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I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

nytimes.com

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Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#81

Post by Arch-TK »

That's nice. In the UK, tap water tastes like chlorine. If you are unfortunate enough to have chloraminated water, just letting it sit is insufficient. You need a filter which can remove the chloramine. After this, the water is actually too hard to make good coffee with, so I either zerowater it or distill it and then mix it with the filtered water using a TDS meter to hit a rough reference point (EC meters are not accurate gauges of TDS, but that's fine, you just want a consistent TDS not a precise TDS).

So sure, if you live in a civilised country and your water doesn't taste like shit and doesn't make your coffee taste awful and you trust your government to not give you poison or have tested your water to ensure it won't hurt you, go right ahead, be my guest.

But I will continue filtering my water because I hate the taste of chlorine and want to make the best out of the expensive coffee I buy.

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#82

Post by rufus_foreman »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #75
rufus_foreman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> municipal numbers and statements are not trustworthy The claims of the manufacturers of filters, of course, are completely trustworthy. If you aren't testing the capabilities of your filters constantly, this is fine.

You can sue a manufacturer for lying about independent testing and certification. Good luck suing your county.

If you win the lawsuit against the manufacturer, do you get your health back?

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#83

Post by torqueehmada »

righthand wrote: post #30
homefree wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than that - they have the same anti-tech political bent as the rest of the legacy tech press. Thankfully we have better options now.

Question: Is there some implied negative critique of Consumer Reports here? I rather enjoy their work and the fact they're reader funded, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's something I should be aware of that's not clear from it (the way they test or how they accept another type of money). I know they review too many cars (every issue lately features a car banner at the top of the cover).

Incoming anecdata:

I'm in my 50's and consult consumer reports whenever I need to buy a white-box appliance. I've moved a few times so I find myself having to do this more than most people.

The qualm I have with CR goes back to the 1980's when I was a bike mechanic for many years. I had a broad knowledge of all the current brands, and knew which bikes were cheap junk. CR had incorrectly ranked the quality of the bicycles largely due to how they "felt" while riding them. One bike, which was actually good quality, got dinged because it wasn't adjusted properly ("Shifter did not engage lowest gears." or something like that). That one article tainted my opinion of them for anything that requires "tuning" by an expert.

YMMV. Mine has for 40 years. :)

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#84

Post by mousethatroared »

OptionOfT wrote: post #62
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #11

Money quote: > readings of PFAS that exceed EPA limits have been found in just 8% of small public water systems (those that serve fewer than 10,000 people) and 15% of large ones 15%! Anyone who trusts their municipal water supply because of *handwave* regulations and reports needs to read that again. Even if my water were 100% pristine as the author's apparently is, which they only know for their own homes because th…

Your filter system is not set up for water that is microbiologically unsafe to drink. And if that filter setup also has an RO system your cost is more, as with RO you have a certain amount of rejection rate.

I trust my municipality to give me microbiologically safe water.

Because I trust bleach, not my local water authority.

I certainly do not trust them to give me chemically clean water. So I have a $150 under-sink RO system.

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#85

Post by torqueehmada »

Crye wrote: post #7
vsskanth wrote: post #4

It's mostly for taste at this point, rather than safety. For a long time I used to drink right from the tap, now use a filter pitcher simply because it tastes better.

does it taste better because of temperature, aeration?

Not the person you asked, but the chlorine level is very high in my muni water so I like running it through a Britta charcoal filter. If I'm in a rush, tap is fine.

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#86

Post by mihaaly »

dbcooper wrote: post #40

>Why you should trust me Absolutely zero mention of qualifications. If you do not have a chemistry/chemical engineering degree, or something closely related then why would anyone want to bother with your verbose writing?

Knowing something well is not dependent on formal education. Helps quite some, but not being a must. And more importantly: not a guarantee!

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#87

Post by torqueehmada »

internet_points wrote: post #63

How much PFAS does the average water filter add to your water? (How much PFAS do you get from plastic-bottled water / soft drinks instead of the stuff coming out of metal pipes?)

Go find out and tell us. That would be really helpful information.

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#88

Post by mihaaly »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #45

I'm a dude who doesn't care to run a chemical analysis of my municipal water every couple days. I filter my water.

Have you tested your filtered water - in various conditions - or you just trust it based on the words of others?

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#89

Post by storus »

After covid I noticed that drinking tap water was making me noticeably worse but buying packaged mineral water didn't (this was done over a few months). I later bought reverse osmosis and never hit that problem since. However, this year I learned that I live in a high-PFAS area (up to 300ng/L) so I am wondering if I was hitting PFAS overload somehow. Most of my flowers died quickly after watering them with the same tap water as well (when I still tried to have some house flowers).

Re: I'm Wirecutter's water-quality expert. I don't filter my water

#90

Post by mousethatroared »

Barrin92 wrote: post #42
porphyra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if safe, municipal water where I live (San Jose, California) contains a ton of chlorine and is super hard, making it unpleasant to drink. In contrast, bottled water consistently tastes fine.

sorry if this is a stupid question because we don't have chlorinated water in Germany, but do people brew green tea or good coffee with tap water? Doesn't it taste god awful? One of the things which I remember from my holidays in Spain as a kid, which is one of the few countries which adds it here, is that the water tasted like pool water.

Its extremely unlikely that German water isn't chlorinated. Perhaps you are thinking about fluorinated?

Chlorine in water is actually fine and tasteless at the concentrations it reaches at the taps - it's basically extremely diluted stomach acid.

The problem is chloramines caused by chlorinated organics. These give water the swimming pool smell and are bad for you.

The solution is easy - reduce the organics in the water before chlorination, and oxygenate (aerate) the water before delivery. But systems can get overwhelmed by too much rain and runoff.

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