By Heather Nicholds
Finding the best water filters wasn’t at the top of my priority list until I learned about the unfortunate effects water toxins can have on our health.
There are bacteria and pathogens in water, especially in areas with lots of people. Municipalities try to kill those harmful bacteria by adding disinfectants like chlorine. Chlorine, unfortunately, is harmful to us as well.
Fluoride is added with the intention of preventing tooth decay, but it’s also harmful in larger doses. As it passes through the municipal water pipes to your faucet, it can pick up heavy metals and other toxins from the pipes.
The excess use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in industrial agriculture means that those chemicals run off fields into our water supply, along with industrial chemicals allowed to flow out of factories and just your average pollution.
Those are a few of the main reasons that using the best water filters for your tap water is important. If your plan is to avoid all this and drink bottled water, keep in mind that bottled water comes from the same water source as municipalities use. There are also huge environmental impacts from the bottled water industry in terms of watershed management, as well as plastic production and waste.
There are a lot of different ways of filtering water, and the best water filters use a combination of methods.
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- Carbon. Carbon is by far the most common filtration system. It’s the basis of Brita and other pitcher filters. The pitcher systems use granulated carbon, but the best water filters use a solid carbon block. Carbon does a really good job of filtering chlorine, and will filter bacteria for a certain amount of time. It’s important to change a carbon filter regularly, especially a granulated one, because the bacteria trapped in the filter will start to multiply. It also has a certain amount of chemical bonds to trap chlorine and other toxins, and eventually all of the bonds will be filled.
- Reverse Osmosis. Reverse osmosis is another popular system, and it filters absolutely everything. It’s the only system as of right now that will filter fluoride. The end result is water that is totally pure – but also totally flat. It loses whatever nutrients and energy it had, and it also creates a lot of waste water. You can remineralize and reenergize the water, but it takes special techniques to do that.
Brita and other pitcher filters are the most affordable way to start, and aren’t the best water filters but do a pretty good job for the low up-front cost. They filter most of the chlorine and chemicals, but miss out on heavy metals. The filters need to be changed fairly often, and the cost per liter of water filtered adds up over time. Phil and I used a Brita filter for a long time before finally investing in a countertop filter.
Aquasana Water Filters
Aquasana is one of the best water filters, incorporating a solid carbon filter along with ion-exchange and sub-micron filtration to get rid of almost all of the things you want to avoid. When I looked around for filters, Aquasana had the highest rate of filtration and a very reasonable price.
They filter chlorine, bacteria, cysts, lead and other heavy metals, and chemicals from agricultural and industrial activity. Their system can be easily mounted on your countertop, or converted to hide under the counter (though you need to drill a hole up for the hose), so that the water is filtered as it comes out of your tap. They also have a shower filter, which is important since chlorine can be absorbed through your skin.
Countertop filters cost a bit up front, but the cost per liter of water filtered is lower than the pitcher filters so you’ll break even after about two and a half years (based on 500 gallons in 6 months). Check it out here…
Santevia Water Filters
Santevia is a fairly new system, and I haven’t actually tried it, but it has a few interesting benefits over Aquasana. It filters out the same bad things, but it also has additional filters that remineralize, reenergize and alkalize your water.
The only downside is that you have to fill the container up, but that also means that the filtration happens more slowly than passing directly through the faucet, which means more bad stuff is removed. It also takes up a bit more space, but I’m really intrigued by this system and am going to try it out. Check it out here…
What system do you use to filter your water? Or have you been thinking of trying one? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
