Not really. These filters are based on the concept of “like-dissolves-like.” You can dissolve nail polish in acetone because they’re both relatively non-polar organic substances, and you can “dissolve” (here we call it “adsorb”) organic substances in your water onto carbon. Minerals are mostly polar and don’t really want anything in particular to do with carbon, so they stay in the water. Though you’re probably getting your minerals in quantity from food, you don’t drink enough water to make a dent in what you eat, unless your water tastes like brine- in which case you may want to check if you’re drinking pickle juice, or the ocean.
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Well, the British have a long tradition of telling other countries what they’re doing wrong…
To their credit, the Graun has run similar stories on UK water supplies, well before the Flint incident. What they were able to do in those stories, but don’t seem to have done here, is investigate a majority of water authorities. Unfortunately, this is harder to do in the US - too many of them - but what it means is that if your city is not one of the ones listed in the article you don’t have a clue what the situation is.
Part of the problem is that many US water authorities are corporate-owned, and at one time many were owned by Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG, which is honestly a little strange.
As it happens, many years ago I was a water quality inspector for the EPA; this was shortly after they were re-organized from the FWQA. The way EPA handles monitoring is to require the water supplier - whether municipal or private - to conduct its own monitoring regimen and report the results to the EPA. Nothing to go wrong there! (They only get hands-on involved if there is separate reason to believe something is wrong.) Normally these results are available through the appropriate local government agency. To make matters worse, some local governments have their own EPAs or reporting regulations, and if they do the USEPA generally cedes responsibility to those agencies. For example, I worked in the Michigan-Ohio District Office, and Ohio had its own EPA which handled water supply monitoring. The people in my office didn’t have a lot of confidence in the OEPA, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.
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Where are you? Most people use a local water testing lab-- there are a million of them. We get ours (for the ag well; the house is city water) done every two years, and it costs about $300 to test for heavy metals, organics, organophosphates, and biologicals. There are dipstick-style tests that can be done at home but are less sensitive and possibly less accurate. See 2024 Cost of Water Testing and Treatment - Estimates and Prices Paid
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It seems that filtering dissolved lead is easier than filtering particulate, first question here:
http://flintwaterstudy.org/frequently-asked-questions-on-lead-and-safety-of-flint-water/
List of NSF certified filters, all kinds- pour through, under counter, whole house:
http://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/listings_leadreduction.asp
It’s up to you to look up what the certification means:
http://www.nsf.org/consumer-resources/what-is-nsf-certification/water-filters-treatment-certification
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Yep, just the public sector.
That seemed really weird to me until I looked it up. They have ion exchange beads, which I think account for that effect. I thought they were just rigid activated carbon cakes, but it appears that I’m thinking only of my Brita water bottle in particular, and apparently it’s unusual. The pour through pitchers apparently have both.
I’m surprised that ACC adsorbs lead ions with significance, at least sufficiently to bring it to safe levels, but you learn something new every day. I still wouldn’t trust it, and based on the link, I’m right not to. I certainly wouldn’t trust it with the pictures I’ve seen of Flint water that got really turbid even though that’s mainly iron rust. The big problem with these filters is that they do lose efficacy over time, and while some have an “auto shutoff” feature, they are based solely on throughput.
It just goes to show me that the second I take anything for granted, I’m bound to be proven wrong.
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not strange at all. RWE was until ~ 2000 active in all classical utility markets, not only electricity but also natural gas, waste disposal and water.
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What is strange is that US water facilities would be 100% owned by non-US companies. Somehow this seems worse than, say, electricity, since water is usually a local, depletable resource. Are there any localities in Germany where the water supply is 100% under the control of a company in another country?
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Privatized water is for sure bad - but unfortunately not strange. I’m not aware of a fully privatized water supplier here, but a good guess would be Veolia, they own 75 '% of the Braunschweig Utilities and run (waste-)water companies Hesse, Thuringia and Saxony.
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