How Safe is Your Drinking Water?

Water is the key to life. It is because of water that our planet can and does support life.

If there is no water, there is no life. However, 70% of the water on this planet is not suitable for drinking, unless it has been treated because it is contaminated and dangerous to our health when consumed.

Thanks to the world of science, we have ways to effectively remove impurities such as with the use of water purifiers, which are devices that remove impurities from ground water making is safe to drink.

Health Benefits of a Water Purifier:

Water purifiers remove many of the unhealthy contaminates from our drinking water.
Untreated ground water can and does contain countless contaminants including arsenic, bacteria, algae, viruses, fungi, minerals, and many other chemical pollutants, which find their way into our drinking water from runoff. The EPA has set standards for approximately 90 contaminants, which are found in our drinking water. For a complete list of all the probable contaminants, you can view the EPA's standards, and the possible source of each contaminant along with its possible health effects, at: epa.gov/safewater/mcl.html. Drinking pure water should not be seen as a luxury, it’s a necessity.

Depending on the type of water purifier used, it can kill or remove most of the bacteria and viruses as well as many of the other contaminates, making the water safe for drinking.

Water Purification Techniques:

There are several different ways to purify water, with the most common methods being carbon filtering, distilling, reverse osmosis, ion exchange, electrode ionization, water conditioning, and plumbosolvency reduction.

Carbon filtering:

Many home water filtration systems use this method. Carbon filters use charcoal, which has a high surface area that adsorbs most compounds. When the words “Activated Carbon” appear on a label, this means that it has been charged with a slight electro-positive charge. This charge attracts more impurities and chemicals to it as the water flows over the charged carbon surface.

Activated carbon filters remove or reduce the following chemicals and impurities: volatile organic chemicals (VOC), pesticides, herbicides, chlorine, benzene, trihalomethane (THM), radon, solvents and other chemicals that can be found in drinking water.

Carbon filters will NOT remove: antimony, arsenic, asbestos, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, fluoride, mercury, nickel, nitrates, nitrites, selenium, sulfate, thallium, certain radio nuclides, dissolved inorganic contaminants, metals, minerals, or salts like those that cause hard water or scale.

Reverse osmosis:

This process has been used in hospital laboratories, industrial, and in photo processing. Where all minerals have to be removed from water, in order not to interfere with any test or manufacturing process. Reverse osmosis water systems forces water through semi-permeable membrane, removing all minerals and contaminates from the water.

Ion exchange:

The most common form of ion exchange systems employ a zeolite resin bed that replaces the unwanted Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions with Na+ or K+ ions and is most commonly referred to as a water softener.

Electrodeionization:

This form of water purification usually passes the water first through a reverse osmosis unit to remove any nonionic organic contaminants, before passing the water through both a positive and negative ion selective membrane, which separates the positive ions toward the negative electrode and the negative ions toward the positive electrode, resulting in de-ionized water.

Plumbosolvency reduction:

Once water has left a water treatment facility, it is usually entirely free of lead. However, by the time it your home it has picked up lead from the pipes and fittings, especially in area with old and deteriorating infrastructures. To compensate for this, many municipalities add a small amount of phosphate ion to increase the water pH, which creates insoluble lead salts on the inner surfaces of the pipes.

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