Filter Your Drinking Water
It probably won’t surprise you to know that your tap water may have contaminants in it. From nasty chemicals to who-knows-what, there are hundreds of things that turn up in tap water in the US. (I won’t even start on Mexico, where I am living till the spring… we don’t even brush our teeth with tap water here!)
There is an excellent website, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) where you can t ype in your zip code and find out what is in your water — they have analyzed almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials and found 316 pollutants in the drinking water from 45 states.
Go through their step-by-step process of choosing a water filter:
- Step 1. Decide what is most important to you.
- Step 2. Consider what type of filter would work best for you.
- Step 3. Determine what contaminants you need to remove.
- Step 4. Find a filter.
This site gets very technical for those who want it, but it is written clearly enough for you to find out what you need. I specially liked their table in step 2.
By the way, all that research costs them and if you end up buying a water filter through their links to Amazon, that helps support their work. I’ve done this.
Removed the commercial link but left the comment, as it reflects a valid point of view.
Although this is a great site to see what is in your water, there are over 80,000 known chemicals and toxins that find their way into the water ways at one point or another, and the only way to ensure you are drinking healthy, clean water is with a water purification system. A water filter won’t cut it as it will most likely only remove chlorine and dirt, leaving your water with all the contaminants you do not want in your water.