Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
So says the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The ancient mariner was recounting his sad tale of woe, lamenting how he was lost at sea and there, surrounded by water on every side, he couldn’t find anything to drink because it was all saltwater.
Sometimes we feel a certain element of kinship with the old mariner. Municipal water systems in America are the best in the world yet we still turn on the faucet from time to time and encounter brown, rusting looking water or get a whiff of chlorine and rotten eggs.
A glass of cloudy water that looks like it came out of the brown eddies of the Mississippi River isn’t what you want to see the first thing in the morning.
Everywhere we turn people are telling us to drink lots of water; that it’s good for you.
And it is.
Water Does A Body Good
Water isn’t a magic elixir but it comes closer than anything else in the world. It’s certainly better for you than soft drinks, slushies, or a latté with extra cream. It washes away toxins in your body, improves your skin’s tone and appearance, helps you lose weight, and even aids your body in warding off constipation.
Fitness experts advise you to work up a sweat precisely in order to lose weight and carry away unhealthy impurities in your system. You can literally sweat impurities out of your system when you work out at the gym. As you do that, you need to replace the water you lost in your sweat with fresh water.
It better be good water though.
Water Can Make You Sick
Saltwater, as the ancient mariner well knew, will make you sick if you drink it. Unfortunately, a lot of other water will make you sick too. Contaminated water can carry all kinds of bacteria, pathogens, and diseases, such as:
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis E
- coli
- Salmonella
- Typhoid Fever
- Cholera
- Dysentery
- Traveler’s Disease (also known as Montezuma’s revenge)
We need water to be healthy but contaminated water can make us sick. In extreme cases with the very old or the very young, it can even kill us. So, what to do?
There are a number of possibilities but the cheapest to buy that won’t break the budget and easiest to use are water filter pitchers.
Water Filter Pitchers
On The Water Geeks website, you can find water filter pitchers that can remove an amazing range of contaminants. A partial list would include:
- Arsenic
- Asbestos
- Bacteria
- Benzene
- Cadmium
- Chloramines
- Chlorine
- Chromium 6
- Fluoride
- Herbicides
- Lead
- Mercury
- Nitrate
- Particulates
- Pesticides (a broad category)
This is actually a severely curtailed list. There about 70 different contaminants these filter pitchers will capture and eliminate from the water. The effective rate is well above 94% in most cases, above 97% in the rest. None of the capture rates goes below 90%. For comparison, these rates are what the city water treatment plant is supposed to achieve but may not be doing in your area.
Ease Of Use
Fill one of these pitchers with water from your tap and within seconds you’ll have clear, drinkable water. The taste will be noticeably better and the smell will be virtually gone.
The filters on these pitchers have a usable lifespan of 150 gallons. That means you can fill and refill the pitcher over and over again until you’re run 150 gallons through it. Once the filter stops working, take it out and replace it with a new one.
How They Work
The filters work by a combination of reverse osmosis and activated charcoal filters. Together, they eliminate the contaminants and treat disinfectant chemicals like chlorine and other solvents. They address the taste, appearance, and odor all at one time.
Filling the pitcher has to be done at a rate the filters can handle. Pour the water in slowly. As you do it, gravity will force it through the filter. Yellow, brown, or discolored water will go into the filter and clear, drinkable water will come out the other side into the pitcher. After that, pour it out and drink it.
Pity The Poor Mariner
The ancient mariner didn’t have any way to filter the seawater when he was adrift. Much of his poem recounts his fight against madness from loneliness and dehydration. If he’d had one of these water filter pitchers, he could have had all the drinkable water he’d ever need.
You can have one anytime you need it.
Revision 3.8.2020 – dead link removed
