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The market is literally flooded with water treatment options. Reverse osmosis systems, loose granular activated carbon, solid carbon block filters, and distillers all promise sparkling, clean water, but how do you know which one is really best? With a little research, you can find the ideal water treatment system for you.

1, Find out the source of your home’s water. If you are receiving water from a well on your property rather than municipally treated water, your needs will be much different.

2, Is your well water treated (chlorinated) or untreated? Chlorination will kill all bacteria and virus — then the chlorine can be completely removed by a good whole house pre-filter and/or chlorine-removing fixtures in the bathrooms, coupled with a solid carbon block drinking water system at the kitchen tap.

3, Chlorine is also inexpensive to administer and maintain; it keeps the entire water system cleaner and freer of algae, bacteria and other pipe and holding tank contaminants. (This is in contrast to ultraviolet (UV) radiation to kill bacteria and viruses. UV is expensive to buy, expensive to maintain and only disinfects for a short length of the pipe downstream from the light.)

4, Is there dirt, turbidity, or other organic matter in your well or spring water? Put a good 10 to 15 micron pre-filter to remove these big chunks before they hit your house taps.

5, Reverse osmosis and distillation, by themselves, do not remove bacteria, viruses, and some chemicals; all reputable RO and distiller units are always coupled with good carbon filtration, preferably carbon block, to ensure removal of these contaminants.

6, Learn about specific water contaminants in your area. A lot of this information can be found out through the EPA. Also, each year your city should produce a water safety report, discussing the incidence of specific contaminants in your city’s water. However, using a filter that removes the widest range of contaminants overall guarantees that you will be protected, no matter what the contamination.

7, Find out about the use of pesticide chemicals in your area. Water in Midwestern states is much more likely to contain chemicals from pesticide runoff. In fact, any agricultural area is subject to groundwater contamination from pesticides, herbicides and fertilization by-products.

8, Determine if your city receives its water from surface water or groundwater sources. Groundwater is much cleaner, overall, and may need only mild treatment with a home water filter. However shallow wells or dug well can be contaminated by pesticides, petroleum spills and animal droppings. In either case, there is contamination that can be removed by the right technology.

9, Find out if your community fluoridates its water. Fluoride can be particularly damaging to the elderly and has been linked to cases of Alzheimer’s disease. If complete fluoride removal is a concern for you, consider the RO technology coupled with solid carbon block, to guarantee fluoride-free drinking water.

10, Evaluate the needs of your family. If anyone in your family is prone to asthma or respiratory illness, you will want to cut down on chlorine fumes in your home with the use of a whole house pre-filter that can remove 80+% of the chlorine entering the home, or put a chlorine-removing shower head (or chlorine-removing tub ball) in every bathroom.

11, Learn about your home’s plumbing system. Many homes built before 1998 contain lead in their pipes that can corrode into drinking water. If you have lead pipes, you will definitely need a point-of-use water treatment system that is certified by an American National Standards Institute accredited certification body such as WQA Gold Seal or NSF International to remove all lead.

12, Recognize that some believe that distillation is the only method in which water can be purified. The thinking goes that the only real definition for pure water is “H20” with a complete absence of any contaminants. Distillation mimics the hydrologic cycle of evaporation (boiling to steam), precipitation (precipitation in an apparatus), normally a condensing coil), and condensation leading to rain (water cooled usually by a fan and and drips into a sterile container).

13, However, the problem is that distillation, by itself, does not remove all chemical pollution. Some chemicals evaporate and re-condense, just like the water, and pass through with the “pure” water. All reputable distillers have good carbon post-filters, such as a carbon block, to completely clean all the water coming through the unit.

14, The other problem with distilled water itself is that the water is lacking an ion, and it aggressively attaches to calcium and other minerals in the body, and flushes them out. For a short time cleaning agent for the body, in the case of health problems, distilled water can work well. But for an everyday, lifetime beverage, distilled water is actually unhealthy over time, and can negatively affect teeth, bones and other bodily processes dependent on trace minerals. At the very least, you need to take mineral supplementation to counteract this factor.

15, Take all of the above factors into consideration when researching and purchasing a water treatment system. The EPA recommends that if you have a well it should be tested annually for bacteria and other impurities. Remember that not only do you drink water but you brush your teeth and wash your fruits and vegetables and dishes in water that could be contaminated.

16, Testing is the only way to determine if your water is suitable for drinking and other uses. You can have the test performed by a chemist or a certified laboratory; you can go to your local water board and get the most recent water quality testing reports that they provide to the public.

17, Understand that testing is only telling you what was in your water at the moment the water sample was taken. A day, a week, a month or later, you could have contamination from any number of sources come through your pipes and you would never know it. While testing is valuable, the better use of your dollars would be to put in a system that is certified to remove the most contaminants — in this way, you have total peace of mind.

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