If you drink water directly from your tap, you're likely drinking some things you don't want to be drinking. Particles of various material can be present, you don't know. We do know of some things admitted as part of the water treatment.
Chlorine is added as a disinfectant to kill bacteria and other things that grow in water. Your water might have it to such a degree that you can smell it when the tap is on, or when taking a shower. You can even taste how the water has a nastiness to it. You can feel the burn of chlorine in your eyes when in a swimming pool, or taking a shower with chlorine in it.
One of the most controversial substances in water is fluoride. This is not naturally occurring at the levels present, but is added. It's not a safe substance to ingest despite what is claimed. Do some research on this for yourself if you aren't aware of what is being added to your water. It was apparently used in psychological testing to render people docile and less intelligent in Nazi tests. Why would so-called "health officials" want to add this to our water? Hmm...
You might be lucky in your municipality or city and not have fluoride added, but you will still likely have chlorine. Of course, those who have a well are not going to have these problems. But a filter might be desired for others reasons.
Apart from what is added, there can be pharmaceutical in the water such as endocrine disruptors and drugs that affect hormone development like estrogen. A few years ago I read about the Great Lakes being full of pharmaceuticals. We just treat our waterways like a toilet. It's sad. We use waterways to drink and we have turned them into undrinkable sources of water. Do other nonhuman animals and the rest of nature get our treated water? Nope. But we see fit to continue to desecrate our environment that we depend on for our survival. What's wrong with us?
But back to the water filtration. If you get a basic carbon water filter, you will get rid of that chemical chlorine taste to tap water. There are common fridge models like Brita, and even built-in models that tap directly into the water supply of the house to filter all the water, even for showers which is good. But not that toilet water matters much, so your filter will be used for unnecessary filtration.
There are also purifiers like ozonators, distillers and ionized water filtration. But back in 2006 or 2007 when I was learning about problems in the world, and the economic issues, I was trying to prepare for a possible collapse where electricity was not a certainty. Water is important for survival. I opted to get a gravity based filtration system that required no electrical power.
I got a Berkey Water Filter System.
The specific model I got was the Crown Berkey, currently the biggest model at 6 gallons. But I think they might have had a larger one 10 years ago (a 10 gallon model?). I also purchased some filtration water bottles and more carbon filters.
About the fluoride, regular carbon filters don't filter that. You need a fluoride filter as well. Fortunately, Berkey also has some water filter fluoride reduction elements.
These also take care of removing most of the following contaminants as well:
- Pre-oxidized Arsenic III and Arsenic V
- MTBE (gasoline additive)
- Other heavy metal ions
With that, I was set for most of the contaminants, and no need for electricity. I still use it to this day, but for the first few years I didn't -- I suppose I was keeping it for the "collapse" -- but I did let my dad use it before I started to use it.
It works great.
There are two compartments, one for the water to be filtered on top, and the filtered water on the bottom. The top part has the carbon filters screwed in from the top:
While the fluoride filters screw into the carbon filters from the bottom.
Here is the top part upside down looking at the bottom:
I have only tried Brita fridge container filters before this. But this system is great. When the water gets filtered, I poor it into a 18.9L (5 gallon) blue water cooler jug. I refill the Berkey system with more waer and filter until the water cooler jug is filled up. Then I separate the Berkey top and bottom and dry them out before putting them back together.
If you're looking for a low-tech quality Made in the USA stainless-steel gravity water filtration system, then I do recommend Berkey Water Filters.
What's your experience with water filtration? Let us know what you like or dislike about the various water purification systems out there ;)
Thank you for your time and attention! Take care. Peace.