Tips That Make Sure You Drink Safe and Clean Water Only

With reports of water crises from different countries around the world, we need to be more aware of how difficult it is sometimes to have access to safe and clean water. Whether you live in the USA, Australia, Asia or Europe, water infrastructures struggle to keep up with water purification demand so loads of potential contaminants can find their way into our drinking water.

Tips That Make Sure You Drink Safe and Clean Water Only

Knowing the risks, there are things we can do to make sure our water is safe. It all starts with finding out what’s in our water and finding ways of making sure it’s pure.

What’s in the water?

The first step towards ensuring clean water in your home would probably be installing a water filtration system, but before going in that direction, it would be useful to discover what it is that you want to remove from your water. You can commonly get the water quality information by request from the local water utility company, but you can also test the water yourself using a test kit available in most home improvement stores. When you’ve finally obtained the information about your water content and quality, you can take the next step.

Common water contaminants

There is a number of different ways in which contaminants can reach our drinking water: they can come from the pipes connected to our internal plumbing, from agricultural or industrial run-offs or they are naturally present in the environment before the water has even been collected.

Anything other than water molecules is defined as a contaminant or pollutant. It can be chemical, biological, physical or radiological substance, but not all pollutants that end up in the water are considered harmful. A physical contaminant such as sand would not put you at risk, but there are many other contaminants that would compromise your health if you’ve been exposed to them for a longer period of time: heavy metals, arsenic, chloride, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, radium, sodium, and sulfate.

Potential solutions

To ensure the highest level of water safety for your home, adopt a zero tolerance policy for any kind of contaminant. Despite the fact that tap water in big cities such as Sydney is drinkable, it only applies to water delivered from the water plant. If the pipes that connect your home to the main water pipeline are old and worn out, your home tap water can be potentially compromised.

This procedure is minimally invasive, there’s no digging or disrupting of the landscape, it’s quick, it saves your money and gives you 50 year’s life expectancy. You’ll get a better flow, better protection from the roots and potential pollutants.

Water filtration systems

If you decide on installing a water filtration system, there are many choices, ranging from common carbon filters to UV systems, and the ones that combine different technologies in one. Whichever you choose, make sure it has been approved and certified by a reputable, independent agency.

Two types of filters are most adept at removing pollutants: carbon/charcoal filtration systems and reverse osmosis. The former system is very effective in removing chlorine, lead, and mercury, but not inorganic contaminants such as fluoride, nitrate or arsenic. For those, you should use a reverse osmosis system which eliminates a wide range of contaminants, but know that it also uses up to 20 times more water than it produces.

As we rely on a daily intake of water to regulate our health, it’s of utmost importance to make sure we drink clean water. Hopefully, tips listed here can help you in finding the best way to achieve that goal.

Cooper Klein is a cool dad in touch with his feminine side. He’s currently working from home as a blogger for several online magazines. You can find him on Twitter.

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