Well Water Filter - Do You Need One Or is it Better Than City Water Or Bottled Water?
I currently live in the country. When I moved there, the first thing I noticed was that the well water definitely had more odor to it. In the city, the usual smell was chlorine. In the country the smell was more like rotten eggs. When I lived in the city I used a counter top water filter because of the chlorine and the known hazards of drinking chlorinated water. I thought when I moved to the country I might not have to use a well water filter. Everyone would say that you don't need to filter your water in the country, well water is good for you. Well I did some research and found out some very interesting things about the quality of well water and bottled water.
I found lots of information on the EPA's website about private well water. There are a lot of potential problems you could have with your well water. Their website mentioned conditions like recurring gastro-intestinal illness, the fact that household plumbing contains lead and copper, you could live in a radon area, your pipes could be corroded, you could live near agriculture leading to runoffs of nitrates, pesticides, or bacteria. Well I couldn't read anymore, that was enough for me to realize well water may not be as goof for you as everyone thought.
I now had two dilemmas; I could buy bottled water or filter my own well water. I was not thrilled about purchasing bottled water because of all the waste associated with the plastic bottles. I did have some concerns about the counter top unit I was using from the city being able to handle the iron and sulfur smell of our well water. I continued searching and found a list titled "National Primary Drinking Water Regulations". The list gave all the disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, microorganisms, organic chemicals, and radionuclides in our drinking water and their allowable level. That was pretty scary. Glad I had that counter top filter on my drinking water when I lived in the city.
I also searched for information on bottled water and was referred to the FDA website. I found even more interesting tidbits about bottled water on their website. I came across an article titled "Regulation of Bottled Water", in that article in stated "Under section 410, when EPA establishes new maximum contaminant levels (MCL) or treatment techniques for contaminants in public drinking water as part of a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (NPDWR), FDA is required to establish a standard of quality regulation for the same contaminants in bottled water, or to make a finding that such a regulation is not necessary to protect the public health because the contaminant is not present in water used for bottled drinking water".
Well needless to say, I contacted the company I purchased my counter top unit from and purchased an under sink water filter. They advised me with their two stage filtering process, it was more than capable of handling filtering my well water.
