Water For Health

Archive for the ‘Water Filtration’ Category

If live in a rural area and your water supply comes from a well, you might think that you’re protected from pollutants, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, well water pollution is one of the major reasons for illness, because the water can be contaminated from nearby farms through such things as animal excrement or fertilizer runoff. Therefore, it’s likely that you need well water filtration systems to make sure that you have the cleanest and vast drinking water possible.

Here are three things you should know about well water filtration systems:

They’re not all the same

Some water filtration systems are meant to filter out relatively large particulates. This is probably okay if you live in the city where your own city has its own filtration system in place, so that you may just need to refine drinking water for chlorine taste or to make it more palatable.

However, if you live in the country, you’ll likely need something a little more involved. First, get your water tested to see what contaminants it has in it.

Reverse osmosis can be done if the water is particularly bad or if it has cysts, which are parasites that cause problems especially in people with fragile immune systems. In addition, lead content will be reduced by 99% or better. This may be what you need if you live near farms where fertilizer or animal waste runoff is a problem. In addition, to further purify water, you may want to consider ion exchange filtration to balance mineral content and normalize the pH level.

Whole house, or point of use filtration?

If your water is very bad, you may want to consider whole house filtration. This is especially useful if, for example, your water has a high iron or rust content in addition to other difficulties. Having high iron or rust in the water can make hair and clothes take on an unpleasant color, and these things can also be absorbed through the skin in the shower.

However, if your situation is such that your water only needs to be filtered for drinking and cooking, you can install “point of use” filters at your kitchen sink and in your refrigerators water and ice dispensers, as applicable. Whole house filtration will be much more expensive, but it can be considered to offset the expense of having clothes and hair ruined with rust or iron laden water, or the illness that might happen if you are absorbing contaminants through your skin.

Should you rent, or should you own your water filtration system?

This is a good question, since many companies will simply charge you a monthly service fee to come out and replace filters for free and to service your unit when it needs to be. Depending on where you live, this may be more cost-effective than owning your unit and having to pay for repairs and filter replacement yourself. Check online to see which companies offer the best price and service — but don’t assume that buying is always better than renting. In fact, renting may be the better deal overall.

There are still approximately 15 percent of Americans do not receive public water supply due to the distribution channel do not reach them or they just choose to rely on other source of water supply. They either dig and construct a well, or just simply drill and extend the pipe to deep down underground and extract water from below the earth surface. Unfortunately, these supplies are not subject to EPA standards, although some state and local governments do set rules to protect users of these wells. Unlike public drinking water systems serving many people, they do not have experts or authority regularly checking the water’s source and its quality before it is sent to the tap. These households are basically left to their own to take special precautions to ensure the protection and maintenance of their drinking water supplies.

A study in between 1999 – 2000, private well without well water filtration contributed 26% of the drinking water outbreaks that made people sick in U.S. The local health or environmental department can only help on the advise, the private well owner will need to be totally on their own initiative to make sure that the well water filtration system they installed, can protect these household users.

There is no way to tell whether the well water is contaminated or not by its appearance, instead a series of test need to be carried out to determine the type of contaminants and how serious is the contamination. Various stages of test need to be done, and these procedures will need to be done periodically in order to ensure the safety of the well water. Before choosing a well water filtration that can ensure the quality of the well water, you need to understand how the common contaminants get into the well water.

Contaminations always has a correlation with environment, and they can happen in many different way but some germs and chemicals just get into the well water naturally. Irregardless where the well is located, heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium are naturally found in rocks and soil and sometimes just seep into well water. Floods, storm water, sewerage system leakage, and illegal industrial waste disposal might just add on to these contamination.

Bacteria, viruses and parasites are the common microbes found in well water which can find their way into the well water through human, animals, plants and it is harmful and can cause diarrhea, dysentery, and hepatitis.

Volatile Organic Compounds are industrial related or petrochemicals that endanger the human health in many ways. Polluted storm water runoff, agricultural runoff, and underground water runoff bring the surrounding contaminants to the well water.

Nitrate which is contained by many foods, but it will make human sick if the level in water is high. Animal waste, decaying plants, private sewerage system runoff, industrial fertilizers, and geology of the land around your well are the main contributors of nitrate level in the well water.

A good well water filtration system must be able to purify the water from all these known contaminants to ensure the well water can be safely consumed. Instead of regularly testing the source of well water, using various equipments, choosing one well water filtration system which had been clinically tested to be effectively removing the contaminants will be much wiser. The cost of one good well water filtration will be much less than the total equipment cost in testing, need not to mention the time factor involve.

If you do not live in an area that provides your home with water through a city or rural water system, you no doubt have a well, which requires well water filtration systems. Finding the right system to install will save you dollars down the road and also assure you that the water you drink, cook and bathe with will be safe and free of contaminates.

The best well water filtration systems will protect your pump for the sediment and other large particles in the water so you will not incur costly repair bills to your pump. Or worst yet have the pump malfunction beyond repair and you have to replace your pump.

The best well water filtration systems will also protect your health from dangerous contaminates in your water. These substances can be weed killers, pesticides and other chemicals you find in largely agriculture areas that farmers use on their fields.

Any chemical used on those fields will get into your water supply through ground water run off into lakes, streams and rivers. Even if you don’t reside in a large agriculture area, there is still run off from residential yards. The best water filtration systems will have more than one kind of filter so all the dangerous contaminates will be removed before you drink, cook or bathe in the water.

Chlorine is a chemical you will add to your well water to kill the parasites and other bacteria that cause diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Putting chlorine in water is a good thing for prevention of those diseases, but it adds a whole another ball of wax to our health problems.

“Chlorine is so dangerous” according to biologist/chemist Dr. Herbert Schwartz, “that it should be banned. . . . Cancer, heart trouble, premature senility, both mental and physical are conditions attributable to chlorine treated water supplies. It is making us grow old before our time by producing symptoms of aging such as hardening of the arteries . . .”

I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in drinking water that will make me old before my time. I seem to be aging fast enough on my own; I don’t need my drinking water to speed the process up.

And speaking of chlorine it is also dangerous in the form of chloroform gases in the shower water. Inhaling these gases have been linked to asthma and nervous system disorders, along with the threat of cancer and various skin irritations we get from having the chlorine come in contact with our skin and being absorbed into our blood stream through our pores.

The reasons listed above are why you need the best well water filtration systems you can find. When shopping for a system, look further than just a sediment filter to protect your pump, look also for one with granulated carbon filters that also include sub micron and multi block filters along with an ion exchange for heavy metals. Having all these in your system will assure you of water that is safe to drink, cook and bathe in.

My web site below gives you more information about the state of our water supply and also will take you to the best place to buy your point of use filtering units for your well water filtration systems. Check it out today.