Do Undersink Water Filters Provide Safe Home Water?

Do undersink water filters provide safe home water? That's a really good question. The answer may be "yes" or "no", depending on the product that you buy and your source.

Is your source a public waterline or a private well? Well-water may contain a variety of contaminants and regular testing is needed to determine the necessary treatment measures. If you are on public waterline, there is no doubt that you need to take additional in-home steps to supplement the treatment measures used by your local facility.

What constitutes safe home water? For drinking, it should be free of lead, cysts, chlorine and cancer-causing chlorination byproducts (THMs), as well as other traces of chemicals and prescription drugs that are commonly found in tested supplies. For showering, it should be free of chlorine and THMs, as well as lead and copper.

Undersink water filters can effectively remove all of those things, but I have only found two products on the market that are effective and one is more effective than the other. This is an example of how "price" is not always indicative of quality.

Ever-pure promises to provide safe home water, but their only semi-effective undersink water filters cost nearly $800. That's more than four times the cost of the most effective product on the market. The extra cost is not justified.

For the shower, there are also two effective products. One is made by Wellness and costs nearly three times as much as the other. Again, the extra cost is not justified.

One of the most difficult substances to filter out is THM, disinfection byproducts. That's why there are only a few products that I consider effective. Most of the solutions on the market are simple granular carbon filters, which effectively remove chlorine, but not THMs.

After years of study, researchers are convinced that the level of THMs that we are typically exposed to in our homes doubles our risk of bladder cancer. They have measured blood levels of carcinogens after drinking unfiltered tap water and after showering in it. The blood levels are higher after a 15 minute shower than after drinking a liter of unfiltered tap-water.

I don't know about you, but I avoid carcinogens, whenever possible. So, I believe that safe home water must be free of THMs.

Ever-pure undersink water filters are expensive because they include a reverse osmosis step, which is unnecessary and less effective than other treatment steps. Submicron filtration effectively removes cysts (tiny parasites that can cause serious illnesses and chronic digestive problems).

Ion exchange reduces lead by more than 99%. Reverse osmosis only reduces it to the federal action level. That's not enough, because there is no safe level for lead consumption. The US EPA goal is for "zero" lead-content, but facilities can't reach that goal, so they created a "federal action level".

For Safe Home Water, you need multi-stage selective filtration for the kitchen and the shower. You can get that with affordable undersink water filters and showerhead systems. Look for the package deal. That's my advice.