> readings of PFAS that exceed EPA limits have been found in just 8% of small public water systems (those that serve fewer than 10,000 people) and 15% of large ones
15%!
Anyone who trusts their municipal water supply because of *handwave* regulations and reports needs to read that again.
Even if my water were 100% pristine as the author's apparently is, which they only know for their own homes because they've tested it at their taps half a dozen times with different laboratories, my tap water still tastes awful, and maintaining a dedicated three stage filter spout next to my kitchen faucet costs me approximately nothing and provides substantially better tasting water. And I don't need to worry about whether I live in the next Flint, Michigan.
It took two whole years for administrators in Flint, Michigan to acknowledge their lead pipe crisis. What your treatment plant claims it does and what your municipal government claims your safety profile is do not matter one bit if you aren't constantly testing the water actually coming out of your taps.
I'd rather just filter my water. It's much less hassle and I get better tasting water as a nice bonus.
And if that filter setup also has an RO system your cost is more, as with RO you have a certain amount of rejection rate.
Because I trust bleach, not my local water authority.
I certainly do not trust them to give me chemically clean water. So I have a $150 under-sink RO system.
First there has to be bacteria in the municipal water. The city does a pretty good job there,
Second there has to be organic matter for the bacteria to grow. Again, cities are good with that.
But even if you have bacteria in your water, a good RO system's pores should be smaller than a virus (really smaller than a prion) or it won't be able to remove metallic ions.
But let's assume after two years these assumptions fail because the filters get old. Replace the filters and flush the system with bleach.
My fear with RO are bad filters. I once had a Zero pitcher and it tasted bad, acidic. A few weeks later there was a recall that the RO membrane was leaking ionomers.
Moral of the story- trust your senses. If municipal water tastes bad, it's bad. If bottled water tastes bad, it's bad. If RO water tastes bad, it's bad.
Also consider what your holding tank and supply to the water, either through leaching, accumulation or simply time
But without a booster pump or if you've got a lower waste ratio either by restriction or piggyback ro membranes you'll have a lower rejection rate.
And that ignores the fact the you really need to be back flushing the membrane regularly and rejection rates are measured after 30 minutes of continuous running, ions migrate when it's idle so you have to throw away a lot of water at the start that you're probably not doing
My water is fairly heavily chlorinated where i live compared to my previous county.
Letting the glass of water sit in open for a few minutes after pouring helps with taste because the chlorine evaporates.
A better approach is to decide whether your municipality meets or exceeds guidelines (the 85% that do).
I trust my city (in New Zealand), but there are other cities I wouldn’t because their water infrastructure is old and under funded, or because of known problems in the recent past.
Calling bullshit on this one. I have one, it's positively wonderful, but the filters are expensive and per the manufacturer's recommendation you're supposed to change them all simultaneously. So when one times out, they all time out. This runs approximately $150 a year minimum depending on usage.
$150 per YEAR at american prices is approximately nothing. That's a measly 41 cents a day.
People spend far far more than that on far far more frivolous things without thinking twice.
Not that I don't love and respect Wirecutter (I don't), but I'm on team "I like how my water tastes when it's filtered."
Some units give you different fixed timespans for each. For that reason, I just use the Reverse Osmosis stage and ignore the rest. RO is the last step, and in theory it renders pure water meaning the only reason to have the previous ones is to pre-filter somewhat the water and extend the RO cartridge lifespan. Problem with that is, first, there's no way to gauge when each filter is spent. Second, they're priced the same anyway, so why even bother. Just go straight from tap to RO! Keep the post re-mineralization stage if you want.
"post re-mineralization stage" is actually "ph adjustment".
RO membrane doesn't remove chlorine iirc or vocs. On the other side chlorine degrades membrane. "nominally clean tap water" can have enough dirt to clog membrane if you don't auto backflush it frequently
RO makes water more acidic. if water was somewhat acidic to start with, it can get more acidic or become corrosive.
Ph change is one part of the result, not the goal. The goal is water purification.
those for example https://www.freshwatersystems.com/collections/specialty-cart...
or those https://www.freshwatersystems.com/collections/filters-media?...
RO doesn't output pure water. if you want pure water you slap DI filter after RO membrane.
But let's assume it costs you $150 a year. Thats less than $0.50 a day for drinking and cooking water. I doubt you could buy any significant amount of bottled water for fifty cents.
... But does it remove the PFAs?
But if you want a full RO system, go for it. They cost only slightly more and just take up more room under the sink.
The article is clearly for someone who is otherwise on the fence and doesn't have those issues.
That's weird because I'm pretty sure that my point is explicitly spelled out. But just in case, here it is again:
If your trust is based in municipal numbers or statements, you should be aware that municipal numbers and statements are not trustworthy because there's a lot of widespread decaying infrastructure (and coverup!) between where they test, what they make public, and where your water comes out of your faucet.
And if your trust is based on "Rah, rah, America!", you should know that 15% (!!) of water systems serving over 10k people have PFAS levels measured above what the EPA says is safe. (And if you don't think that 15% is a lot, holy smokes, that's nuts.)
So if you aren't testing your tap constantly then you have no idea what your water is like, no matter what the city says their water is like.
And if you are testing your taps constantly, it's less hassle and gives a better result to just filter your water instead.
The author says "I don't filter because I constantly test my taps and they're good each time." That's not the same at all as saying that filtering isn't a generally good idea, especially for anyone who isn't constantly testing their taps. The author ALSO says "a fuckton of you have more PFAS in your water than the EPA says is safe, just not me, lol". The author also chooses to ignore that their good water today may become bad tomorrow.
Yeah I read it the first time, so repeating it is non responsive. The article was about one person's opinion on the subject of water filters. Your opinion is just one more in a sea of opinions. It's not like the author hid those numbers that you keep repeating -- you're just (again, repeatedly) saying they're scarier than the author felt they were.
> And if your trust is based on "Rah, rah, America!", you should know that 15% (!!) of water systems serving over 10k people have PFAS levels measured above what the EPA says is safe. (And if you don't think that 15% is a lot, holy smokes, that's nuts.)
Yeah, OK. So basically you just want everyone to be as scared as you are.
I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but your "holy smokes, that's nuts" is worth approximately what I paid to read it. That goes for the author, too, btw.
The claims of the manufacturers of filters, of course, are completely trustworthy. If you aren't testing the capabilities of your filters constantly, this is fine.
I don't trust my municipality because they cheaped out on the corrosion inhibitors chemistry, leached lead into the water and my house is now filled with developing pinhole leaks. I've had five in four years.
Hint, I don't live anywhere near Flint MI.
Strange days indeed.
So why test?
Just one or two bad test results, or one failed audit, can sink a business like that.
The county can have thousands of people scream for years (flint, Michigan) without panicking.
Under-sink RO systems seem pretty great to me, anywhere you live. With a small holding tank, municipal water pressure is enough to drive small RO cartridges, requiring no electrical power to run, and giving more than sufficient flow rate for all drinking water. I think the biggest downside is a few hundred dollars in initial setup, and cartridges every year or two. This seems safer than relying on the changing opinions of experts as to what amount of harmful chemicals are safe to drink.
It shouldn't be surprising that Americans might understand that their water might not actually be safe despite the municipal government saying it is. It took two whole years for administrators in Flint, Michigan to acknowledge their lead pipe crisis. Trust needs to be earned and maintained, and America is notoriously bad at maintaining critical public infrastructure.
How does that compare with food safety in commercial products? That's the question.
[1] https://www.lenntech.com/processes/disinfection/regulation-e...
Compared to that, in New York, I can definitely taste it and it took some getting used to. (Ironically, at this point my senses seem to have been rewired to associate the taste of chlorine with fresh, i.e. non-stale tap water.)
Uferfiltrat=shitty, deep well=depends, dammed reservoirs=mostly good/usually soft water.
Can even vary within larger cities, where different parts get water from different sources.
I use filtered tap water (under-sink type) which removes most of it.
A lot of the higher end coffee makers like Keurig have built-in filter cartridges in the water tank.
Most commercial coffee maker setups I've seen (hard-plumbed) in offices have a filter attached to the plumbing behind the appliance.
Water can be safe/potable and taste terrible, and vice versa.
Note this excessiveness is really needed for espresso though; a regular Brita jug handles more tolerant methods of brewing perfectly well (and to be honest most people murder coffee enough that the water is the least of their concerns)
Lets you fiddle and fine tune things more for your own preferences too.
There is a whole book on the topic (2015, with a new edition supposedly coming soon):
Chlorine in water is actually fine and tasteless at the concentrations it reaches at the taps - it's basically extremely diluted stomach acid.
The problem is chloramines caused by chlorinated organics. These give water the swimming pool smell and are bad for you.
The solution is easy - reduce the organics in the water before chlorination, and oxygenate (aerate) the water before delivery. But systems can get overwhelmed by too much rain and runoff.
If it’s done, the level is often imperceptible, contrary to the US (I actually had to look this up – I’ve never tasted it in German drinking water in various cities myself).
No. The chlorine in tap water is HOCl + OCl- (it’s a weak acid/base equilibrium). Stomach acid is HCl. And chlorine has both a noticeable smell and odor even at low concentrations (e.g. 1ppm in water). The smell is much worse if any of the chlorine has reacted with organic crud to turn into NCl3.
More enlightened cities in the US use monochloramine (NH2Cl), which is a rather weak disinfectant but is barely noticeable at normal concentrations.
Visiting friends recently, they have well water which smells like sulfur from their tap. Visiting them for a few days, I do not get inured to it, but my friend cannot tell it's there.
I have a whole-house soft-water filter for general use, and for drinking/cooking get 5-gallon bottles filled with RO purified water from The Water Spring on Homestead in Santa Clara. The municipal source for RO water matters, and Santa Clara has the best utilities in the valley.
Stay safe out there.
I know the Eldorado Springs from when I'm in Aspen, Austin, Altadena, and while I don't get the hype surrounding the stuff, it's more than acceptable (for water).
Taste matters. Be it for coffee, tea, cooking, making desserts, even baking, or making your own pizza dough.
> While some studies have hypothesized that the use of RO water could contribute to vitamin B12 deficiency, no significant differences were observed in this study.[20] Symptoms of deficiency were not significantly associated with serum vitamin deficiency status. Only VDD was significantly associated with fatigue as a symptom. This discrepancy raises questions about the current normative values for vitamin B12 and vitamin D3 in the Indian population and suggests the need for further research.
A whole lot of people drink RO water. If it were a simple correlation, I would expect to see cases and papers from all across the world.
I also know there's a long history of false claims along the lines "distilled water sucks the minerals from your body", also called "hungry water". I first heard in the 1980s as a supposed reason for not using distilled water in a radiator. Or even commentary of it in the Carnivorous Plant FAQ at https://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq3385.html .
Because of that long history, and the lack of a good mechanism for how it should work, I need a much higher level of evidence for a direct, causal connection.
if you only drink ro water it can creep up on you, but takes some time
refs:
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/co...
https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/php/data-research/fast-facts-w...
Rather if they did there'd be probably quite a lot of concern.
Not sure where that old wive's tale came from but even my parents had similar concerns against filtered water ages ago.
To wit: Arsenic is not an essential micronutrient.
"Trace quantities of arsenic have been proposed to be an essential dietary element in rats, hamsters, goats, and chickens. Research has not been conducted to determine whether small amounts of arsenic may play a role in human metabolism." [1]
It has the same toxicity and micronutrient profile as selenium, another extremely toxic but nonetheless essential micronutrient. Unfortunately, activists with an unrelated agenda have been spreading unscientific misinformation about arsenic to advance that agenda.
Same story as fluoride outrage actually. Being anti-science is fashionable and most people are ignorant about chemistry.
It is one thing that makes me glad I am no longer a practicing chemist.
The authority that I have appealed to (Wikipedia) is a reasonable one and bias should not be implied in the absence of these supposed corrections you have to make.
I’m open-minded …
Enjoy your 10000% recommended daily intake of Arsenic.
Plant-based arsenic often has poor bioavailability. Quite a few plants people eat are natural accumulators but it just passes through. Pesticides and geology are the primary bioavailable sources.
His other publications include a self-published amazon book titled Autism, Enzymes and the Brimstone Demons. [1]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Enzymes-Brimstone-Demons-Trill...
Drinking sulfate won't repair broken sulfur metabolism, but it's completely plausible that a subset of people maintained adequate day-to-day function with the benefit of sulfate-laden water, and now fall below the threshold with sulfate mostly removed.
I'm on a well, but with super hard water. So I have a water cooler, which I empty into a Brita pitcher, but just for drinking.
Just for the flavour.
I cook with my hard water though. Lots of stews and soups too, make bread, etc. So I suspect I get sufficiently mineralised as a result.
For context, I was boiling a large pot of water and got distracted by a call. Most of the water boiled away, well over a gallon. I was left with a solid white disk of calcium at the bottom. Also, when I broke it to get it out, it was super sharp, almost cut myself.
People who grew up in one of these areas are habituated into never drinking the tap water even if they move to a city with excellent tasting and very high quality tap water. I’ve lived in extreme examples of both.
You also see the opposite case, where someone who grew up with amazing tap water naively grabs a glass from the tap in north San Diego and has a “wtf is this” moment.
Fortunately, I live in the Pacific Northwest currently, which generally has some of the best tasting water you’ll find anywhere. No one would dream of not drinking the tap water.
I wouldnt run bleach through the filters. The filter medium saturates, and any further use will just recontaminate water
Here's the maintenance manual for the one I have. The sterilization and emptying/refilling are done as part of the filter replacement, and not otherwise:
https://www.whirlpoolwatersolutions.com/wp-content/manuals/W...
Is it worse than the other groceries we can't readily get without them being wrapped in plastic? Or storing leftovers in plastic bags at home?
Like me.
Luckily, I am very unreasonably distrusting of government and never drank the stuff.
If the federal rules allow unsafe levels of PFAs it’s reasonable to expect that municipal water companies adhere to said unsafe limits. So no we probably should not trust our municipal water supplies.
Maybe in countries that have functional governments that’s a safe bet.
I'm in my 50's and consult consumer reports whenever I need to buy a white-box appliance. I've moved a few times so I find myself having to do this more than most people.
The qualm I have with CR goes back to the 1980's when I was a bike mechanic for many years. I had a broad knowledge of all the current brands, and knew which bikes were cheap junk. CR had incorrectly ranked the quality of the bicycles largely due to how they "felt" while riding them. One bike, which was actually good quality, got dinged because it wasn't adjusted properly ("Shifter did not engage lowest gears." or something like that). That one article tainted my opinion of them for anything that requires "tuning" by an expert.
YMMV. Mine has for 40 years. :)
I do enjoy their studies on things like: the percentage of plastic particles in General Mills products.
Maybe CR gives something a good review and demand goes up and quality suffers a as a result; but they seem useless and as good as a shot in the dark.
What's your estimate for the percentage of owners that are going to get it adjusted properly?
Most of the things I buy are not going to get tuned, and while a tuned score would be good to see an untuned score is important, likely more important.
If I’m shopping for a hand mixer, I want to get a list of the best ones and then make my own call on price / performance. I don’t want to be told a $19 product is the best and have to carefully dissect the article to learn that it’s not actually the best, CR has just decided on my behalf that the actual best product isn’t worth $10 more.
PLV isn't just the sticker price - it's the total cost of ownership when considered against the utility and convenience it provides.
I no longer set a goal to find the very best #1 thing in every category by reading reviews when I'm buying something. Reviews can be hit or miss, anyway. Instead, I focus my energy on getting good value and buying the best when it comes to things that make me happy or I use a lot.
A computer monitor is a great example of something where PLV for a developer is totally different than a casual user, but the equation serves them both well in pre-purchase considerations.
What tangible thing do you do differently from the advice this friend gave you? Or rather how did you shop before is your didn't look to see what utility it gave you in comparison to the cost?"
Let's say I'm in a situation where I need a bicycle for two months. I'm not going to buy the must expensive bike or there, I'm going to look around and buy a cheap bike that will be fair enough for two months. Are you saying before this advice you would research and buy the best bike out there?
Life is too short to spent 5 hours agonizing over reports about what object to buy for 2 months. Agonize about the things you'll care about in 10 years, like a house, your career path, your health... that's where the value and utility/convenience comes in.
If photography was my passion, I'd spend that time willingly finding the best camera for me that would bring me joy and the function I wanted. I went to NYC years ago and wanted a camera with a selfie screen for the trip... went to target, bought one that worked in store. It was great on the trip and I had no issue just giving it away when I got back. Not worth researching --- but some otherwise very thoughtful people will spend 2 hours researching which printer paper to buy when they really don't care and it really doesn't matter.
Buy the car you want, not the one CR says to get. Buy an appliance from a brand you can get serviced in your area, and try to make purchases locally when you can. All of this matters much more than finding what 10 reviewers agree is the best bike or whatever is so temporary in life.
What do you mean by that? Do think they review new cars they shouldn't?
Also, I suspect they may have found that they attract many new subscribers from people researching car purchases, so it makes sense to have fresh content on the subject to ensure those new eyeballs find value in the publication and decide it might be for them in the long term.
Idk why, this string of text is very weird to me... Feels like you expect effusive praise of the tech industry's political goals in the press? That's not what press is for...
Wirecutter recs are paid for and so that is part of the expense (but also expensive products tend to be better quality).
I've been buying CR recommendations for a decade now and no problems, albeit I haven't bought a car yet from their recs
I think the practice of only reviewing/considering items they can hope will stay in stock with affiliate links really limits what they even consider.
They write thoughtful looking reviews with headings like "why you should trust me" and you think "okay!" Then they recommend something that sucks and you think "never again."
Absolutely zero mention of qualifications. If you do not have a chemistry/chemical engineering degree, or something closely related then why would anyone want to bother with your verbose writing?
I'm a little confused that this is used as an argument against filtering water. I get that iron is not a particularly worrisome contaminant, but I still don't want the occasional "bit of rusty water" showing up in my glass
Then again, they also refused to drink our water at home, which I know is nothing but H2O, as we live off grid and it all goes through numerous filters before hitting the RO.
Then again, where they live (and drink the tap water), I also drink the tap water, because again, EU, safe - but it tastes like a swimming pool, as they dose it heavily with chlorine.
Each to their own.
they have a good reputation, but aren't foolproof
i trust govt + berkey in series more than I trust either alone
basic probability
however, in series, i trust the govt water + berkey more than I trust either independently
basic probability
There are filters that are certified by NSF to comply with those standards https://info.nsf.org/certified/dwtu/
I mean I trust corporations more than I trust the government, but 0.002 is more than 0.001.
You seem like a very trusting person.
this is basic probability
Much like CNBC, it's completely "turned the corner" for me and I take their editorial as a negative signal.
In other words, definitely filter your water.
How so?
How do you know it shaped their decisions between products?
Denver water couldn't force the mine to continue cleanup of the molybdenum (because they're bankrupt) and instead raised the tolerable levels of molybdenum in Denver water. The same thing happened in 2017, 2010 and I'm certain before that. And then we have things like this https://www.cpr.org/2025/06/04/free-private-well-testing-ote...
Colorado has some serious issues with mine runoff and water contamination.
https://www.pagosasun.com/stories/the-day-the-river-turned-o...
So while it's important to me that my municipal water is technically safe to drink, I still have a better experience with my drinking water when I use a filter. While it's amusing that this technical expert considers rust-red water to be "delicious", do they have family members, or friends that visit and consume beverages, and do these other people get to have an opinion?
I think the whole article was a pretty solid attempt at helping people like myself who tend to overreact when it comes to exposure figure out that the fear and the danger are often not the same.
BTW, unless you were just being sarcastic, the rusty water was him talking about the filtered water from a LifeStraw - something that's miraculous as far as I'm concerned, seeing as I've drank mucky water out hiking through them just fine. Well, probably, anyway.
So sure, if you live in a civilised country and your water doesn't taste like shit and doesn't make your coffee taste awful and you trust your government to not give you poison or have tested your water to ensure it won't hurt you, go right ahead, be my guest.
But I will continue filtering my water because I hate the taste of chlorine and want to make the best out of the expensive coffee I buy.
Based on a web search, it looks like Particulate Class 1 means particles in the 0.5 to 1 micron range. Several carbon block filters are rated at 0.5 µm, so I guess they're meant to handle those microplastics, but it leaves me wondering:
Do any smaller microplastics exist? Are they likely to be present in municipal water supplies?
All the filter cartridges that I've seen, and almost all the housings and tubes that hold them and the water, are made at least partly of plastic. Given that water typically sits in these filtration systems for hours or days at a time when the tap is closed, could it be that microplastics are leaching into the water from them?
(How much PFAS do you get from plastic-bottled water / soft drinks instead of the stuff coming out of metal pipes?)
Right now, I prefer the Brita Elite. Refills available everywhere and it makes my chlorinated tap water taste clean. (Not the same as regular Brita).
I tried about 40 brands over the years. Brita Elite is the first one with no drawbacks that make me want to keep looking for something better.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
Water filtration should be an informed decision, based on what water you are actually getting.
If you live in the bay area, you know you have to filter your water because it tastes like metal. We hadn't even had an electric kettle for more than six months in our startup with less than 5 employees using it, the entire bottom of the kettle was covered in 1/4" thick plates of various minerals. Obviously, water differs per city but this was a common occurrence throughout the bay area. The water, of course, always tasted poorly. I'm not even getting into how the housing stock in the bay area is decrepit and full of homes and apartments that are nowhere near up to modern construction standards. You have copper pipes? That's cool but you probably still have lead solder in those pipes. Who knows what kind of supply pipes are coming off the street. Yeah, your local supply probably replaced the ones that run in the street but the ones on your property? Unlikely. Your fittings? Still could have up to 8% lead until 2014. The amount of homes I'd see that still have knob and tube wiring was astounding. You can bet your ass that place still has an abundance of lead all over it.
The poor tasting water in the bay area is reason enough to filter it - even if it wasn't for all these other issues like most homes not being up to modern standards. A lot of these water tests are done at the county's office. It does not reflect what your home will add to your water supply. So, yeah, getting at home test could be nice... for $300... or you could just install a nice RO system that will last many years and give you better water anyway.
In the end, there’s just so many more vague risks affected by the society you live in.
Driving a bit slower will probably offset a great deal of those.
For most people their water filters are probably contributing more mold and contaminants than removing.
But hey, at least it's not bottled water, which is basically tap water that has been put in a single-use plastic bottle and trucked across the country.
Everyone acts like bottled water is evil until there is a water crisis, then it's the lifeline.
It's not as good as the US's one though
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/