What is and can we use the Reverse Osmosis water filtration station?

A Reverse Osmosis (RO) water filtration system is probably the best combination of impurities removal, health benefits and cost of all water filtration systems. The lead free chrome long reach faucet can be found in the laundry room right next to the dishwater detergent tap, on the sink counter. This 3-stage (pre-carbon, RO membrane, post-carbon) system can remove up to 93% of chemicals, heavy metals and elements, foul tastes and odors. The RO water filtration method has been around for decades and is widely used in the military, agriculture and the food and beverages industry. bottled water vs tap water

Some of the leading brands of bottled water sold to consumers at a premium are really made of municipal water thus filtered, according to myspringwater.com:

• • Aquafina® : This well-known bottled water brand produced by PepsiCo is derived from a municipal source and goes through a purification process that uses charcoal filtration, reverse-osmosis, ozonination and other elements of the process. During purification, virtually all of the natural minerals are removed from the water, giving it a light, mellow taste.

  • Dasani® : Coca-Cola's flagship purified bottled water brand is also derived from a municipal source and undergoes a reverse-osmosis-based purification process. However, Dasani® gets a blend of minerals added back after the purification process, giving it a crisp taste.

  • Evian® : This upscale spring water comes from a source in the northern French Alps. The water is collected from an aquifer that is fed by snow-melt and rainfall. Other than filtration through the ground's sand and clay, no other purifying process is used to produce this bottled water.

In 1999, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published the results of a four-year study in which researchers tested more than 1,000 samples of 103 brands of bottled water. These researchers found that an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not. In one case, a brand of bottled water, advertised as “pure, glacier water,” was found to be taken from a municipal water supply while another brand, flaunted as “spring water,” was pumped from a water source next to a hazardous waste dumping site. While “purified tap water” is arguably safer and purer than untreated tap water (depending upon the purification methods), a consumer should expect to receive something more than reconstituted tap water for the exceptional prices of bottled water.

According to freedrinkingwater.com,

• • Nearly 70 percent of Californians drink bottled water, which nationwide is a $6 billion industry. And by the end of this year, bottled water will have moved past milk, coffee and beer to become the second most popular beverage behind soft drinks, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp. Bottled water's popularity is fueled in part by suspicions over the quality of tap water.

  • Although often advertising themselves as superior to tap water, bottlers are required in most cases only to meet the same quality standards as tap water. (..) Bottlers don't have to create a "consumer confidence" report each year like water agencies do. The reports tell customers what's in their water. It details levels of contaminants, if any, like lead, aluminium, arsenic and salt.

In contrast, tap water is mandated by law to meet a number of objective criteria and it also undergoes regular testing (even with cuts to environmental agencies). Still, Toronto takes its water from the Great Lakes, collecting water from many rivers subjected to a seriously cut EPA overview. Furthermore, the Great Lakes have been accumulating water for the past centuries throughout the great American industrial expansion and as such contain chronically high levels of certain pollutants. The following are a few quotes of mostly American studies from freedrinkingwater.com underlining lesser known problems with our water supply:

• • Though multiple studies show trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in some Montana water, activated charcoal drinking water filters and reverse osmosis systems are able to remove most of them, says the director of the Water Center at Montana State University. Gretchen Rupp, director of the Montana University System Water Center, says that several studies have looked for and found common pharmaceuticals at specific sites in Montana. Among those studies showing trace pharmaceuticals are work in 2003 by the University of Montana that looked at septic system leachate at Frenchtown High School, work in 2005 by Montana government offices that found trace amounts in ground water in the Helena valley, including in some drinking water wells, work in 2007 that found traces in surface water below the Helena wastewater treatment site, and a 2007 statewide study by the Montana Bureau of Mining and Geology that showed trace amounts in some wells in agricultural and rural subdivision areas. (..) Because the concentration of pharmaceuticals in water is extremely low, in the range of parts per trillion or less, few labs are qualified to test for them. The only laboratory in Montana that tests for pharmaceuticals in water is the Agricultural Experiment Station Analytical Laboratory at MSU-Bozeman, said Rupp.

  • It may not taste very good, but it's safe. That's the conclusion reached by U.S. Geological Survey scientists who surveyed drinking water supplies in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Although trace amounts of nearly 40 industrial chemicals and 20 pesticides were found in groundwater used by 3.5 million people in the Santa Ana River watershed, which covers portions of the three counties, none was in a concentration that poses a danger to the public, officials said. The geological service sampled 200 wells across the three-county area from 1999 to 2001 and found that more than half contained trace amounts of carcinogens and other dangerous, volatile organic compounds and pesticides.

  • Federal lawmakers Wednesday criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for not moving faster to determine whether "intersex" fish in the Potomac River and its tributaries signal the presence of pollutants that might be harmful to humans. At a House Government Reform Committee hearing, lawmakers and environmental groups expressed alarm at a survey last year by the U.S. Geological Survey that found an unusually high number of male smallmouth and largemouth bass with female sexual characteristics. They also worried that the presence of egg-bearing males at locations in Washington, Maryland and Virginia could be a sign that something is dangerously amiss. "Fish are like canaries in the coal mine," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. It is not clear what is causing the changes, though a combination of chemical pollutants is suspected. The reaction could be triggered by estrogen from birth control pills and human waste that makes its way into the waterways from sewage treatment plants, or manmade chemicals in pesticides and cosmetics.

  • March 11, 2008 — Tiny amounts of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, hormones, mood stabilizers, and other drugs -- are in our drinking water supplies, according to a media report. In an investigation by the Associated Press, drinking water supplies in 24 major metropolitan areas were found to include drugs. According to the investigation, the drugs get into the drinking water supply through several routes: some people flush unneeded medication down toilets; other medicine gets into the water supply after people take medication, absorb some, and pass the rest out in urine or feces. Some pharmaceuticals remain even after wastewater treatments and cleansing by water treatment plants, the investigation showed. Although levels are low -- reportedly measured in parts per billion or trillion -- and utility companies contend the water is safe, experts from private organizations and the government say they can't say for sure whether the levels of drugs in drinking water are low enough to discount harmful health effects. Low levels of pharmaceuticals in the water supply have been a concern for a decade or longer. The finding of pharmaceuticals in public water supplies is not a new phenomenon. According to a science fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental action group, "Ever since the late 1990s, the science community has recognized that pharmaceuticals, especially oral contraceptives, are found in sewage water and are potentially contaminating drinking water." Concern among scientists increased when fish in the Potomac River and elsewhere were found to have both male and female characteristics when exposed to estrogen-like substances, she says. For instance, some fish had both testes and an ovary. Scientists starting looking at the effects of oral contraceptives first. "Now analyses have expanded to look at other drugs."

There are attempts to introduce legislation to subject bottled water to the same quality standards as tap water. An April 2011 headline suggested that "One Third of Bottled Water Contain Contaminants".

why RO

It is difficult to believe that we need to be reminded of the importance of water, but in this marketing / social media / self-promoting / top-ten driven age, providing this top is not as ridiculous as it seems:

• 1. Water filters provide better tasting and better smelling drinking water by removing chlorine and bacterial contaminants.

  2. Point-of-use water filters remove lead from drinking water immediately prior to consumption, thus preventing this harmful substance from entering the body.

  3. The purchase of a countertop filter results in a source of clean, healthy water that costs much less than bottled water.

  4. Water filters greatly reduce the risk of rectal cancer, colon cancer, and bladder cancer by removing chlorine and chlorine byproducts from drinking water.

  5. A solid block carbon water filter can selectively remove dangerous contaminants from drinking water while retaining healthy mineral deposits that balance the pH of drinking water.

  6. Drinking clean, filtered water protects the body from disease and leads to overall greater health.

  7. A water filter provides clean, healthy water for cooking, as well as drinking, at the convenience of tap water.

  8. Water filters reduce the risk of gastrointestinal disease by more than 33 percent by removing cryptosporidium and giardia from drinking water.

  9. Drinking pure water is especially important for children. Water filters provide the healthiest water for children’s developing immune systems.

  10. Water filters offer the last line of defense between the body and the over 2100 known toxins that may be present in drinking water.

In most consumer blind taste tests, consumers overwhelmingly prefer the taste of tap water to that of bottled water. Still, in the year 2003, Americans alone spent more than $7 billion on bottled water at an average cost of more than $1 a bottle.

Here's how RO compares to other filtration methods (WCPonline):

choosing a home water treatment system is not an easy task. Although each treatment can produce a different taste in the finished water, there are other health-related points to consider. The following is a brief summary of each of the processes that you mentioned and some (not anywhere near all) of the good and bad points to consider.

• • Distillation -- The process of separating contaminants by boiling the water to steam and condensing or cooling the purified water into a separate reservoir.

    • Advantage: Kills bacteria, viruses, and other microbes effectively. Water boils to steam before many heavy organics, inorganics and metals. Softens water.

    • Disadvantage: Produces a flat, tasteless, and sometimes bitter product. May not boil extensively. Does not remove volatiles and other chemicals with boiling points lower than or near that of water. May be corrosive to plumbing.

    • Solution: Vent volatiles. Add granular activated carbon (GAC) filter to pick up the slack from any "carryover" contaminants.

  • Reverse osmosis -- Forces water through semi-permeable or selective membrane that separates contaminants from the water.

    • Advantage: Removes 98-100% of pesticides, 90-99% of dissolved pollutants and many bacteria.

    • Disadvantage: Cannot remove lighter molecules, i.e., trihalomethanes (THMs) and nitrates. Requires frequent membrane replacement. Slow, uses lots of excess water.

    • Solution: Combine with GAC.

  • UV and ozone -- Both are disinfectants aimed at reduction of microbiological pathogens. Each are effective provided that the water is low in turbidity, which may require pretreatment to remove total dissolved solids (TDS) as well as other more technical considerations for both operation and maintenance. Protozoa are easily killed by ozone, but relatively resistant to UV—although more recent studies show it to be much more effective than was previously thought at lower doses of ultraviolet irradiation.

Based on this information, a combined RO, UV and/or ozone system would offer more health based protection compared to a distillation unit alone. But whether this combined system is necessary for you as an individual depends on the original quality of your source water. UV and ozone aren't usually required for either process unless the water is to be stored for extended periods, or comes from a microbiologically contaminated or suspect source.

A few articles from WCP online:

• • RO - Opportunities and Challenges (PDF)

  • POU RO: A thing of the past? (PDF)

  • TDS Reduction Testing of PoU RO under NSF / ANSI58 (PDF)

  • Contaminant Reduction Testing of POU RO Systems Under NSF/ANSI 58 (PDF)

  • How to Extend the Life of Your Residential RO Element (PDF)

A practitioner of qigong / chi kung who has tried all possible filtration methods also thinks that RO is the best.

RO benefits

According to AllAboutWater.org,

• • Reverse osmosis is a valuable water purification process when mineral-free water is the desired end product. Most mineral constituents of water are physically larger than water molecules. Thus, they are trapped by the semi-permeable membrane and removed from drinking water when filtered through a reverse osmosis system. Such minerals include salt, lead, manganese, iron, and calcium. Reverse osmosis will also remove some chemical components of drinking water, including the dangerous municipal additive fluoride.

  • Although reverse osmosis does extract several contaminants from drinking water, its removal capabilities are not ideally suited to the challenges of the municipally treated water that the overwhelming majority of people receive. Municipal water contains such contaminants as chlorine and volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). Because these contaminants are physically smaller in size than water, the semi-permeable membrane cannot prohibit them from passing through with the water. Thus, they remain in drinking water.

However, our system includes a carbon pre-filter and an activated carbon post-filter, which help to greatly reduce even microscopic impurities.

RO disadvantages

The main "accusations" against this water filtration method are that by removing minerals from water it makes it more acidic, producing "demineralization of the body". However, proponents claim that precisely because it is so pure, filtered water will leach toxins out while your body has the ability to remove minerals from normal food sources. One clear disadvantage is that the method is quite useful in residential systems due to low pressure (not the case with industrial systems). As with any other system, one that is seldom used my result in stagnant water in the tank resulting in increased bacterial growth.

specs

Our system features:

• • an automatic shut-off valve

  • 2.5 gallon reserve tank

  • Filters: 5 micron spun poly, high holding depth sediment filter, 5 micron coconut shell granular activated carbon filter

  • 10 gpd CTA reverse osmosis membrane, Ultra-fine 0.001 micron pore size

The system specs are:

• • Feed water: PSI 40 - 125 PSI (20-40PSI at reduced performance)

  • Feed water Temperature: 40˚ - 100˚(F)

  • Max. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS):

  • 2000 ppm Max. Hardness: 10 gpg

  • Max. Iron 0.2ppm

  • pH limits: 4 - 10

usage

To use the station, please first understand that we make no guarantee of its fitness for use. We used it ourselves however we stopped using it because it uses quite a bit of water in order to perform the filtration - that is, it wastes 3 gallons of water for every gallon of water produced. The carbon filters cost $20-$60, can be purchased from Nimbus, Home Depot, Walmart or Costco and last 2-5 years, depending on usage; if you plan on using it and buying them, let us know in advance so that we can ensure that you end up buying the correct filters. The best way to determine if they're doing their job is to measure the TDS (total dissolved solids) and see if it falls within the normal range. We can measure it ourselves or you can take a sample to Nimbus, who will measure it free of charge.