What Is the Best Type of Water Filter?

As people become interested in seeking out treatment solutions for their water it easy for them to become overwhelmed by the vast amount of information and products that are in the market today. The term “water filter” is a generic term that most people associate with purifying water. Rather than discussing the best type of water filter, let’s discuss the best type of treatment method.

Filters and other barrier methods are a selective removal process that can only remove certain types of contaminants from water. This includes reverse osmosis and every other process where water is forced through a barrier under pressure to remove contaminants. There are filters of all shapes, sizes and composition but they all have one thing in common: they lose effectiveness over time. As these filters remove whatever contaminants they are designed to remove, those contaminants build up in the filter causing less efficient removal and eventually little to no removal if they are not changed. (continued below)

Another important point about filters is that they do not have the capacity to distinguish between the contaminants they remove. Some companies claim their filtration processes “remove the bad things while leaving in the good”. This is physically impossible and very misleading to prospective buyers that are researching methods of purifying their water. A filter has no ability to distinguish between contaminants in the water nor can a filter be designed to do so. This makes the quality of the water you get through a filtration process speculative regardless of the life of the filter because everyone’s water is different in the types of contaminants present and the levels that are present.

So if only certain types of contaminants can be removed by filters and the quality of the water is never guaranteed then what can you do? You could buy combinations of filters that each remove certain contaminants (which is basically what an under-the-sink RO system is) but then you have multiple filters to replace which would leave you with high maintenance, replacement and wastewater costs. The best answer is to seek out a collective removal process that removes all the contaminants from your water.

This is what a water distiller is. As filters try to remove contaminants from the water, the distillation process actually removes the pure water from the contaminants, producing 99.9% pure water for the life of the equipment if it is properly operated and maintained. There are 4 types of contaminants in the water pollution spectrum: organic, inorganic, radioactive and biological. Distillation is the only process that can effectively remove the full spectrum of these contaminants. In order to match this with filters you would have to buy a specific filter to remove contaminants from each category and maybe even certain filters for specific contaminants.  Clearly distilled water is the best water to drink.

So to summarize, the question, “What is the best type of filter?” is simply not the right question. The real question should be what is the absolute best way for me to protect my family from the full spectrum of contaminants that could be in my water. The answer is most definitely a Pure Water Distiller.