I spent most of the first 14 years of my life growing up in the Congo, which was the Belgian Congo at that time. We always boiled our water and then filtered it. Some of it was rain water collected off of roofs and some of it was water taken from springs or rivers. The boiling would kill any and all disease carrying organisms. Filtering would make it look clean.
It wasn't till I came to America that I experienced the "luxury" of drinking water straight from the tap.
My life experience illustrates most of the options there are for drinking water. So what are the various options and what are the pros and cons of each? Which is the best option? This may vary depending on where in the world you live and what are your financial limits. However, if you live in a developed country, which option will give you the safest drinking water? These are some of the questions of the complex drinking water puzzle we want to solve.
What Are Some "Best Drinking Water" Options?
The word "best" can be understood in a relative sense. "Given my geography and circumstances in life, what is the best drinking water for me?" Or it can be understood in an absolute sense. What is the world's best source of drinking water?
This article will be answering the second question as I'm writing primarily for people in developed countries, but it will also give you a grid for determining your best options given other limiting circumstances.
1. Rain Water was recognized in ancient history as a source of safe water. In some countries it may still be the safest source of drinking water. However, there are complications in the modern world where pollutants are in the atmosphere. There can be contaminants in the methods used to collect rain water as well. For these reasons rain water may not be the best choice.
If you collect rain water, then boil it and then filter it, you will likely have very good quality drinking water. But boiling and filtering would do this for any water not just rain water.
2. Boiled Water is a great way of disinfecting your drinking water, if you boil it for 10 minutes. However, it takes time to boil and then cool down the water. The cost of fuel is prohibitive for many of the people who would benefit from it the most. Furthermore, boiling doesn't remove many of the other pollutants that find their way into water in industrialized countries.
3. Tap Water is a drinking water source for many people in developed countries where the water is filtered and disinfected before being served up to your tap. Tap water used to be considered perfectly safe, but increasingly questions are being raised about the purity of the water because of the aging of the plumbing and water purification equipment used. Also, there has been an introduction of new kinds of pollutants into the water supplies of these countries.
Erik Olson, Senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, puts us on guard by saying, "Most Americans take it for granted that their tap water is pure and their water infrastructure is safe. They shouldn't."
4. Bottled Water has become the beverage of choice for many moderns. With questions being raised about the quality of tap water, the bottled water companies stepped up their campaigns. In l976 the average American drank 2 gallons of bottled water per year. By 1996 they were drinking 30 gallons of bottled water per year. The irony of it is that while the taste is usually better, the quality may not be better.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) recently completed a four year review of bottled drinking water. They tested more than 1000 bottles representing 103 different brands. They found that most of the water was high quality, but that some brands were contaminated. They concluded, "There is no assurance that just because water comes out of a bottle, it is any cleaner or safer than water from a tap."
What Is The "Best Drinking Water" Option?
I would like to suggest that filtering your water will potentially give you "the worlds best drinking water". I say "potentially" because not all filters are equally good. The world of filters is a puzzle in itself. There are filters which simply improve taste and color, and there are filters that remove practically all pollutants.
Here are some of the reasons that I believe filtered water will give you the best drinking water:
o By filtering, you can take water that is already treated and basically safe from your tap and make it even better.
o Quality filters, that have been certified, will give you water that you can be sure has been purified of specific pollutants. These quality filters will tell you exactly what is removed. You are not left to guess as with bottled water where there is no consistency between companies.
o Distilled water has all pollutants removed, even the good minerals, except for VOC's which can then be removed by a carbon filter. Reverse Osmosis filters are similar. They aren't quite as thorough but they do remove the VOCs. There are high quality carbon filters which give you high quality water at great speed without removing the healthy minerals as is done with distilled water or reverse osmosis filters.
o Filters will give you this highest quality of drinking water for a fraction of the cost of bottled water and in a much more convenient way.
With the increasing number of pollutants in drinking water sources and the need to reduce the cost of our drinking water, this question of looking at all the options is an important one. Sorting through the pros and cons to identify filters as being the best option for the purest water is just the first part of the puzzle. The second part involves sorting through the vast array of different kinds of filters and different models of filters to find the source of the world's best drinking water.
