Do you know what’s in that glass of water you’re drinking?
It’s not an easy question to answer, especially on farms.
Rural water can be difficult to treat because dugouts often absorb organic material, forcing residents to live with foul-smelling, discolored drinking water.
Many people are turning to water filters to improve quality, but large systems can be expensive and time-consuming to maintain. Cheaper alternatives are becoming popular, such as filtered pitchers and filters installed on the tap.
Consumer Reports magazine estimated one in five American homes owns a water filter. That is expected to increase to one in two within five years. These filters are inexpensive and easy to look after, but are they effective?
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It appears the answer depends on whom you ask.
The consumer magazine tested a variety of home filter systems available in Canada, looking at faucet-mounted models, faucets with built-in filters and filtered pitchers. All products received fair to good ratings in categories such as lead and parasite removal, taste and flow rate. Pitchers received the highest scores.
However, Hans Peterson, director of the international charitable organization Safe Drinking Water Foundation, said filters may not make water completely safe.
“They do remove some organic materials and improve the taste, but it’s not enough,” he said.
Difficult to remove
Peterson said rural water that comes from dugouts is in constant contact with the soil, and frequent melting and freezing make plant matter easier to absorb into the water. While it won’t necessarily make people sick, water filtered in pitchers still contains high levels of this material.
Peterson recommended installing larger treatment systems that use activated carbon to remove impurities, but admitted these systems are not foolproof either. He said more research is needed to improve rural drinking water.
“Look at the city of Calgary,” he said. “They have perfect water, and they have 17 scientists working to make it more perfect. Then you look in rural areas. They have crappy water and no one is looking for sustainable solutions to improve it.”
