subject: Details About Pharmaceuticals in Water Supply and How You Can Protect Yourself [print this page] Details About Pharmaceuticals in Water Supply and How You Can Protect Yourself
By the time you finish reading this article, you will know the answer to a question I have been getting a lot. Does reverse osmosis remove pharmaceuticals from water?
The reason this question is coming up so often is that testing has revealed a variety of prescription and non-prescription pharmaceuticals have been discovered in water supply samples taken from around the United States.
The most shocking example was 56 different pharmaceuticals in water supply samples taken in Philadelphia. Typically, only one drug was found. Sometimes the drug was "unspecified", so there's no way to know what effect it could have on your health.
Suppliers conducting the testing don't report the results to the public. They don't feel it's necessary. Someone might overreact.
I find that kind of thinking offensive and I hope you do too. In my opinion, most people want to know what's in their drinking water so that they can take any precautions necessary to protect their health.
Now back to the question: Does reverse osmosis remove pharmaceuticals from water? RO is one of the choices for home purification devices. It is only one step in a complete purification process. If you are serviced by a treatment facility, it is an expensive, wasteful and largely unnecessary step.
The pharmaceuticals in water supply tanks are chemical compounds. Reverse osmosis does not target chemical compounds. Dual stage granulated carbon and multi-media blocks target chemicals. If you are concerned about the drugs and other chemical contaminants, you need a purifier with the dual stage system.
I think you can see that the one word answer to the question, does reverse osmosis remove pharmaceuticals from water is "NO".
Unfortunately, there are a lot more than pharmaceuticals in water supply systems around the country. Most of these toxins can be removed with a dual stage purifier as mentioned above.
However, there is one known health threat requires an additional step. They are called cysts and they float through the system undetected.
Cysts are about the size of a speck of dust on a pinhead. They are highly resistant to any purification system except one. Once ingested, they grow within the human digestive tract, causing a parasitic infection. The resulting illness can cause death in some cases.
The answer to does reverse osmosis remove pharmaceuticals from water is "no", but does the system remove cysts? It depends on the size of the pores in the membrane. Submicron filtration is needed to remove cysts. Some RO units filter down to one micron. Others do not.
The ones that do are quite a bit more expensive than a dual stage chemical filter with a submicron sized porous structure. Even a product that also includes ion exchange to remove metallic ions, like lead and copper, is less expensive than RO.
If you have a multi-stage system on your kitchen faucet, you never have to worry again about pharmaceuticals in water supply tests. If you have one on your showerhead, you can further reduce the risks of exposure to cancer causing chemical compounds that are, in actuality, an even greater health threat than the drugs.
As you shop, remember that the answer to: "Does reverse osmosis remove pharmaceuticals from water" is a resounding "No".
Now that you know this, I hope that you will take the time to learn more and discover as I have, a water purification system that protects you and your family.
