Toxic Water

[WuWei]

The EPA's Web site provides directions for finding out more information about your drinking water

States With the Most Toxic Tap Water


Pat

[mamafish9]

Yup, when I started looking at sources for metals toxicity, I was astounded at what can be in our drinking water. The "allowable" levels are pretty high for some metals, and they get exceeded regularly.

I live in a county with some of the best public water in the country though (and had it tested), so that's not our exposure route. Even if you are on good public water though, it's worth having your water tested - house pipes can add all kinds of garbage to your water .

[linguistmama]

Not listening, not listening! Just kidding I know our water is bad because when we first moved in it smelled like chlorine, we've gotten used to it now. I'm sure I really don't want to look up my area's 24 violations from the most recent regular check. And that's only what's bad enough for the epa to list, doesn't show chlorine or fluoride etc.

What do you do with bad water? I've heard of distilled water, but needing to put minerals back in and I'm confused. Is there a good filter that doesn't cost a fortune?

The second link isn't working for me.

[allnaturalmom]

Thanks so much for this info..... I never knew such a list/system was available for checking. I couldn't get the second link to work.

[WuWei]

Originally Posted by allnaturalmom

Thanks so much for this info..... I never knew such a list/system was available for checking. I couldn't get the second link to work.

Fixed.


Pat

[Marnica]

I would like to test our water...there are so many options when I google Im a bit overwhelmed...any advice for testing....I guess that is the first step. We also have fairly good water for our state but it is floridated and that concerns me. The Britta type filters do not filter flouride. The good quality in house filters that I would love to have installed in my house are way too expensive.

Why is it that being Green and healthy is often not attainable for the average joe....it makes me so angry!!

[Theloose]

Yeah. Suppose you decide you don't want to drink the tap water anymore. What are your options then? Filter it or buy elsewhere? If you're buying, then how do you best dispense the 5 gallon jugs? Or just buy individual bottles?

I'm currently concerned most with fluoride, chloramines and low-toxic levels of arsenic. If we buy water, the small bottles create too much waste, the 5 gallon bottles need to be dispensed, and then I worry about the hormone disruptors in plastic dispensers and about the toxic metals in ceramic ones.

So then is the only choice a filter? There's got to be a good water filter resource thread somewhere...

[momofmine]

I researched this on MDC almost two years ago, so I'll see if I can go and dig up the old threads on it. But here's what I remember from off the top of my head. Because I live in the city, we have tap water with flouride, chlorine, and all the other basic tap water contaminants (prescription drugs, etc, LOL). I didn't want to buy water because it seemed wasteful, and I didn't want my water stored in plastic. Reverse osmosis is supposed to be the most efficient and filter out the highest level of bad crap. The only problem with RO systems is that they also filter all the minerals that we need and get from water. So, if you drink RO-filtered water over time, you have to supplement with minerals. I am not sure how you would know how much you'd need to supplement though, and it seems like less than optimal to me.

The Aquasana water filter filters the water almost as good as the RO (good enough for me at least) with the added benefit of not removing the minerals. It was the only one at the time that I could find that filtered out both flouride and chlorine, along with all the other junk. When I contacted them, they said the filter would filter out all fluoride that was added to the water, but probably not the amount that was naturally occurring in the water. So it doesn't filter out all of it. but most of it.

For our house, we decided to get two filters. I got the whole house filter, which was the more expensive one, because I also wanted to chlorine filtered out of the bath and shower water. The whole house filter (I think) filters about 85% of the stuff out. But I also got the countertop filter, because that one filters stuff out at a higher rate (more like 95% or something like that). So I wanted that for the drinking water. I don't use that for the cooking water, since I have the whole house filter too. But, the only drawback with just having the whole house filter is that is installed at the point of entry from the city water, into our house. After it goes through the whole house filter, it still has to go through the pipes in my house. My house is 100 years old, and although some pipes have been replaces a lot of them are old and gunky.

So, that was the solution I came up with then. I bought both filters through an MDC co-op, so I got the whole house filter at about 50% off, which was huge. If you want to PM me, I still have the MDC mama's contact info, I don't know if she can still do it. She ran it through her business, so it's possible she still can do stuff like that. I think you had to order ten to be able to get the discount. Just getting the countertop filter for your drinking water would be fine, but I also wanted to remove the chlorine from our baths. Plus, I felt like ti was getting filtered twice, so it was better.

At that time, the Aquasana was the best option I could find, next to RO. There may be more info out there now. I'll see if I can find links.


Here's a link to
Aquasana.

I have the under counter filtration system. I think above I called it teh countertop, but I actually have the one that goes under your sink, with a little faucet on top, like where a sprayer would go. I didn't have to give up my sprayer though, it's just on the other side of the sink.

And then we also have the whole house water filter. The Rhino EQ-300.

[momofmine]

Okay, I found the old co-op thread about Aquasana. I'm glad they still have these on here!

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...light=aquasana

We talk a bit back and forth about the filter, what it does, etc. So just scroll through the posts of people ordering, and you'll see the info about the filter itself.

HTH!

[es1967]

Originally Posted by whoMe

Yeah. Suppose you decide you don't want to drink the tap water anymore. What are your options then? Filter it or buy elsewhere? If you're buying, then how do you best dispense the 5 gallon jugs? Or just buy individual bottles?

I'm currently concerned most with fluoride, chloramines and low-toxic levels of arsenic. If we buy water, the small bottles create too much waste, the 5 gallon bottles need to be dispensed, and then I worry about the hormone disruptors in plastic dispensers and about the toxic metals in ceramic ones.

So then is the only choice a filter? There's got to be a good water filter resource thread somewhere...

I buy Mountain Valley water in 2.5 gallon glass jugs from my water company. We live in Florida and the water is horrible. Its not cheap but worth it. If I drink the water in the plastic jugs I cannot stand the smell and the taste (the ones you buy at the grocery store). I just hope its as good as they say it is. I've been getting it for years.

http://mountainvalleyspring.com/

[linguistmama]

Nevermind! There is a counter top model, http://www.aquasana.com/product_detail.php?product_id=1, for those of us who rent

[eireann]

we got first place! hooray! oh...wait....nevermind...


might explain my uranium in the 97th % on my hair test, which of course depletes calcium, magnesium and iron (who needs those, though? ) and deposits itself into the bones.

might explain why my minerals are wacky, huh? meh, again, that could be a result of hair vanity.

fantastic either way...

[SuburbanHippie]

We came in 2nd. Dh wants to buy a reverse osmosis system for the kitchen and a shower head with a filter already. My only issue with the reverse osmosis is it takes 9 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of drinking water. He said he would run a line out so we could "keep" that water for flushing toilets, but I don't think we flush quite that much in a day. I wonder if I could somehow use it for the washing machine... DH may have a new project on his hands.

[momofmine]

Here's a page on the Aquasana site about RO and distillation. I promise I don't work for them! It's just that when I was researching this and trying to decide which system to go with, Aquasana seemed like the best choice because (a) it does not remove the minerals, and (b) it removes flouride (I couldn't find any other filter systems, besides RO and distillation, that also removed flouride). It doesn't remove all the flouride, but most of the added flouride.

http://www.aquasanastore.com/water-you_b03.html

[Theloose]

But how does the filter know which minerals to remove? And are there other filtration systems that also don't remove all the fluoride but do remove most of it? I've been making my head swim, researching water filters today. I've looked on and off a bunch over the past couple years, but I always hate it. There are no easy comparisons, everyone's trying to sell you theirs, and I can't tell if they do chloramines AND fluoride AND arsenic. Seems like each one of those gets put in a special class, or else gets ignored completely.

Sorry. I'll trade nutrition/biochem research for water filter research. Any takers?

[seawind]

Are these filters good? Scroll down the linked page for how it works. Sounds quite promising, but, would be good to hear from those who have used it.

[momofmine]

Originally Posted by seawind

Are these filters good? Scroll down the linked page for how it works. Sounds quite promising, but, would be good to hear from those who have used it.

yes, when I was researching the filters, that one was mentioned, and I heard that one was good. I am not sure if it filters flouride or not though. You could do an MDC search for the name of that filter, because I know it was mentioned back then when I was reading.

whoMe,
I know how you feel. I felt the same way. I could not figure out which one was best. At the time, from my research, Aquasana was the best filter I could find, that filtered out the most stuff, while still leaving the healthy trace minerals in the water. It explains on their website how it does this, through several different ways. It's not just the mechanical filtering part, but it also uses ion exchange, and some other way that absorbs certain things. Ther are different steps in the filtering. I would think about what questions you still have (arsenic, etc) and call Aquasana and talk to them. It is definitely a good filter, from what I found when I did my research, so it is a good starting point. SO just eliminate them one by one. Start with this one. Call them, and if it doesn't eliminate something that's in your water that you really need it to, move on to the next one. Does that make sense? Because you can only buy what's available, so just start systematically going through some of them, eliminating the ones that aren't going to work for you.

I decided to get both the whole house filter, which would filter the water coming from the city source, and also the under-sink filter for drinking, because there are some things the whole house filter won't get, and, the water also goes through the pipes in my house AFTER going through that whole house filter. This link explains that some:

http://www.aquasanastore.com/doc_wholehouse.html

Did you read the old co-op that I posted in an earlier post? That has a lot of information in it.

[Theloose]

Yeah, I read the co-op post. I just... I don't even know where to find a list of the available filters. It seems like there are a thousand of them! I think I need to just buckle down and do it, but aarrggghhh... There are so many other things I'd rather be doing on the computer!

I did find this link that helps with the comparison a bit:
http://thewaterexchange.net/filter_comparison.html

[momofmine]

Well, there are a lot of them, yes, but there really aren't that many of the high quality type of filters that I think you are probably looking for. There are lots of different reverse osmosis and distillation systems, but that also removes trace minerals. So, if you don't want that (which I didn't), then you can go ahead and rule those out. Next, just ask yourself what else you want to be sure gets filtered out, and pick a few and call and ask if their filter does that. The Aquasana and the Berkey are two right here you can call. Are you concerned about added flouride? Because I couldn't find any others that also filtered out flouride, besides RO or distillation.
HTH

[momofmine]

whoMe, I just realized, I feel about AIR filters the way you feel about water filters. ZI have been researching air filters for EIGHT YEARS and I still don't feel like I have any answers. I finally bought the EcoQuest air filter (because we have an old house with significant damp basement issues) and it really helped. But so many people say the ozone is bad. But anytime I cut it off in the winter, that was when my kids would get sick. I really think it worked on viruses and bacteria. Anyway, that's another thread, maybe I should start a toxic air thread!