Water For Health

Posts Tagged ‘Bottled Water’

Tap water is simply too dangerous to consume anymore. There are ridiculous amounts of contaminants found in tap water and all of them have detrimental effects on your health. If you want to protect your health and that of your family, it’s imperative that you get a water filtration system immediately.

 However, not all water purifiers and filters are created equal. To help you pick the right product here is a list of 7 points to consider when you go shopping.

 1. Water filtration does not have to be expensive. Some methods such as reverse osmosis and distillation are fairly pricey at up to 26 cents per gallon. Carbon block or granular filtration is the most affordable at less than 10 cents per gallon.

 2. You also have to consider what type of water filtration system you want. You can filter your drinking water, your bath water, or your home’s entire water supply. It would cost you more money to filter your whole home’s water supply but it would still be cheaper than drinking bottled water and you would be 100% protected from the dangers of tap water.

 3. Do you have a problem with visible filters? Countertop filters may get in the way of things and make your kitchen look cluttered. If you would prefer something that is out of sight and out of mind you can opt for an under-the-sink water filter.

 4. Learn about the health benefits of drinking mineral water. There are some water filters out there that remove the beneficial trace minerals from tap water so it’s important to make sure that you find a water filter that doesn’t demineralize water. Reverse osmosis and distillation strip tap water of its minerals. Drinking demineralized water can lead to cancer and mineral deficiencies. Carbon filters don’t remove trace minerals from tap water.

 5. Determine how quickly the water filtration device you are interested in produces water. Both reverse osmosis and distillation produce less than a gallon per hour. Carbon filters produce up to 30 gallons per hour.

 6. Is the filter you are interested in wasteful? The only water filtration system that doesn’t waste any water during the filtration process is carbon block or granular filtration.

 7. Check whether the water filtration device removes both organic and synthetic chemicals. For example, reverse osmosis only removes organic chemicals and is not capable of removing synthetic chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides and so must be used in conjunction with a carbon filter. The obvious solution is to use a carbon filter instead.

 In conclusion, it’s important to weigh your options carefully when shopping for a water filtration system. There are many models and methods to choose from so it’s important to get your priorities straight prior to hitting the stores. By doing so, you will be able to make an educated decision and purchase the best possible water filter that your money can buy.

Are you ready to drink your tap water right from your faucet? You probably never considered that proposition seriously, after having become addicted to bottled water.

In fact however, it would be worthy to consider the alternatives. Unless you live in a lucky location where the drinking water at you tap is constantly of the highest quality, you may possibly find out that its taste is lousy, although the water supply is generally wholesome, for grownups at least.

It is widely known by now that the highest authorities appointed to check water distribution and quality recommend that tap water be filtered at home before use.

Quality home water filtration at the tap offers remarkably better than bottled water at a much lower cost.

When looking for a water filtration system one can compare for performance, looking for the list of contaminants it is certified to remove and to what degree. This information should be provided by respectable manufacturers.

Then one has only to check the total costs, to figure out the cost per unit volume (gallon or liter) of filtered water. By comparing the data from different manufacturers it should not be too difficult to determine which product will best meet your needs.

Of course you will find also other solutions than water filtration. It may be useful to point out here that distillation is not recommended because distilled water lacks some important minerals like salts of calcium, sodium, magnesium and potassium, that the human body needs a continuous supply thereof.

The fact that demineralized water is deprived of essential constituents excludes it from the sources of drinking water that should be taken into account. The same is applicable to reverse osmosis for two main reasons.

The first is that it consumes quite a bit of energy for providing the positive pressure that makes the system work, the second is that it produces a very large quantity of water that did not pass the membrane, and therefore must be disposed of as reject.

Even if it could be asserted that the issue is not settled from a general and theoretic point of view, as specific cases can be found where such solutions would be advantageous, like for the printing and photo processing industries which require mineral free water, the home water purification way to go seems to be filtration, at least for drinking, because even Scientific research points in this direction.

Summing up, multi media block filters as offered by the best manufacturers, have several additional advantages. A blended media extruded or compressed into a solid with a sub-micron pore structure is highly effective to filter out sediment and cysts like Cryptosporidium and Giardia. This configuration also prevents water from tunneling around the filter media.

For best performance it is essential that a multi stage process be used to filter out a wide range of contaminants.

You are intelligent enough to know that the purpose of most science fair projects is to teach students how to use scientific methods to solve problems on their own. A science fair project can allow students, parents, and teachers to make new discoveries together. One of those discoveries might be how clean your drinking water is.

Students may expect faucet water to be clean, but is it? A science fair project on testing drinking water can help them learn what is in the water they use. This outline will help them and you conduct a drinking water test.

State Your Hypothesis

A good example might be, “If I test drinking water from different sources, which will I find to be the best for my health?” A poor example would be, “If I drink tap water, what happens?”

Background Research

Learn all that you can about what water may contain. Research the effects of various contaminants, minerals, etc.

Develop a Drinking Water Test

What kind of drinking water test will you use? What kinds of drinking water will you test? Will you buy a kit, or simply order appropriate test materials? How will you collect the water to be sure you do not change its content?

What You Need for Drinking Water Tests

Students will need Colorimetric test strips for many drinking water tests. Kits are available from science fair websites. Water Safe Drinking Water Test is an EPA standardized, laboratory certified simple kit that identifies harmful levels of 8 different common contaminants in water: bacteria, chlorine, lead, nitrates, nitrites, pesticides, pH, and water hardness.

Predict Results

Write out a prediction of what you expect. Will your city tap water be the best water for your health? Should your family pay money to drink only bottled water? What do you predict your drinking water test will reveal?



Conduct Your Drinking Water Test

Students may choose from many drinking water tests. Here are a few possible tests. Younger students may want to use only one. Older students may combine a series of drinking water tests.

1. Basic: A basic drinking water test might allow students to test water for alkalinity, chlorine (both free and total), nitrate and nitrite, pH, and water hardness. What is the basic make-up of your water?

2. Bacteria: Along with a basic drinking water test, you might test for bacteria in the water. Water from a drinking fountain may show bacteria that collect on the bubbler and wash into the water.

3. City Water: What is in municipal drinking water? You can use the basic drinking water tests above, but check, too, for metals and sediment. Are corroding pipes contaminating the water?

4. Well Water: Since the government does not test private wells, there may be contaminants in the water taken from them. What might you find? Would you expect more sediment or less? Would your drinking water test be likely to find pesticides if the well is near a farm or garden where they are used?

5. Bottled Water: Is bottled water really pure? Is it better than tap water or worse? Run a drinking water test on it and see what you find.

6. Water Cooler: If your water cooler is typical, a large five-gallon bottle is turned upside down into the drinking water crock. Might there be germs on the bottle top? Will a drinking water test show up these germs?

7. Pet Water Bowl: Pet drinking water tests will show you what your pet’s water contains. The pet bowl should not be cleaned right before the test. Allowing your pet to drink from it will show whether or not the water is still pure enough for humans.

Repeat Your Drinking Water Test

A good scientist repeats tests to be sure the results are the same. You will not have accurate results if you run your drinking water test only once.

Analyze

Analyze the results of your tests. Which water is purer? Which one tastes better, looks better, and smells better? From your analysis, do you think your prediction will hold up?

Arrive at Conclusions

Draw conclusions from your drinking water test. Look at all the evidence and decide what it means in regard to healthy drinking water.

1. Which water contains the fewest contaminants?

2. Which water contains the fewest bacteria?

3. Which water is best for your health?

Prepare Your Display

Decide early how the display will look and leave plenty of time to complete it. Will you have photographs? Will you have clear glasses containing water samples? How will you display used test strips?

Most science fair projects require a display board to communicate your work to others. A three-panel display board that is 36″ tall by 48″ wide when unfolded is standard. On your board, include these elements.

1. Title: Make it catchy – and big enough to read from across a room.

2. Hypothesis and research: Organize your information from top to bottom, left to right, as though you were planning a newspaper page. Put Hypothesis and research information on the left side of your board.

3. Materials and procedures: Place this information just under your title in the middle of the board.

4. Data / Charts / Photos: These go at the bottom of the center part of your board.

5. Results and conclusions: The right side of your board holds the final information about your drinking water test.

A science fair project on testing drinking water can be interesting and exciting, appropriate for any age student. The results may surprise everyone.