To many people, the idea of using a water filter before utilizing water from your main pipeline seems like a redundant process. After all, doesn’t all water coming from our taps pass through a heavily monitored and regulated water purification plant, making it safe for us to drink water straight from our taps? Well yes, but as it turns out relying on the water plant alone isn’t the best option. Why is there a necessity of water filtration? Read on.
Removing sediments
Although the prospect of drinking water with a little dirt mixed in is mostly a safe one, the experience is still an uncomfortable one, if not entirely an unsanitary one. Using a water filter at home becomes necessary because it’s quite hard to remove all fine particles of dirt, sand or clay at the water purification plant, and even more challenging to have the water traveling from the plant to your house not get mixed with some sediment along the way. Therefore, the only real way to have water that’s completely free of sediment is to use a water filter that removes them before pouring it out into a glass for you.
Reducing minerals and chlorine
Having water without the slightest trace of metallic elements dissolved into them is impossible if you’re using tap water. Not that that’s a bad thing, because most of the metallic elements dissolved into them are mostly harmless (and even beneficial in the right amounts). However, it’s not too uncommon for the concentration to be a little too high to leave an unpleasant taste in the water. The same can be said for Chlorine in high amounts (usually introduced in the water during purification to kill pathogens). Drinking water with a metallic or chloric taste can be terrible, which is why having a water filter to deal with this is necessary.
Removing toxic metals and chemicals
While metals like Iron and Manganese in water aren’t harmful, a metal like Lead (mixed into the water from the welding in pipes used to transport water to your house) can spell disaster for your health if your water supply was laced with it and you were unknowingly consuming it. Lead poisoning is a severe, very fatal condition and warrants the installation of a water filter to prevent this outcome. Similarly, if chemical pesticides were to mix into your water supply, thanks to the increasing use of soluble organic pesticides, it could mean trouble for your health. Unless you had a water filter to deal with this kind of contamination.
Treating pathogens
Wait a minute, you say. Isn’t the Chlorine from the purification plants supposed to take care of all of the pathogens in drinking water? Well, it is, but Chlorine can’t kill ALL pathogens found in water. Cryptosporidium, for example, is a parasite that is resistant to chlorine and needs to be filtered out with mechanical filters (like those in a water filter) to eliminate the threat, which further solidifies the importance of water filtration.
