Boy, did I learn a valuable lesson about buying a home reverse osmosis units.
I once needed to get something that would purify water for our family home.
In those days I didn't know there were reverse osmosis units and all sort of other type of purifiers.
I just went to the first merchant I found in the Yellow Pages, believed what he told me, and bought his water filter.
(It was not one of the reverse osmosis water filtration systems, I should say.
) Well, for the next 10 years my family and I used it for all our domestic drinking water, and never once got ill from it.
But I have since learned that there are different kinds of water purification systems on the market.
There are ceramic systems, ultra violet purifiers, reverse osmosis water filtration systems and so on.
And some of them work better than others.
If I had blindly trusted a store salesman selling a less-than-reliable purification unit imagine the illnesses my family and I would have contracted in those 10 years! The lesson I took from that experience is to ALWAYS look at other options.
Especially when it concerns my children's health.
That time I was in luck.
I might not be another time.
So if you are thinking about getting one of those reverse osmosis units, for example, also look at other options even though reverse osmosis gets a lot of good press and there seems to be good science at the heart of these units.
Actually, not all the press reports are good.
And this is another reason to look further than the reverse osmosis units.
For a start, they are not cheap.
A typical one that will produce 30 gallons an hour will cost a little over $500.
And while it is true they have won a vote of confidence from the people who mange the very large, industrial-sized desalinization plants in the Middle East, the water the reverse osmosis units produce in those countries can only safely be used for desert farming or as gray water in the big, flashy arab cities.
This is also true in the submarines where drinkable water is often extracted from sea water by compact reverse osmosis units.
Sailors drink it on tour, but they are only at sea for limited times and can get pure clean water again when on land.
You see, the main problem I know of with reverse osmosis is that the system depends on cleaning water by passing it through a porous barrier.
This is its strength and its weakness, because if any harmful toxins or impurities have a molecular structure smaller than water ...
they will pass through into your drinking water.
And they do.
You don't need to look far for proof of this.
Many US city authorities use big, commercial reverse osmosis units to treat water for urban taps.
But guess what? The officials take the water that has been passed through the reverse osmosis barrier and treat it with chlorine.
They do that because there are organic substances and toxic chemicals that are smaller than water and simply don't get stopped at the barriers.
Just ring your local water authority and they will tell you the same thing about reverse osmosis water filtration systems.
So, I don't need to go on and on like this any more.
You have my lesson, all you need to do is look at the options.