Difference Between Water Filters and Water Purifiers

Giving your lovely fur babies a bath, washing your all-important clothes, a refreshing glass of water for your dinner guest — you use water for everything. And having clean, healthy water to deal with all of life’s little spills and mishaps.

As you look to improve the quality of water you have you may encounter industry jargon. Lucky for you, we’re here to help. After all, what is the difference between a water filter vs. a water purifier?

What is Water Filter?

As the name says, It filters water to remove any impurities like dirt, chemicals, and other toxins. Activated Carbon is mostly used as a filter and should always be maintained and replaced on a regular basis.

Based on the size of the contaminants, the pores of the filter can retain them by only allowing the water to pass through. Many water filtration systems use activated carbon to block out unwanted microscopic contaminants from entering your drinking water. Because most toxic water impurities are carbon-based, water filters can be extremely effective at keeping your water safe and healthy. Plus, to an extent, filtration can help improve the texture of drinking water.

Some house filters work by using a giant, ultra-dense carbon block which offers superior filtration compared to granular media. Catalytic and activated carbon are combined to perform ion exchange and sub-micron filtration these types of filters are great against chlorine, chloramines, cysts, and lead.

Drinking Filters – Many use a combination of activated carbon/catalytic carbon to capture and prevent those pesky contaminants from entering your water, like chlorine, chloramines, heavy metals, chlorine-resistant cysts like giardia and cryptosporidium, pharmaceuticals, and more

What are the Advantages of Water Filtration?

Water filtration can still be a valuable process in many applications. Here are some advantages of water filtration systems:

  • Often less expensive than water purification systems
  • Remove many of the most dangerous contaminants that should be avoided, including mercury and lead
  • Easy to replace activated carbon cartridges
  • Systems can easily be purchased as pitchers and sink attachments in local stores

What is Water Purification?

Water purification goes beyond what a water filter is capable of. Purified water is often confused with filtered water. Many people believe the two terms to be synonymous, but this is not the case. While both types of water are subject to some sort of filtration (as is almost every spring water), purified water is cleansed and purified through additional purification processes, typically reverse osmosis, distillation, or deionization. The resultant product, “purified” water, is of significantly higher purity than either spring water, tap water, or filtered water. Using reverse osmosis, distillation, or deionization to sanitize the water, these systems can remove more than 90% of the contaminants in drinking water. Although each of these processes achieves similar results, the processes work in different ways.

Reverse osmosis (RO): Reverse osmosis works much like a filter, but instead of using contaminant-grabbing media, it forces all water particles through a very small semi-permeable membrane. By forcing the water through this semi-permeable membrane (think of the whites of an egg), it screens out all particles that were too big to follow the pathway of the water.

Distillation: Distillation, on the other hand, is when water is boiled and the steam is captured. The steam gets collected and purified.

Unfortunately, for both of these processes, unless your RO system includes a remineralizer, you’re drinking demineralized water. These are the reasons why it could be bad for you.

DEMINERALIZED WATER

It may look like that Purification may be the best choice, it actually removes the water of the good minerals that your body needs, like calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

So, what do we mean by healthy minerals?

The World Health Organization has reported that “drinking water should contain minimum levels of certain essential minerals”. They’ve identified those minerals as, “Calcium, Na, K, Cl, Mg, Fe, Zn, Cu, Cr, I, Co, Mo and Se [which] are unequivocally essential for human health; although not commonly realized drinking water provides some of these elements.”

What will happen to me if I’m drinking demineralized water? First, demineralized water is more acidic. When you consume an acidic substance, your body will pull minerals you carry in your bones and teeth to allow the formation of bicarbonates that will neutralize the acid. Another is when the fluids in your body contain more acid than alkaline, more free radicals are produced and the risk of cancer increases, as cancer cells have been shown to be more productive in more acidic environments

What are the advantages of Water Purification?

  • More effective than water filtration systems
  • Removes up to 90% of contaminants from drinking water
  • Many of these systems need to be installed by a trained professional
  • Some systems need cartridges replaced less often
In the end, having a stable supply of usable and clean water for you and your family should always be up on the priority list. Having a system that will help you with that will be great and I can assure you that either of the 2 systems will put your mind at ease when it comes to the water you and your family are using. It’d be best to consult an expert when it comes to the system that would fit your needs.
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