Unfortunately, the quality of water in the world has diminished due to a massive amount of chemicals and contaminants getting into the water supply. This has led to a number of people realizing the only way to get the quality water they need is by using home water purifiers.

What many people fail to realize however, is that your health is affected not only by the water you drink, but also by the water that you shower in, bathe in and cook with as well.

What’s worse, is many people show no concern over the quality of their drinking water, thinking they can protect themselves just by drinking bottled water. What they don’t know, is that more often than not, that expensive bottled water they are drinking hasn’t been properly filtered and is no better than the water that is coming from their tap!

The government has placed no standards on companies that sell bottled water that make them supply water that is more pure than tap water. There are no standards in place that prevent bottled water companies from filling up their bottles from a non-filtered water supply.

Essentially, people are spending hundreds of dollars a year purchasing bottled water believing that it is better for them, when all they are doing is just wasting their money. Money that would be better spent invested in a quality home water purifier that will actually work to filter their water.

The key however, is to purchase a water purifier that will really work. Many home water purifiers work by reverse osmosis, which is an extremely ineffective way to filter your tap water. These filters create distilled water, which is water that has been stripped of it’s natural and organic minerals.

These minerals are essential for our bodies. Just take a look at nature. There is not a single water source on the planet that does not contain these natural minerals. Our bodies are meant to have them. Minerals such as magnesium, calcium and potassium should be present in your drinking water in order to provide the highest level of health benefits.

Using reverse osmosis home water purifiers, you are ending up with demineralization water that is unhealthy for your body and can cause a great number of negative affects as well. Just because the reverse osmosis home water purifiers remove contaminants, does not make them an optimal choice for a water filter.

Instead, you need to look at home water purifiers that work to effectively remove contaminants like chlorine, volatile organic chemicals, lead, etc., such as multi-stage filters. These filters work best for removing harmful chemicals, while leaving behind the healthy minerals that your body needs.

While these filters may seem expensive at first, you’ll spend far less than you would purchasing bottled water for a year and you will get higher quality water. You know you’re going to have to spend money in order to provide your family with clean drinking water. Doesn’t it make more sense to spend money on a product that will actually be able to provide it?

Not if you’re drinking unfiltered water. Now that you’ve increased your water intake, you’ve also increased the amount of harmful chemicals that are in your body that are found in almost every water supply around the country. Chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, chlorine and benzene are all present in non-filtered drinking water as well as radon, lead and other heavy metals.

These undesired additives are not only present coming from your unfiltered tap water, but then make their way into anything you make with that water. Coffee, tea, foods that call for water and even your ice supply remain loaded with these chemicals if you do not have a quality water filtration system in place.

Many people simply don’t realize the threat that comes from drinking unfiltered tap water. There is always a lot of hype surrounding the quality of tap water, whether bottled water is better, and if our drinking water is safe. It can be hard for a person to determine what is the truth and what is a lie to try and get people to buy a certain product.

The fact of the matter is, most of the bad things you hear about your drinking water are true, and though bottled water companies try to drive home the point that their water is better for you, most of them use poor quality water filtration systems that really aren’t doing much to improve the quality of your drinking water. Additionally, purchasing bottled water will get extremely expensive over time. Having a home water filter that will filter your tap water and provide you with clean, quality drinking water will help save you a great deal of money.

If you feel your tap water is safe, try having it tested by a certified lab that will provide you with concise results about what contaminants are in your drinking water. This will either give you the peace of mind that your water is indeed safe, or the warning that you need that a quality water filtration system is needed because there are in fact contaminants present.

Chances are, whether you get your water from a well or from a water processing plant, your water has toxins present. The ground water that supplies us with most of our water is loaded with chemicals from landfills, septic tank leaching, use of herbicides and pesticides from farming and even emissions from naturally occurring deposits.

If having your water tested is too expensive for you, you can check how well your water processing plant is processing your drinking water by reading the annual Consumer Confidence Report for your area. This report is required by the Environmental Protection Agency, and will provide you with information about the quality of water in your area compared to the EPA’s drinking water health standards. Keep in mind however, that the quality of water coming out of your tap can be quite different from the quality of water tested from the processing plant.

As you can see, it is extremely important to have a quality water filtration system in place to help protect you and your family. Consuming the many chemicals that are found in the water supply can lead to cancer, organ damage, circulatory problems, skin conditions and many other health ailments. These conditions are particularly harmful to infants, children and the elderly who may compromised immune systems.

Scientists have learned that there are more than 2100 contaminants in the water supply that can cause cancer. Reverse osmosis treatment for water actually removes very few of these contaminants. Reverse osmosis water filter systems work by forcing water through a semi-permeable membrane that allows water to pass, while trapping large molecular structured contaminants behind.

The problem is, most contaminants have a smaller molecular makeup than water molecules, so they are easily able to pass right through that membrane and remain in your water. Realistically, reverse osmosis water filter systems were just not meant to be used as an in-home water filtration system to provide clean, clear drinking water.

People that have large particle contaminants in their feel that they are doing good by purchasing a reverse osmosis treatment system, because once they use it they are no longer able to “see” the contaminants left behind in the water. They don’t realize that additional filters are needed to remove chemicals that cannot be seen, to ensure that their water is really clean.

In fact, some of the most harmful contaminants that can be found in water are too small to be seen by the naked eye, and will not be removed by reverse osmosis treatment systems. There are microscopic parasites that can be found in the water that can cause severe health issues, and even death.

These parasites, known as cysts, cannot be blocked by reverse osmosis water filter systems. They are also resistant to chlorine, a chemical used by most water filtration plants to clean the water. This is why it is so important that you choose a multi-stage water filtration system for your home, to ensure that your family is only consuming clean drinking water that is not contaminated.

Though there are government standards in place that require our water to be of a certain quality, these standards fall drastically short of actually providing us with water that is safe for consumption. It is up to you to make sure that you take the necessary steps to purchase a quality water filtration system for your home to ensure that your family is drinking water that is healthy.

Though reverse osmosis water filter systems do have their place in the world, in your home is not one of them. Fortunately, water filtration technology has advanced enough that you can find excellent water filters that will provide your entire household with clean, quality water that you don’t have to worry about.

The first major shock for me was the sheer quantity of US citizens who are dinking from a residential water supply that has been, and continues to be, contaminated by drugs. Take a guess? What kind of figure do you imagine it to be? 41,000? Maybe higher say 410,000? Try 41,000,000! That’s right; 41 MILLION people are affected by this problem in some of the most populated areas of the USA including San Francisco and Philadelphia.

The shocks do not end here though; the list of substances found is also astounding, including trace elements of medication used to treat hormone imbalance, angina, asthma, heart problems, high cholesterol, anxiety and epilepsy. Nobody can know for sure what the long term effects of inducting these kinds of medication can be.

Now for the hands down, big daddy of all shocks, are you ready for this? US Federal Regulations do not require the water supply to be tested for drugs, there are no guidelines or measures in place to regularly test the water supply for drug contamination, and there are no limits placed upon the quantities of drugs that can be found within the water supply. Basically nothing is checked and nothing is done to remove these potentially harmful substances.

Personally I am disgusted by this situation, there can be no doubt in my mind that the constant induction of even the most mild pharmaceutical drug for a period of years can be anything but damaging to a person’s health. I fully expect other nations to begin coming into the firing line soon, as the global public picks up this startling news and runs with it.

Over the last 5 months, Associated Press monitored the water supply in 24 metropolitan areas of the United States, and found a whole myriad of different drugs in the residential waters supply, consumers are understandably shocked by this.

How do drugs get into the water supply in the first place? Quite simply they find their way into waste water, as human being either consume or discard them. This waste water is obviously not filtered effectively, allowing traces of the drugs in question to re-enter the residential water supply.

Simple logic tells us that our residential water supplies are not being filtered and cleansed effectively, and that the water treatment plants themselves are now incapable of ensuring we have a clean, safe and healthy water supply piped into our homes. The problem lays in the fact that there is little standardisation of the actual filtration techniques used by individual water purification plants, often plants will use old and ineffective equipment, or will fail to upgrade to a newer, more effective technology once it becomes clear that their old equipment can no longer perform adequately.

It becomes increasingly clear that providing your own filtration system, to clean your own water supply is fast becoming a requirement instead of a luxury in major urban areas. Luckily there are plenty of cost effective filtration systems on the market, many of which are fully capable of supplying healthy water for the entire household.

If you are concerned over the purity of your residential water supply., you may like to consider getting it tested, you may well be shocked by the results!

Reverse Osmosis Filters

I have a friend who was a submariner for many years in the Dutch Navy; he has told me many stores about the way water was filtered on the subs he served on, all of which used a form of reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis works by drawing the water through an extremely fine membrane, this membrane acts as a filter, and can be used to remove salt and other impurities from a water supply. Interestingly enough, my friend tells me that no matter what, the water always tasted of diesel fuel, although I am sure this was due to the fact the filter was installed on a submarine with diesel engines! It should be noted that reverse osmosis will also remove many trace minerals from the water supply, many of which are deemed to be beneficial to a healthy life.

Catalytic Conversion Filters

A water filter which uses a process of catalytic conversion works in almost exactly the same way that the catalytic converter in a motor vehicle is used to control emissions. Certain substances such as chlorine and heavy metals are oxidised and broken down into their basic component form. The original design of these units can be traced back to Estonia, and some starling results have been achieved. A catalytic conversion filter can be used to turn a very bad water supply, such as a stagnant pool, and create safe, drinkable water which would pass WHO (World Health Organisation) safety checks. In addition to filtration, the catalytic converter will also change the PH value of the water and produce an alkaline supply. This is an incredible form of filtration which is just beginning to find its way into the mainstream domestic market; more on this in future posts for sure.

So there we have it, over the last few posts I have introduced plenty of information for people to read over, and familiarise themselves with filtration technology, before I dive into the deep end so to speak, and begin to discuss real world applications and situations.

The theory behind Electrolyzed Alkaline Water Filters was developed over 40 years ago in Russia, and is very simple indeed. By using magnetic plates and a ceramic filament, water can be separated into two distinct streams, one alkaline and one acidic. These two distinctly different types of water, produced from one input stream, have separate applications.

Alkaline based water is mainly used for consumption, far healthier to drink and cook with. Most well known chefs insist that their cooking supply is as Alkaline as possible, as they consider the taste to be more pleasing.

Acidic water is used for cleansing, either of the body or for general household cleaning. The acidic nature of the water means that it is in itself a natural antiseptic. Acidic water has been proven to be better for dermal application, causing healthier results that alkaline water.

Generally an Electrolyzed Alkaline Water Filter will be installed and used to feed separate rooms or areas of the house, enabling the owner to direct the correct type of water for each application. This can be somewhat expensive, as the best of these systems will feature duel plumbing, to allow both acidic and alkaline water to be supplied depending upon the application. Smaller units can be used to process the residential supply and collect the separate streams into a container, to be used as necessary.

It should be noted, that although we do classify this technique as a filtration method, it does not actually cleanse the water in any way, it simply allows the owner to split water by PH value.

Distillation Filters

For a very long time, people were firm in the belief that consuming the purest water possible, was also the most healthy option, and there can be no doubt that the process if distillation produces very pure water. More recently, people have begun to realise that the natural minerals found within water are important to the body, thus distillation removes these beneficial minerals alongside the less useful contaminations. Typically a distiller will also produce fairly acidic water as output.

Ultra Violet Filtration

If you have ever kept an aquarium, it is possible that you are already aware of UV filtration methods, as they are widely used to clean the water contained in the fish tank. UV filtrations use a very high frequency light, which irradiates the water through an element made of glass. As water passes over the element it is exposed to this light, which is quite capable of killing all known organism. UV based filtration systems are particularly well suited in third world situations, where the possibility of the water supply being contaminated by potentially harmful bacteria, is fairly high.
Ultra Violet filtration is a very effective way of sterilising a water supply, arguably the most effective solution of all. However, there are some drawbacks; there is no way to actually discern if the filtration unit is working effectively without the resulting output supply being tested in a laboratory environment. Many of the more complex and expensive UV filtration systems will incorporate a counter, which indicates how many hours the filter unit has been run for on the current element, when a particular hour count is reached, the element will need to be changed.

Infra Red Filtration

There have been a fair few filtrations systems introduced which use Infra Red energy. IR is a totally natural type of energy, which is emitted by certain minerals such as semi-precious gemstones. IV energy is capable of softening the water supply and to put it into a negative charge state. Furthermore, IR filtration will restructure the water molecules into much smaller cluster, allowing the body to induct them more efficiently and help with hydration. IR filtration units are a great choice for installation at any form of sporting club or facility; due to the fact the water supply produced by them is very quick to hydrate the body once it has been imbibed.

There are several types of charcoal water file; the best performing, yet lowest flow rate type of charcoal filter will use a solidified block of carbon, much like a honeycomb. Next we have Activated Silver Impregnated Charcoal, which is often known as Chlorgon. This type of filtration system brings chlorine exclusion and an anti-bacterial system to the table, making it a great choice for cleaning biological and chemical toxins from a water supply. Lastly, we have a loose carbon type filter, which is often the cheapest, yet least effective form of filtration.

It is important to note that charcoal based filtration systems only remove impurities from a water supply, they cannot be used to change the pH balance of the water, and so if you have a rather acidic water supply to start with, you will still have an acidic supply once it has been filtered.

Carbon filters can also be susceptible to a build up of mould within the filter unit, you need to remember that a filtration unit is basically removing all of the garbage from your water supply; this garbage builds up in the actual filter, which means it will require maintenance from time to time. Taste is a good indication of the state of your charcoal filter, when the water starts to taste anything but good, then it is time to change the filter. Carbon based filtration units also lose effectiveness over time, so it is important to change the filter regularly to maintain a continuous supply of healthy, clean water.

Overall, carbon based filtration systems work very well with a residential water supply, and are among the easiest and cheapest to maintain.

The clear benefits that a good water filtration system can provide, can be found in the fact that many of the best types of water filters can remove a high quantity of this contaminations, ultimately providing you with cleaner, purer and above all safer water.

Many people will tell you that they are aware of the issue regarding contaminants in residential water supplies, and that they only consume bottled water because of this. Quite frankly, this is not strictly any better than drinking straight from the tap, as in many states, bottled water is required to be no more pure than the standard residential supply.

If we consider the facts, it becomes increasingly apparent that water filtration is arguably the only cost effect means of ensuring that you and your family, are consuming the purest water possible. Filtration systems work in various way, in my next blog entry I will explore the different methods used by some of the best water filtration systems.