Brita Filters Are Worthless/ Countertop Reverse Osmosis

[The Beast1]

I don't know if you'd agree if Mercola is reputable or not.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/08/23/natural-water-filter-system.aspx

If you can only afford one filter there is no question in most experts' minds that the shower filter is the most important product to buy for water filtration, even more important than filtering your tap water. This is because the damage you incur through your skin and lungs far surpasses the damage done by drinking water (which at least gives your body a fighting chance to eliminate the toxins through your organs of elimination).

Edit: I just did a cursory glance online at Scottsdale water out of curiosity and the opinion of most(on TripAdvisor) is that it should be safe/safeish? It seems that it's just very "hard" ie has a lot of minerals. Which wouldn't actually be bad in of itself.

I call hooliganism on that source. Even if toxins are absorbed through the skin it will still be filtered by your liver once it hits the blood stream. How else is blood cleaned?

Drinking water is far more important to filter first.

 

[Meadowlark]

OP, does the APEC unit you mentioned get rid of fluoride?

There's a million questions on the Amazon page about fitment and installation but I can't find a clear cut answer on this.

I'm trying to get fluoride out of my life, everything else is a bonus.

There are add-on filters for the Berkey that filter out fluoride. An RO system will as well.

 

[HonantheBarbarian]

Im confused; I thought the APEC unit was RO?

Why do I need an additional flouride filter if it is already RO?

 

[Meadowlark]

I was just saying in general, RO systems will remove fluoride, there are many brands

 

[frozen-ace]

Where I live the water is untreated and comes from an unapproved surface source and is not safe to drink. There are warnings that the water poses a health risk and contains disease causing bacteria. A Brita filter in this setting would be completely useless. I use a Berkey filter because it is simple, there are no moving pieces or parts to break, and it is easy to set up an use in a rural setting with very little infrastructure. All you have to do is fill up the top and let the water drip down. The only complaint is that it takes FOREVER for the water to filter through, and if I don't remember to fill up the top portion I will run out by the end of the day. The filters are also expensive, but in this situation the price doesn't matter. Even if they were $1,000 a filter I would still buy them without hesitating.

One of my coworkers took samples of water into town to be tested. I haven't looked at the results, but he said he was told the raw water was really bad and that you probably shouldn't even shower in it (which everyone does). The water that went through the Berkey filter came back ok. I'll see if I can get my hands on the actual test results and post them here.