The Importance of Pure Water

Pure water, or a close approximation, is critical to your health, as well as your successful detox efforts. Here are tips for finding a water solution that best meets your requirements for quality, cost and convenience.

First of all, don't drink the tap water. Lots of people are aware that the water that comes out of the tap is not high quality. That's why the bottled water industry is booming.

We need to help you further refine your understanding, so as to help you make the choice that makes the best sense for you. You have to figure out what's more important to your situation, degree of quality, cost or convenience.

There are several aspects you want to look at in regard to each water option. First the basic three: degree of quality, degree of convenience and relative cost. Here's the rule. You can have two out of three, but you can't have all three in any one product. In other words, if it's high quality and convenient, it won't be cheap. If it's cheap and high quality, it won't be convenient. And if it's convenient and cheap, it won't be highest quality. Environmental issues are another factor, i.e. how much trash do the different solutions generate, how much energy do they use? And the final complicating factor is the fact that you can't believe what the manufacturers tell you about their product. Because they'll all tell you that their product is or it creates (if it's a filter) the purest, highest quality of water available in the world. Unfortunately this just isn't true about most of them.

Bottled Water

Bottled water delivered to your door is relatively expensive, but convenient. Unfortunately, you're going to have to do more research to find out if the bottler is providing a high quality product. More than one third of bottled water sold in the U.S. originates in a public water system. Chlorine is removed and minerals are added for taste. Many bottlers treat their water with ozone, an environmentally safe disinfectant, which unlike chlorine, leaves no aftertaste. The International Bottled Water Association provides information and test results on bottled water. It's also a trade association for the bottlers, so exactly how good their information is, we don't know. Information on water quality and testing may also be obtained from the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline: 800/426-4791. The downside to bottled water from the store is all the plastic trash it generates (we hope you recycle it, actually). The high end solution here is buying distilled water in glass bottles. Distilled water is totally pure, but has to be purchased in glass, otherwise chemicals from the plastic it's stored in will migrate into the water. Some health practitioners also warn that distilled water does not provide trace minerals. If you want the purity of distilled water, you may want to add supplemental trace minerals to your diet.

There are now "water stores" springing up in small shopping centers in California, hopefully in other parts of the country as well. These seem to be franchised operations that occupy a small storefront and fill it with a whole battery of water filtraton equipment. The customer brings in their own bottles and fills them for somewhere between $.25/gallon to $.40/gallon. The quality is quite high, and the cost is quite low. There's a distinct lack of convenience to this option, because you have to schlep the bottles over to the store, schlep them into the store, back out to the car and back into your house. And those bottles are heavy! (You can buy three-gallon bottles with built-in handles that are easier for women to handle. The five-gallon bottles that come from the delivery services are okay if you're trying to stay fit and want to convince yourself, "Oh they're not THAT heavy." [Puff-puff])

Water Filters

The inexpensive faucet-mounted models that use granular carbon do not do a good job at filtering out contaminants. Larger granular activated carbon (GAC) filters do a better job of improving taste and odor of water and will reduce levels of chlorine and some chemicals, but not lead. Water running through them finds channels of less resistance. Also alarming is that the filters can foster bacterial growth. Some filters are treated with silver nitrate to inhibit the growth of bacteria, a feature called "bacteriostatic," but studies by the Federal Trade Commission show that the filters produce "unpromising results as to their ability to control bacterial growth." These filters can be acceptable for uses that call for semi-effective filtration, such as shower filters.

Activated carbon that is compressed into a solid block does an effective job of removing lead, chlorine, giardia, asbestos fibers, trihalomethanes, pesticides and organic chemicals. They're also dense enough to prevent channeling and growth of bacteria. Prices for such filters vary, and the internal cartridge must be replaced annually at a cost of $30 to $50, but they are probably the option that offers the most convenient, cost-effective and high quality solution, unless your water has high salt or nitrate levels, in which you might need a reverse osmosis unit in conjunction with the solid carbon block.

A water filter based on "reverse osmosis" uses water pressure to force water through a semi-permeable membrane, leaving the larger molecules of contaminants behind. This process is effective with some toxins, but not volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can be eliminated with carbon filtration, which is why the two systems are often paired. A reverse osmosis system also wastes a lot of water. Three to 12 gallons go down the drain for every gallon purified.

Water Distillers

A home water distiller converts water to steam and then condenses it. Different systems are available. Some vent the boiling water in such a way that VOCs are eliminated. Some don't. Distillers also waste a lot of water, unless you divert it, cool it and use it in the garden. They produce only one to three gallons in several hours and draw a lot of electricity. Their advantage is they do produce a significantly higher quality water product than other in-house systems and if you get one that vents the VOCs, we'll call it "pure."