How do you know you have drinking water problems?
Drinking water problems can be identified by color, smell, and taste. However, the appearance water can be deceiving; clear-looking water may not necessarily be fit to drink because dissolved harmful organic matter will not be visible.
Where do these problems come from?
The main sources of drinking water are surface water (streams, lakes, rivers) and well water. Contaminants can find their ways to drinking water supplies by various human activities such as wastewater sewage effluents, sanitary sewer overflows (SSO), combined sewer overflows (CSO), agricultural runoffs, street litters, leaking underground storage tanks, most recently in the news, pharmaceutical or drugs that were not properly disposed of resulting in varieties of drinking water problems.
Water in homes near electrical equipments can be contaminated with lead. According to a report by the Texas Cooperative Extension report, drinking water problems can occur if water source is close to electrical lines. Electric current through the ground wire can increase chances of corrosion in pipes, therefore, home owners should find out if their electrical equipments are grounded to water pipes.
Taste and odor are drinking water problems that could be from chlorine residual during disinfection, rotten egg feeling as a result of dirty pipes (due to bacteria growth in the piping system, and gasoline possible from a defective underground storage that may be leaking to well water.
Drinking water color could be dark brown resulting from sediment, heavy metals such as iron or manganese leaching from pipes, green due to copper in your plumbing systems, and milky white resulting from air bubbles. Some heavy metal contaminants in your drinking water are known to cause various health problems even at low doses.
Calcium and magnesium in water are nuisances but can be healthful. These chemicals can cause hardness in water and they can also be used as dietary supplements. Hard water can result in costly maintenance and/or replacement of water heaters and dish washing machines. Hard water will create scales in these appliances that can reduce their useful life. Ion exchange is used to soften hard water. Hard water is caused by calcium and magnesium. Ion exchange can also be used to remove cadmium, zinc, dissolved iron, and copper. Sediment filtration when preceded by another treatment device can remove manganese.
Water Authorities are required under the Safe Drinking Water Act to provide a Consumer Confidence Report to consumers annually. The report allows consumers to know the quality of their drinking water, the contaminants in it, and the possible harmful effects. The report also allows consumer to decide whether or not a home water purifier is needed to make the water potable. For well water that is not regulated, owners make purchase a home test kit to analyze the water for possible pollutants, or hire a professional to do the test.
How can you remove these water problems?
The first thing is to test what is in the water by using a certified home test kits, or higher a state certified laboratories. The responsibility to test drinking in homes rests on the home owners. The quality of the water you drink may be altered once it enters the pipes in your homes. Some home testing devices are designed for a single parameter while some can be used to test for multiple parameters.
How to perform water testing
You should know what type of sample to collect before water is collected for testing. Some water analyses can be done in your home by eyeballing such as odor, taste, color, and turbidity. You can also purchase water testing kits to test for some of these parameters at home. Collection of water for some testing may require higher level sampling and testing protocols. Chlorine and pH testing must be conducted immediately water samples are collected, others will need special preservatives and allow for longer holding times before they are delivered a certified laboratory. Some laboratory may provide you with sterile bottles or other containers and the directions to follow. Testing laboratory may send its own technicians to collect the water samples so that specific protocols are maintained to handle the chains of custody.
Choosing the best water treatment system for your drinking water problems
The purpose of this website is to make it easy for you to find the best water filters or purifier to choose from. So take your time and search through the pages of this website.
What treatment device is good to resolve the drinking water problems?
When you have identified the specific drinking water problem(s), you can then decide the treatment options to correct the problem(s). There several water treatment devices capable of removing more than one contaminant. Several water filters and purifiers systems are available in the market. It can sometimes be a daunting task trying to select the best water filter.
You can choose one that can treat your water or you can choose a combination of two different technologies:
- An activated carbon can treat or remove tetrachlorides, benzene, chlorine, pesticides, solvents, and more. These contaminants adsorb to the activated carbon filter surface as water passes through it. AC filtration is recognized by the Water Quality Association as an acceptable method to maintain certain drinking water contaminants within the limits of the EPA National Drinking Water Standards
- Reverse osmosis filter remove some tastes and odors, nitrate, lead, heavy metals, arsenic, pesticides, and Cryptosporidium. Each manufacturer will specify the type of and the level of treatment.
- Distillation can remove dissolved solids, fluorides, lead, heavy metals, and pesticides. Ultraviolet radiation can remove or destroy bacteria, viruses, and Giardia. One disadvantage is that it does not leave residual. Chlorine leaves residual in water to prevent bacteria regrowth.
A February 1999 issue of Water Research described a sampling program set up within the Water Board in Sydney, Australia, drinking water distribution system to determine the presence and extent of bacterial regrowth. Samples were taking over a 14 month period to correlate bacteria regrowth within the system with certain parameters, such as turbidity and distance from the initial treatment point. High numbers of coliform bacteria group were identified in the water distribution system, however, conditions in the water distribution system did not allow the regrowth of E. coli.
The treatment technologies described above can come as a point-of-entry (POE), or a point-of-use (POU) water filters. POE filters are installed at the water main to filter water coming to the whole house to treat water for the whole house. POU filters treat water from a single location and can also be permanently installed under sink or under counter, and they come with a separate faucet.
A POE device could be water softeners, sediment filters (followed by reverse osmosis), or ultraviolet disinfection. POU devices could be pitcher filters which are generally low cost table top filtration system. Most of these pitcher filters use activated carbon filter to remove contaminants such as taste and odors. A POU can also be a shower water filter fitted unto the showerhead.
Some reverse osmosis water filters are designed as multiple-stage units are 5-stage units capable of removing a lot more contaminants than a single stage. Each stage in the device will remove a specific water problem or contaminants.
While you are searching for a water filter device to remove your drinking water problems, look for an NSF-certified water treatment system. A water treatment device may be inspected but not necessarily certified, so read the labels carefully.
SteriPen UV Water Purifier--Named one of Time Magazine's Inventions of the Year, this is the only portable handheld water-purification device that uses ultraviolet light to purify 16 oz. of clear water per use in a mere 48 seconds, or 32 oz. of water per use in 90 seconds.
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