How much do you know about your drinking water?

The drinking water in Germany is generally good to very good.
I drink it directly from the tap for many years. It's clean colourless and odourless, there is no smell of Chlorine.
It’s well controlled by institutions.

I live in a region where the amount of Calcium and Magnesium are very high, though. It's hard water. This can rapidly change when moving only 20 km away.
Hard water has its huge disadvantage since Calcium precipitates as Carbonate. The bathroom looks 'dirty' having white residues after a few days and you can clean all the day.
The residues also can be a problem for the water conduits and the heating system (calcification).
A high amount of Calcium is not good for making tea. It tastes dulled. It's rather good for coffee, though.

But Calcium and Magnesium are important for the body/health and makes the water refreshing.
At some regions there was temporarily a problem with Nitrate. (Comes from overfertilisation). This applies to babies since they are sensitive to it.

I don't have any purifier in use. There are many misinformations about purifying of drinking water.

When you boil the water you can :
Kill micro organisms such as legionella.
Remove Chlorine
Lower Calcium/Magnesium by eliminating temporary water hardness.

When you filter it through an Ion exchanger you can:

Actually EXCHANGE the cations (Calcium and Magnesium and heavy metals) and the anions (Sulphate, Nitrate and Carbonate). Some exchange them with the cation Sodium and the anion Chloride. This isn’t good at all. We have enough salt in our food already.
Best is to exchange a part of the water by H+ and OH- and mix it with original water to have a good average.

Filter it through charcoal:
It removes Chlorine, colour and some but not all organic metabolites coming from human pharmaceuticals as excretions.

To all filters especially to those for household use applies:
They do contaminate by microbiological regrowth!

Many people who do 'purify' their water for drinking (tea or coffee and the like) in the kitchen do not use the filter properly. They use them for a too long time (beyond its capacity, which is actually lower than most people think) / do not rinse / are using it as 'open' system. They frequently get water which is more contaminated than before.

To prevent microbiological regrowth some filters contain Silver, but it also gets into the water!!! Silver is a heavy metal.


IMHO such filters are only useful to reduce hardness to prevent damage at the water conduits and the heating system. A closed maintained centralised system, though.

If you have got hard water and want to have a good tea I'd rather buy some at the supermarket. Also the other way around.

Also I am personally not worried about organic substances in drinking water here. For now the nature's purifying by vaporisation and condensation and finally filtration through rock layer still works.

But I am very worried about our oceans. Finally it all 'ends' there and gets in there. If we do not care about it will end in a disaster.

 

Arsenic is commonly known as 'poison', but yea a natural Element and widely spread. There are many cases of murder where arsenic trioxide has been used to kill people. The concentrations are by far too low to be harmful, though.
It belongs to the 'popular' poisons just as potassium cyanide.
But as any 'popular' poisons or acids or chemical agents most of their attributes are distorted in the general public.
And there is a high toleration effect in human body. That means the general level that has been determined to be toxic increases by constant uptake.
There has been a cult of Arsenic eaters. A low dose acts as a stimulant. Already in dark age people (ab)used it.
In the US there were the 'Dippers'.

I do not say it is harmless, of course not. A single dose of 100 mg of arsenic trioxide would highly probably kill you. Considering the stoichiometric factor it would mean 75.7 mg of Arsenic would be lethal. If you now calculate the limit of 10ppm (parts per million) you know how many litres you would have to drink...

The issue is that you don't take up Arsenic only from water itself. When it is essential to chickens and you eat chicken for instance. This applies to heavy metals as well.
There are people who are worried about heavy metals in drinking water and at the same time they take up more of them because they eat seafood...

And people do frequently forget Paracelsus. (simply spoken: The dose makes the poison and there must be poison and one who can be poisoned).
I have water that contains Arsenic --->conclusion it must be poison or harmful.

Fact is Arsenic is essential for some animals.(Chickens and rats) and even though there is some controversy if it is essential for humans scientists assume the human need is between 5 and 50 micrograms / day.

I had a look at it. There is no info what they use as filter, except the mentioned Silver to prevent microbiological regrowth.
The 'issue' with such filters is that you actually do not know what they really take up and what they release. You actually don’t know how much they have taken up already and what exactly and when they are (partially) exhausted.
Charcoal is known to take up only. But any exchangers do exchange, means they take up something and do release something.

I know it is technically difficult to have those cations separated. Especially at commercial products for household use. This applies to the advertisement :"Leaves good minerals, including calcium, in water"
The wording -good- has a commercial intention.

There are many factors which makes it hardly possible to make general statements. It strongly depends on where somebody lives / the water quality there.
Taste and quality/health do not correlate. Magnesium can have a slightly bitter taste, Calcium can make food taste dull. Taste is a personal matter.

I personally would leave all the inorganic compounds of the water alone. Heavy metals normally aren't an issue except the water supplies are old. Changing their amounts affects the taste of the water and the prepared food, though. If one finds it better when filtering then it's fine.

Removing organic compounds makes sense. They should actually have no place in the water.

What some people might not know: The taste of water and the prepared foods depend exceptionally from the composition of the inorganic compounds including Chlorine.
The organic compounds don't matter. The reason for it are their concentrations. The major inorganic compounds are milligram wise per litre (some a few hundreds) whereas the organic are all in the ppm/ppb/ppt range.

As mentioned already. I personally do not use any filters.
I think when living at one place for years the body gets 'used' to the local water. I presume its quality does not change medium-dated. The local water tastes fine for me and foods have no disadvantage when cooking with it.
When I want to have a different taste I buy mineral water. Here in Germany we have many local springs.
The water is classified into 3 different kinds depending on amount of minerals:
table water
mineral water
curative water
Most Germans buy their drinking water I am actually an exception drinking tap water, but my favourite is 'Ensinger sport' lol. I prefer high Calcium/Magnesium and low Sodium waters.


There are many factors. I cannot consider them all. The composition of local water changes rapidly when moving. And when buying beverages they use 'different' water...

 

Endocrine disruptors are a group of organic substances which have different attributes concerning adsorption / removing by absorption..
The problem results from the different classification. The pharmacological classification as EDCs and the classification as affinity to a particular absorbent.

Regarding filtering / adsorption it strongly depends on the substance/adsorbent pair. This means it depends on each single substance which is classified as EDC

There are 2 ways.
Distillation of water (expensive and with efforts)
And reverse osmosis.

Both would remove anything from the water, though. You actually get pure water without essential minerals.

Here is something to illustrate the complexity of the matter :
http://swhydro.arizona.edu/archive/V2_N6/feature4.pdf

Lead (Plumbum) can be removed by filtering through Ion exchanger. It absorbs well there.