“Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, biological contaminants, suspended solids and gases from contaminated water.”
This is the first line on Wikipedia after searching the term “water purifier”. Now I don’t know about you but a process that is first and foremost used to remove chemicals and contaminants from heavily polluted water doesn’t seem like a great process to apply to tap water. But that is essentially what is happening with the average water purifier machine found in people’s homes.
Knowing that there are folks happy to pay the price of water purifier machines only strengthens my resolve: to prove that these devices are not going to give you the healthy water you have been sold on! In fact, they could be giving you the exact opposite.
What exactly is a water purifier? In order to tackle the lack of awareness about the real value of these machines, we need to define exactly what we are talking about here. So specifically, a water purifier is an appliance that produces what has been marketed as “pure” or “zero” water through the process of reverse osmosis (sometimes distillation).
Another commonly used term connected to these devices is “sterilization”. And from a point of experience on the subject of healthy water, these types of words should immediately set alarm bells wringing. Whilst no-one can argue that filtration is not needed these days in an age of dirty tap water supplies, water purifiers like the portable Waterlogic Hybrid Water Purifier take purification to a whole new, unnecessary level.
This particular brand has trademarked its reverse osmosis system used to purify water placed into its machines as the “Firewall”, so it’s no wonder that the drinking product these purifiers produce is completely sterilized. But as I have been alluding to for a while, “sterile” and completely pure are not good properties when we’re talking about drinking water.
The reason the price of water purifier machines shouldn’t be considered if you are seeking healthy drinking water is because the processes central to their function leads to a water product that is simply not good for you.
Reverse osmosis is simply the process of pushing a solution under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane. To create apparently healthy water, water purifiers use this membrane so that the ‘solute’ (waste) is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and the ‘pure solvent’ (drinking water) is allowed to pass to the other side.
This works by the membrane being “selective” by not allowing large molecules or ions through the pores but allowing smaller components of the solution (such as the solvent) to pass through the membrane freely.
But water has many things in it that make it healthy and nutritious to drink. Minerals and antioxidants, both the most important properties found in water for their health benefits, are sadly filtered out by the brutal semi-permeable membrane at the heart of most water purifiers. And what is worse is that the removal of minerals and antioxidants leads to water being able to actively absorb toxic substances, so when it comes into contact with air, it absorbs carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide in water leads to it becoming acidic. So I wouldn’t advise leaving sterilized water purifier water standing about for too long. You don’t know how acidic it may become.
All of these problems with water purifiers are avoided entirely if you decide to not waste your money and opt for different sources of healthy water via different methods of production. Where a water purifier may strip minerals and antioxidants from water, leading to unfortunate consequences, other machines such as water ionizers actually create more alkalinity and antioxidants in the water they produce. And when it comes to healthy water, these properties are more important that any other. Don’t end up paying the price of water purifier machines by consuming unhealthy water. You have been warned!
To your health,
Follow Water for Life USA on Facebook and like us to save 15%!
See our latest videos!
