If you’re a healthy person than you most likely appreciate the beneficial elements of filtered water. You should understand, though, that setting up a filter is only the beginning. It is just as important to maintain a clean filer replacement cartridge. This means replacing the filter cartridge when it is recommended by your filter manufacturer. Filters are wonderful ways to remove contamination from your drinking water. The problem is that as it filters, dirt gets stuck in the filter. A dirty filter is much less effective at filtering water than a clean one is. This is why you should use filter replacement cartridges to maintain a healthy water supply.

Filters are great for use at home because, depending on the water usage, you can install them in a variety of places. The most common of which is the kitchen faucet. This is where it’s most crucial to have a water filtration system. There are two primary types which will achieve this.

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If you’ve been learning a little about water filters because you’re convinced of the benefits of drinking clean purified water you will have come across “charcoal water filters” or “carbon water filters” or “activated carbon water filters”. What are these?

A charcoal water filter is a water filter that uses charcoal for the filter process to remove the impurities. Charcoal is carbon that has been created by heating organic material in the absence of oxygen. The good ones are derived from coconut husks.

Charcoal has various properties, primarily that it is extremely porous and this is what is necessary for successful water filtration. These pores allow water, and contaminants, to pass through and for the contaminants to be absorbed by the carbon by means of chemical attraction, because many carbon based or organic compounds are chemically attracted to carbon.

What then, is activated carbon? Activated carbon is charcoal that has been treated with oxygen in the manufacturing process to result in a much higher percentage of pores. In other words it is more porous than ordinary charcoal. The best charcoal water filters use activated carbon.

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Is it possible that there are drugs in your drinking water? Surely it’s not possible that when you drink a glass of water you’re drinking drugs? Lets take a look at the possibility that there are drugs in drinking water in the US.

How about we begin with a quote from the Ralph Nader Institute. “U.S. drinking water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.”

Now of course “toxic chemicals” may not include drugs, but it’s a pretty scary place to start the discussion. However there is plenty of other evidence that there are drugs found in drinking water in mainstream water supplies. Particularly antibiotics.

Strangely, some of the evidence for drugs in drinking water comes from a high school student. In 1999 a West Virginia high school student decided to do a science project for school by testing for levels of antibiotics in rivers. Ashley Mulroy tested for the antibiotics penicillin, tetracycline and vancomycin in water by taking samples over a 10 week period from the Ohio river and having them tested. The antibiotics were found in all samples.

So as she had found antibiotics in river water she tested her tap water. Same result.

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Shower water filters. Why would you bother? Yes theres no doubt that drinking clean water is essential to our health, but why do you need to filter shower water?

After all, you don’t drink out of the shower do you? You only wash.

But even so there are excellent reasons to use a shower water filter. Here’s 4 good reasons in support of using a shower water filter every time you shower.

1. Chlorine. Now we all know that you shouldn’t drink chlorine, and that the best water filters filter out chlorine. There’s no doubt that drinking chlorine isn’t good for you and some consider it very likely that drinking chlorine causes cancer.

But even showering in chlorinated water is a problem. Several actually. Because when you shower some of the water goes into your skin. And in a hot shower your pores actually open wider and let more in, and if there’s chlorine in the water the chlorine goes in too. So in effect you’ve just drunk chlorinated water.

2. And as chlorinated water gets hot the chlorine is released into the atmosphere and you breathe it.

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