Why do You Need Home Water Filter?

Why Do You Need Home Water Filters. So, your home is tapped into the municipal water feed. You know the water goes to a purification station at the edge of town. You drive by this facility each day on your way to work. You see it's working, so that means your tap water is clean, right?

Wrong. Well, not exactly wrong, but not right either. It's true that tap water usually is filtered in a water purification facility before it reaches the end user (that's you, by the way), but that doesn't mean it's very clean. This is true for every city, no matter how large or small. When the authorities test the water quality, they test it right after the water is filtered, before it goes in the municipal feed lines. The results they obtain are often satisfying, well above the required standard. What the authorities don't account for, however, is the age of the feed lines, and their length.

Water treatment stations are usually placed at the edge of a city or town, and the water has to travel a long way through the municipal pipes before reaching the end consumer. It's not rare for the pipes to be decades old, and by traveling a long time through them, the filtered water becomes polluted with everything it encounters, from rust to dust and debris. These old pipes are also a good way of distributing microorganisms, bacteria, and viruses. The water reaching your faucet might a have bad color or a bad taste, and it might have a high degree of biological contamination.

Another reason why you should use a home water filter is the way your municipal authorities are treating the water. One of the oldest but most frequent ways of treating the water is by chlorinating it. This does indeed kill some of the microorganisms present in the water, but it also changes the water's taste. But that's not all. Recent studies have shown that sometimes chlorine can interact with some of the organic matters in the water forming dangerous carcinogenic compounds.

Did you think that was all? Unfortunately, it's not. Filtering the water is essential if you want to keep harmful parasites, bacteria, and other microorganisms from your drinking water. When talking about contaminated water, one of the worst parasites you can get is Cryptosporidium. This parasite is resistant to chlorine, and it has to be filtered out by mechanical means. If the parasite enters your drinking water it can lead to severe diarrhea, dehydration, and weight loss. Infested people can present sickness signs for up to six weeks.

Last but not least, your water source can be contaminated with pesticides, chemicals, and heavy metals. Pesticides used before the 1940s and 1950s usually contained heavy metals which have a long halving time. This long halving period means they might still be present in the soil around the water pipes, enabling them to leak in the water. Lead was also used for plumbing, so old pipes or the solder used for joining them might still contain some. Other chemicals present in the water may also be harmful, and a home water filter will remove them.