Conclusion
A high quality home water purifier or home purifier water system is your best guarantee that emerging water contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products and pesticides, are not passing into your drinking water.
Background
Because up to 90 percent of oral drugs can pass through humans unchanged, based on a study at the Utah State University Extension, these contaminants often then move through wastewater into streams and groundwater.
As a result, your tap water may contain residuals of those over the counter and prescription drugs taken last week by your neighbor.
Likewise, some of the endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as pesticides and personal care products that we use are also passing through in trace amounts to our drinking and bathing water.
So why doesn’t your public water supply remove these for you? The answer is fairly simple.
Because by definition many of these contaminants are and will continue to be new, specific product performance standards have not yet been developed.
Therefore, while your utility company is required to meet safety standards set by the U.S. EPA, they may not have the information, resources or the motivation to remove many of the pharmaceuticals and emerging contaminants that are now entering our water supplies, sometimes at alarming rates.
But if the potential risk is so high, why should you be forced to install a home water purifier? Why aren’t the utilities and the EPA more concerned? Again, its’ a numbers and return on investment formula for both the utilities and the agency charged with regulating them.
We ingest less than 2 percent of all the water that is consumed. The bulk of the water delivered by the utilities is for other non-drinking commercial and industrial purposes. These large consumers may care little about those elements and have sophisticated resources to manipulate their water supply to their specific requirements.
Therefore, it stands to reason that, at least for the near future, our best defense will be to utilize a home water purifier.
Solution 
Okay, great! We’re convinced.
But which home water purifier system will provide us with this protection? Are all ‘point-of-use’ systems pretty much the same? If not, what should we look for when evaluating these products?
Here are the criteria you should look for when comparing one home water purifier with another, regardless of price.
The Good - Home water filtration systems based on:
- Distillation
- Ozonation
- Activated carbon
- Advanced oxidization
These systems have been tested and the results are that they are better than no filtration.
The Best - Home water filtration systems based on:
- Nano-filtration
- Reverse osmosis
These systems have been shown to be the best at completely removing many of these contaminants based on those drugs tested by the Colorado School of Mines.
Direct Comparisons
Although many popular and well known brands; such as Aquasana, Amway, Culligan, Kenmore, GE, Ever Pure, Aqua-Pure, PUR and Brita offer similar products, the differences can be significant in both performance and total cost of ownership.
You can find some of the basic comparisons between name brand features and benefits on our Home Water Purifier Comparisons page.
Summary
When considering a home water purifier or home purifier water system we recommend you make sure the manufacturer states clearly in their specifications that their product is based upon nano-filtration or reverse osmosis for the best protection or at least is founded upon distillation, ozonation, activated carbon or advanced oxidization technologies.
To find out more about the contaminants most frequently listed in product specifications and data sheets, visit our Contaminants page.
