include the potential for bacterial contamination, pharmaceuticals, and the presence of neurotoxins, like fluoride.
On top of that, 45% of tap water in the United States has been found to contain polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS), which are synthetic chemicals that break down so slowly they’re referred to as “forever chemicals.” These chemicals have serious, negative consequences on human health.
Whole-house filtration is the answer
Every home with running water should have some kind of whole-house water filtration system in place, even if nobody drinks the tap water. The contaminants found in tap water aren’t even good for washing dishes or doing laundry, and you definitely don’t want to give that water to your pets. For example, too much iron in the water will make your clothes turn yellow. A high concentration of metals creates hard water that leaves stains and makes it nearly impossible to rinse soap off your body in the shower. And if you aren’t filtering out the chlorine and fluoride, you’re going to be absorbing it through your clothes and any dishes you rinse off.
The ideal solution is to have both a whole-house water filtration system and a water softener. A water softener uses salt to reduce the hardness, and filters can remove a large number of contaminants. With a typical water filtration system, the water will first pass through a filter to remove sediment and dirt. Then, the water will pass through a carbon filter to remove chemicals, like chlorine and chloramine. If you want to filter out fluoride, you’ll need an additional, special filter.
You can also add UV water disinfection to your filtration system to remove 99.99% of harmful microorganisms, like Giardia, E-Coli, Cholera, Dysentery, Salmonella, and Cryptosporidium. However, UV disinfection should be the last stage in your filtration system, since particles in the water can block UV rays. Hikers, backpackers, and campers often use personal UV light water filters to safely drink from streams and lakes, but they use a basic filter first.
Avoid bottled water
Unless it’s spring water, bottled water should be avoided. Almost all bottled water is just filtered tap water, and it’s not even filtered well. Additionally, the plastic bottles leach toxic chemicals into the water, like polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
Get a personal water filter for your travels
If you travel to another country, or even just take a vacation locally, you can’t count on your destination having clean water, so bring your own water filter. Check out this review of various options used by outdoor enthusiasts for some good options. You probably don’t need anything big, but make sure you bring an extra filter just in case.
Stay up-to-date on your branded water filtration tests
In a perfect world, you could use any water filter on the market and feel confident about its efficacy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and you need to stay vigilant about what brands you use. For example, Berkey has been a leader in the water filtration industry for many years, but recently they were caught using unregistered silver in their filters, which is classified as a pesticide by the EPA. While silver is commonly used to disinfect water, they didn’t go through the proper channels to add it to their filters.
This incident caused people to take a closer look at Berkey’s test results, and they weren’t good. In fact, many people have been reporting that their filters make clean water worse, and test results don’t match reported claims.
Water quality is a matter of health
Your health depends on the quality of water you consume. To ensure optimal wellness for you and your family, get a whole-house water filtration system as soon as possible, and start testing your water quality regularly.
