Last Updated on November 7, 2020
If you tested your water once and the results showed that it is perfectly safe, don’t think you are set for life. You should regularly test the water to make sure that it stays that way because the use of pesticides and other chemicals could start contaminating your tap water from one year to the next. If the results show some kind of concern, you should ask the expert what your options are.
Know that there are some excellent well water filter systems like the “reverse osmosis system”, that removes a great number of toxins (among which are nitrates, arsenic, and heavy metals). In some cases, a simpler carbon filter should be enough as it can filtrate lead and chlorine.
2. Tap water vs. bottled water
People intuitively assume bottled water to be safer than tap water. And for many, that is the reason behind their preference for bottled water. But that is not necessarily true.
Bottled water is regulated by the FDA, and although the requirements are a high standard, the FDA doesn’t have the means nor the power to do as much testing and control as the entity that regulates public water suppliers – the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Besides, by consuming bottled water, you are increasing your ecological footprint unnecessarily.
Every year, 38 billion plastic water bottles end up in landfills. That’s over 2 million tons of plastic that will remain polluting our planet for centuries before it decomposes (not to mention the amount of water bottles that will end up in the oceans). And this is data for the United States alone.
If your tap water is safe but you don’t like its taste, you can buy a home water filtration system like the Aqua Pura AP-DWS1000 to make it as tasteless as possible. This is one of the most common reasons to install a water filter because, in some states, water needs to be treated with chlorine (known as “hard-water”), which can make it taste a bit weird.
Please note that a filtering system requires maintenance. If you don’t do it, it will not only protect you from contaminated water but will actually make things worse by accumulating contaminants in the filter and pushing them in high amounts into the water.
