Water Contamination and filters

If you are considering buying a water filtration system you may want to consider all the different types of contaminants that can be in the water you use so that you can decide if you want to get rid of them using a filter.

The first step for me is to see what type of water my has. The city of Tempe has its own web site and report posted there.

Here is what I learned from the report. "the United States
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prescribes regulations that limit the
amount of certain contaminants in water provided by public water systems.
The Food and Drug Administration regulations establish limits for contaminants
in bottled water.

The EPA has a webpage that lists a ton of contaminants and their allowable limits and how they get into our water supply. They can be broken categorized into the following types:

• Microorganisms
• Disinfectants
• Disinfection Byproducts
• Inorganic Chemicals
• Organic Chemicals
• Radionuclides

I looked through the list. I wanted to compose a list of the most serious ones, but as I looked through the list I concluded that nearly all of them have harmful effects that are serious. Take note that several of them are part of the water disinfection process so this will be in nearly everyone's water unless filtered at the faucet level.

The best way to decide on filters is see enumerate what each type of filter can remove and buy the filters that remove the largest number of contaminants.

The University of Nebraska wrote a good paper (short) on Reverse Osmosis systems.