The Importance of Clean Water

In general, tap water in the United States is perfectly safe for human consumption. However, sometimes you may notice a funny color, odor, or taste. These often come from otherwise harmless contaminants like chlorine, sulfur, iron, and manganese. Home drinking water purification is a snap when it comes to filtering out these benign contaminates; in most cases, clean water is just a conventional activated carbon filter away. These kinds of water filters are available at many retail stores and even supermarkets and are very affordable.

Having clean water is not always so easy, however. If your water contains dangerous levels of other pollutants, you'll need to choose a water treatment technology that is appropriate for eliminating the toxins.

Water Purification in Public Systems
Less than 10 percent of the water produced by public systems is used for drinking and cooking. The vast majority of our tap water is used by business, industry, and for purposes such as bathing, washing clothes, etc. While our public utilities provide water that is safe to drink, it is neither practical nor cost effective for them to produce high-purity water, since most uses do not require this level of quality.

For the sake of discussion, it's easiest to group toxic pollutants into four categories: organic chemicals, inorganic chemicals, radio nuclides, and microbiological organisms. Organic chemicals include solvents, pesticides, synthetics, resins and other manmade chemicals; many are known as volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). Inorganic chemicals include nitrates and nitrites, asbestos, fluoride, and metals such as arsenic, mercury, and lead. Many of these occur as natural mineral deposits. Some, such as copper and lead, leach into water as it travels through pipes; the water filtration done by your water utility doesn't remove them.

Drinking Water Purification: What Water Filters Filter
Impurities in your water can be broken down into four categories: sediments, chemicals, dissolved solids, and microbiological organisms. Each of these can create water that is undesirable in smell or taste; some concentrations of impurities can cause sickness, though contaminants that would be dangerous are filtered out by your utility company. Homeowners using well water get a little help from Mother Nature when it comes to water purification, as earth's filtration system does a good job of catching harmful contaminants (though well water is notorious for containing non-threatening impurities that make water unappealing for drinking and can cause fluctuations in performance when cooking or cleaning).

Better Water Purification with a Home Filtering System
If you are buying a filtration system, consider filtering all incoming water instead of just putting a filter on the tap. Built-in water filters utilize several different technologies to clean water. Some filters only use one of these methods, while others take advantage of two or more in order to combat a wide range of contaminants.

Water softeners reduce the mineral content of hard water, substituting sodium for minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and iron. This also reduces mineral buildup in pipes and appliances. But because they add sodium salt, a potential health hazard to water, it's smart to install a softener only on the hot-water side of a water supply system so it won't affect the drinking water.

A reverse osmosis (RO) filter removes nearly all contaminants, particularly when combined with carbon filtration. Installed beneath the sink and connected directly to plumbing, an RO filter forces water through a membrane that permits only pure water molecules to pass.

A carbon filter can be connected to most RO filters to remove sediment and some contaminants that the membrane won't catch. Carbon post-filters attached to some RO filters are used to "polish" the taste of the water. Whether you have well water or you get water from a utility, having clean water is important; installing some type of water purifier for your whole house or even for one tap can make a big difference in how your water tastes and performs, too!

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