You may have heard of ceramic water filters. How do they work and are they any good?

Gradually consumers are learning that our drinking water is polluted with many substances. Some are removed by water authorities, but most are not, and so many are turning to water filtration. How do ceramic water filters work, and are ceramic drinking water filters the best way to purify your drinking water?

If it’s news to you that our water supplies are polluted then read on. The Ralph Nader Institute estimates that our drinking water and tap water is polluted with up to 2100 toxic chemicals. Nasty bugs are killed by chlorine, but then chlorine contamination is an issue in itself.

PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, drugs like antibiotics and many many more find their way into our water storages and are not removed before we drink that water or shower in it or wash our clothes in it. Tap water is not healthy to drink.

Modern water filtration systems are very good, and it’s perfectly possible to purify your drinking water to the point that it is way cleaner than any naturally occurring water supply on earth, including bottled water.

One major form of drinking water filter is ceramic water filters. Are these the best form of water filtration?

Ceramic drinking water filters work by forcing water through a filter made of Diatomaceous Earth. This is a substance made up of countless numbers of fossilised shells from millions of years ago. The reason it filters water is that the pore size, or the size of the hole that the water passes through, is very small, so molecules larger than water molecules are caught and removed.

A silver compound can be incorporated into the ceramic filter to counter the growth of bacteria, mold and algae on the filter.

There are some very well known ceramic water filters like Doulton ceramic filters.

Although drinking water systems like ceramic filters are good water purifiers, they have their drawbacks though, and do not produce the highest water quality that good purification can achieve.

What are the drawbacks? Firstly the filter itself is brittle and can be very prone to developing hairline cracks. This of course increases the size of the hole that contaminants can pass through, and some contaminants can remain.

Secondly the colloidal silver method of filtering bacteria does not meet the approval of the FTC who regard it as insufficiently effective.

Thirdly they are not particularly effective against chlorine, one of the major chemicals that you don’t want to be drinking. And they allow volatile organic compounds through.

Finally if you don’t wash or replace the filter regularly they can become contaminated and don’t filter well.

So if you’re looking for the best water filter money can buy a ceramic water filter isn’t it. They’re good, but not the best water treatment.

The best water filters are Aquasana water filters.

And not only are they the best they are also extremely cost competitive, both on initial price and on cost per gallon over time. Read the rest of this entry

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Why would you consider a whole house water filtration system?

We’ve talked about the problem of contaminants in our drinking water, we’ve talked about lead in water, chlorine in water and other contaminants like drugs in your drinking water.

And we’ve suggested that you health demands that you filter your drinking water to remove these contaminants. It’s perfectly possible to filter them out so you’re drinking clean water.

But that’s just about drinking water, so for example you could use a good quality benchtop water filter or a faucet water filter. Remove the contaminants and chlorine taste of your city water and you’re looking good.

But how about whole house water filtration systems? Why would you consider using a whole house water filter? They are more expensive and more of a problem to install.

There are good reasons why house water filters are worth considering. A water treatment system that filters ALL the water you use in your house has real benefits. Lets look at those benefits.

1. Believe it or not one of the biggest reasons to consider home water filtering is to keep the air clean. Whether residential or commercial, home water treatment systems will result in improved indoor air quality.

Using contaminated tap water in such appliances like dishwashers releases compounds into the air.

How? By making sure that contaminants such as chlorine are not released into the inside air. These can be compounds like chloroform and other VOCs (volatile organic compounds) which are compounds formed by such actions as heating, and of course you then breathe them in.

According to the U.S. E.P.A., “Every home has an elevated level of chloroform gas present due to the vaporization of chlorine… from tap and shower water.”

2. Filtered water reduces or eliminates scum and soap residues on your dishes from dishwashing, and it makes the detergent work more effectively so you use less.

3. Showering in filtered water is way healthier than showering in tap water. Your skin absorbs chemicals, so if you’re showering in contaminated water you are getting contaminants into your body just like if you’re drinking it. That’s why things like anti smoking patches work, the skin absorbs the chemicals in the patch.

We’ll look at shower water filter systems in another article.

4. Washing your clothes in filtered water provides a noticable difference to the clean. Filtered water has all the contaminants removed, including some that may stain your clothes. Which contaminants may stain your clothes depends on the particular type of water contaminants in your area. But chlorine is everywhere and chlorine can become embedded in your clothes and is thus in contact with your skin. Read the rest of this entry

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I wrote about chlorine in drinking water yesterday. Here’s some more about chorinated water

Yesterday we had a reader contact us asking about our article about chlorinated drinking water, and the risks of drinking water contaminated with chlorine.

He asked a question about a point that we hadn’t covered. If we don’t like chlorine in the water we drink, what would happen if we didn’t have the chlorine?

Good point well made. We didn’t actually advocate the discontinuation of chlorine purification from municipal water supplies. Chlorine fulfills a very important function.

There is absolutely no doubt that our water supplies, including our drinking water, can be contaminated with various bugs and living organisms that would seek to do us harm. If we were to drink water that had not been treated for contamination by organisms like bacteria we would all run a very high risk of getting seriously ill.

We advocate the use of water filtration to remove water contaminants of any kind, and advocate the importance of drinking clean water. Chlorine free drinking water.

Chlorine works well to kill nasties that may be in our water, and this is good. If the chlorine wasn’t there our water would be just about undrinkable from a health point of view, just look at what is happening in Zimbabwe right now with people contracting cholera, sometimes from contaminated water.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, chlorine is necessary in municipal water to combat living contaminants.

For some people it isn’t necessary to have chlorine in our water. The authors have chosen to install rainwater tanks (and we use the best water filter to filter that water) so that they are drinking the cleanest water possible, and it isn’t necessary to chlorinate rainwater. Well so far it isn’t necessary. But municipal water supplies are different.

So don’t get us wrong, chlorine currently performs an essential task, and will probably be in our water for a long time. Just remember, you don’t need to drink chlorine. The best water filters will remove it, so your water is uncontaminated by chlorine.

Modern carbon filtering successfully removes chlorine. Read the rest of this entry

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Does the chlorine put in our water expose us to the risk of cancer?

Interesting question and one which, unfortunately, there is no one authoritative answer. Chlorine in drinking water is the subject of much debate.

Because like all these things it’s pretty hard to prove one way or the other. But it seems that there is a definite link between drinking chlorinated water and getting cancer, and there are studies suggesting that drinking chlorinated water can indeed cause cancer. It seems the risks of chlorine in our water are there.

How do we know? Well take this quote from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Senior Research Team.

“We are quite convinced, based on this study, that there is an association between cancer and chlorinated water.”

Now that’s a little scary isn’t it? They seem quite convinced that there is a clear link between chlorine in our drinking water and cancer.

How about this. “The Australian”, an Australian newspaper, reported on January 20th 2007 that “swimming or showering in or drinking chlorinated water may all be linked with an increased risk of bladder cancer” based on a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology by Spanish researchers.

And even back in the 1960s there was a book published by a doctor linking chlorine in water to the development of atheroschlerosis. Atheroschlerosis is a major disease leading to heart attacks and death.

Here’s a quote from the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality: “Cancer risk among people using chlorinated water is as much as 93% higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine.”

You’d be surprised at how much chlorine there can be in your drinking water. It is quite possible to test your chlorine levels, there is a simple test kit that you can buy commercially, it’s not expensive. You’d be surprised to know that often the chlorine levels in your tap  water are higher than that of swimming pool water. That’s why it tastes so bad.

The health risks of chlorine aren’t necessarily from the chlorine itself. The problems come from the chemicals formed as a byproduct of having the chlorine in the water.  Chlorine in water mixes with other substances to form chemicals called trihalomethanes and it is suspected that it is the action of these trihalomethanes that does damage to our body, damaging cells and initiating cancer.

So it seems that there are clear links between having chlorine in our drinking water and disease. Though not fully proven these links are strong enough to convince us, at least, that we don’t want to be drinking chlorine.

How? The worlds best water filters remove chlorine from drinking water. When you consider the risk of cancer, the cost of removing chlorine from our water is tiny indeed. It is even possible to get high quality filters to enable whole house water filtering so that you can remove chlorine from you shower water and all other water you consume in the house.

There’s no doubt that we  are all taking a risk drinking chorinated water. It’s simple to remove, and filtering chlorine out of your water may well be the best thing you could ever do for your health. Read the rest of this entry

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If you accept that our water is laced with nasty things, should we be drinking distilled water?

We’ve written quite a bit about some of the contaminants found in water. Lead, chlorine, flouride, industrial chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, drugs and much more.

According to the Ralph Nader Institute there are anywhere up to 2100 toxic chemicals in our drinking water, so I’m sure you can see the need to filter your drinking water, or even using a whole house water filter so that you can wash in filtered water, and even wash your clothes in filtered water. Unclean water even affects your clothes.

But we digress. Back to distilled water.

Surely distilled water has to be the cleanest drinking water?

Distilled water is water that is produced by boiling water, usually contaminated water, collecting the steam and reconstituting it into water by cooling. If you hold a plate over the top of the kettle when it’s boiling you’re collecting distilled water.

Water distillation removes contaminants from water, no doubt. But it has a problem, and for this reason drinking distilled water is not recommended at all, except perhaps in small quantities.

You see distilling water results in all the minerals being removed. Now whilst we want our water filtered distilling our water is not the best water filtration method. The minerals it removes are beneficial to our bodies, and so aren’t getting them drinking distilled water.

And not only that, water that is distilled can attract minerals to replace those lost, and so can leach important salts and other minerals from our body. This can be quite dangerous.

Yes certainly you need the best water filter money can buy, preferably as a whole house filter so that all your water is filtered, but drinking distilled water is not the answer.

There is some suggestion that because distilled water sucks up other substances so well it can be useful as part of a toxin elimination diet. This may be so but is outside the area of this website. Read the rest of this entry

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Did you know that our bodies are 70% water? So do you think the quality of the water we drink affects our health?

Yes that’s right,  our bodies are 70% water believe it or not. Why don’t we all run down the drain? Who knows.

But it makes you think doesn’t it? Actually our brain if over 75% water and our livers 95%.

And our nerves are like little rivers, made up mainly of water too, and it’s believed that the signals that travel along our nerves, from our brain and other organs, are essential to our well being. If our nerves don’t transmit the signals properly many scientists believe, we get sick in one way or another.

And there’s so much evidence that our drinking water is contaminated by so many toxins. And when we drink our water (unless we drink high quality filtered water or water purified in some way) those toxins get into our bodies, and could well result in some problem with our nerves transmitting those signals.

Contaminants like lead for example. A cumulative toxin that, once it gets into our bodies remains there. And there’s clear evidence that there is lead in much of our drinking water.

The Ralph Nader Institute estimates that there are up to 2100 toxic chemicals in our drinking water.

Herbicides, pesticides, heavy metals, antibiotics, hormones, industrial chemicals, chlorine and all sorts of other contaminants that have long chemical names that you couldn’t even pronounce.

It’s extremely scary.

Drinking water contamination is considered by many to be one of the major causes of disease in our society. After all if you’re drinking all that stuff it’s hard to imagine that it COULDN’T affect us. It just makes sense that drinking contaminated water must affect our bodies and make us sick.

So what do you do about it? There are some excellent water filtration systems available. You’ve probably heard of all sorts of different types of water purification methods. They include reverse osmosis, charcoal filtration,  ceramic water filtration, water distillation, ultraviolet and magnetic filtration, ionized water filtration, bottled water and more.

They all have disadvantages and advantages. However it seems clear on balance that Aquasana Water Filters are the best water filters you can get. That is one of the reasons why they have been voted the best buy by Consumers Digest magazine for 5 of the last 7 years.

The cost of water filtration or water purification is minimal compared to your health.  Aquasana water filters provide the cleanest water it’s possible to get for around 9 cents a gallon, way cheaper than just about any other form of water purification. Read the rest of this entry

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