What’s in YOUR water?

In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of attention placed on what is in our community water supplies.  There are “government standards” for what is allowed in water, and they issue community reports to let us know what is in the water we consume.  Last week, Columbia University released a data report that 2/3 of the United States has an issue with Uranium in their drinking water. Especially in Hispanic communities. Kinda creepy, given it is a radioactive element and all. It was found in higher concentrations particularly in the southern and western states.  This got me curious about what exactly is in OUR water.  I woefully took for granted that my husband throws a new filter in the fridge water dispenser when it flashes “new filter needed” and I was drinking quality water.

So the Columbia report https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/uranium-detectable-two-thirds-us-community-water-system-monitoring-records

I discovered that Uranium is not a problem in MY water, but it is just a few counties away.  So I decided to look at what was in my LOCAL drinking water.  This company evaluates what you currently have in your water, and what THEIR ideal standards are for drinking water versus the “government” approved levels.   https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/404.php?p=system&pwd=MO1010459?pws=MO1010459

I discovered that my city water did comply with “required governmental levels” of safe drinking water.  What I also discovered is that most of the “junk” in my drinking water is contaminants from the water filtration process itself.

I then discovered that the local government standards do not meet the EWG standards for removing metals and other contaminants known to be carcinogens, or cancer causing agents. Notably, Chromium Hex, the same contaminant made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich.  It can be “naturally occurring” but is usually byproducts of industry that gets into our drinking water. I realized the Chromium Hex levels in MY water are 87x higher than what EWG would consider safe.  In fact, there are a lot of cancer causing agents in my water, and for most of them, there is NO LEGAL LIMIT of acceptable amounts in the water.  The photo below is the carcinogens detected in my local water. This is scary and concerning.

Below is a map of the Chromium Hex concentrations in the United States. It is an even BIGGER problem than Uranium, in terms of areas where high concentrations exist. I was shocked to see the levels of Chromium Hex not only throughout our country, but centered here in the Midwest states! Nebraska looks awful. Kansas and Missouri slightly better. Chromium Hex is a known carcinogen and I have to ask “does our city water still have chromium hex in it or have they filtered that out?” How can it be filtered out?

So then I went further and looked at well ok, my fridge has a charcoal filter.  Water tastes good that comes from the fridge.  So surely this crap is getting filtered out BY that charcoal filter, right? What exactly is filtered BY a charcoal fridge filter?  (For the record my filter is a LG filter on an LG fridge).

What I discovered was oh hey, guess what!  Charcoal filtration does NOT remove Chromium Hex, or several other metallic agents in the water.  The only way to get that crap and other metals out of your water is reverse osmosis. I am guessing there is also not a “standard” to which charcoal filters are held to. It is one of the reasons I was kind of a “brand snob” and always bought the name brand filter for the fridge instead of the cheaper generic filters. I thought that maybe they were better quality since they were branded the same as my fridge and perhaps had a better filtration system in them. (I thought wrong). I also realized that city or municipal water systems are not adequately removing Chromium Hex from their supplies either.

So I went down a wild goose chase of studying reverse osmosis water systems.  I found a single serving pitcher type of reverse osmosis filtration product (Like a Brita water filter pitcher) type of system that can sit on the counter top and I can reverse osmosis pitchers of water at a time for drinking.  I opted for a BlueVoa system.  It arrived and we set it up today, and here are the results!

First, it measures total dissolved solids or TDS.  TDS are all the viruses, bacteria, metals, sediment, minerals, toxins, etc that are found in water. Here is the ranking system of TDS per the BlueVoa system manual.  The lower the TDS, the better your water quality in terms of less “trash” in the water.

We did the required cycles of water to get the filters primed and ready for drinking.   Then we decided to test out our various drinking water sources in our house. Here are the numbers of TDS in the water just from our local tap water from the kitchen sink:

So the TDS was 386.  From straight kitchen sink tap water.  Pretty high number, and not what you would want to be drinking. The TDS would be considered poor quality drinking water from the tap.  The output water had a TDS of 14, so its scoring really good post reverse osmosis. I was not super surprised at this number, as this is not filtered and fresh from the tap as the source.

Then I got a wild hair to try the fridge filter water.  I wanted to see what it would score.  I was NOT expecting these results though. To say I was shocked would be an understatement.

What exactly IS my charcoal fridge filter doing?  The score was 352!  Versus regular tap water from the kitchen sink being 386?!?!  And that is a new fridge filter just installed 10 days ago!  I mean, yeah it helped a LITTLE, but I honestly expected that my fridge filter was doing a better job than that.  The TDS score is still close to the poor quality drinking water.  Gross when you think about it.  I would guess most of us are surprised that our fridge filters do not do a better job than advertised.

The taste of the reverse osmosis water is fantastic.  I have never tasted water like it before.  Whole house osmosis machines are pricy.  Like, sell an organ on the black market level expensive.  Countertop versions are in the $150-400 range.  You can also buy separate filters for shower heads. I also discovered that Sam’s Club sells 4 gallon bottles of water that are reverse osmosis!  They run $5 each.  We went this route first.  We used it for all drinking water, keurig brewing and coffee pot brewing.  Also used it to make ice.  Our usage averaged at 3 of those 4 gallon bottles per week.  Having the countertop RO filter machine will pay for itself over 3-4 months versus using the bottles of reverse osmosis water from Sam’s club.

The more you know.