Home pure water systems have become all the rage! And it's no wonder! With all of the negative press our municipal water systems have had lately, who doesn't recognize the need to filter their own tap water. Turns out bottled water is not much better than tap water, if any. In other words, having your own home pure water system is no longer an luxury. It's now a necessity.
The only question is which type of the many pure water systems available should you buy? There are a number of ways to purify and filter water. Among them are distillation, reverse osmosis, exposure to ultraviolet light, and carbon and ceramic filtration. All of these have their strengths and weaknesses.
Although distillation is a very common pure water system, it has two faults. For one thing, it's expensive. For another you have to be careful about distilling chlorinated water. (Distillers work by heating up the water. The chlorine that's already in your water can create carcinogenic compounds with organic materials, which then will be vaporized by the distiller. This means they'll end up in the supposedly pure water.)
Reverse osmosis was the water purification system of choice. There are some issues with it as well. Reverse osmosis is not nearly as expensive as distillation. So, money is not the issue. It's the fact that it "demineralizes" the water.
The water that we are supposed to drink has naturally occurring minerals in it. Although the amounts vary, in pure, natural water you'll find trace amounts of minerals like potassium, calcium, and magnesium. Our bodies need these trace minerals in order to function properly. Because of the way it works, reverse osmosis takes these minerals out. Some scientists actually think there are long term consequences to drinking demineralized water.
Ultraviolet radiation (UV) is also a very common technology used to create pure water systems. UV works great, by the way. It's only effective on living organisms--bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms. It will do nothing to get rid of the whole host of other stuff in your water like lead, pesticides, and prescription drugs.
Perhaps the best all around water filtration technology uses carbon and/or ceramic filters. Usually these are used in a two-step process where you filter out the organic contaminants first, then the inorganic impurities next. This way you can make the water pure, but leave in the trace minerals. This type of pure water system is also substantially cheaper than many of these other methods.
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