Don't just drink water, drink healthy water

Water is a life-sustaining fluid that’s essential to health, but if you're drinking straight out of the tap, it can undermine your health. When you drink tap water, you’ll likely be getting more than you bargained for — chlorine, fluorine compounds, Trihalomethanes (THMs), assorted hormones, pesticides and even trace amounts of prescription drugs. It can be a witches’ brew of health-killing compounds, but you can improve the odds.

Here’s the low-down on water, and how to turn it back into the health drink nature intended:

Tap water is dirtier than it looks.

Even “clean” drinking water that flows from the tap isn’t what most of us would think of as clean. It’s traveled through miles of pipeline, picking up contaminants, pesticides and industrial run-off along the way. It’s been disinfected with potential carcinogens like chlorine, ammonia and or chloramines, then “fortified” with fluoride. While disinfection is a necessary evil — without it, water-borne illnesses would be a constant problem — drinking, showering and bathing every day with this chemical brew is a lousy idea.

No. Seriously. Your water is funky.

Problem is, most of us don’t have a clue about the chemicals and contaminants in our water, nor do we know their long-term effects. We trust that everything is OK, but it’s not. In fact, the Environmental Working Group spent three years investigating the country’s drinking water and the results were jaw-dropping. They found that roughly 85% of the population was using tap water laced with over 300 contaminants, many with unknown long-term effects and more than half of which aren’t even regulated by the EPA. Add to the mix an ever-growing list of new chemical compounds that come online just about every day and well, the waters only get murkier.

Bottled water isn't better, cleaner, or good for the earth.

Let me be blunt: there’s just no good reason to drink bottled water — and if you’re one of those folks who buys it by the case, I beg you to stop. Bottled water is virtually unregulated, expensive, and even the EPA says it’s not necessarily safer than tap. It’s also insanely wasteful — an estimated three liters of water is needed to produce just one liter, and roughly 17 million barrels of oil is required to produce all those bottles, according to The Pacific Institute. What’s worse, roughly 2/3rds of those bottles wind up in the ocean and in landfills, polluting and poisoning waters and wildlife.

How to clamp down on the bad stuff in your water?

The best way to go is a point of use water filtration system. Activated carbon is one of the most effective mediums used to filter water. Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) is highly porous and 500g of carbon contains a surface area of roughly 0.5 km² and can absorb literally thousands of different chemicals.

The carbon is converted to activated carbon via high thermal heat that gives carbon it’s highly porous nature forming a network of sub-microscopic pores. This is where adsorption takes place. Activated carbon has a slight electro-positive charge to it: as the water passes over the positively charged carbon surface the negative ions of the contaminants are drawn to the surface of the carbon granules. Carbon Filters remove contaminants and impurities from water utilising chemical adsorption and are very effective in removing/reducing chlorine, volatile organic compounds (VOC), pesticides and herbicides, blue green algae, organic sediments, rust, mud, slime, sand, as well as trihalomethane (THM) compounds and hundreds of other man-made chemicals found in tap water, as well as reducing heavy metals.

Awesome Water filters has an 8 stage filter cartridge. In conjunction with the activated carbon, it also consist of 3 other components that assist with the filtration process. GAC does not remove sediment / particulate material very well, so they are often preceded by a sediment filter (double layer cloth filter). Cloth pre-filters assist by removing sediment and particulate material before the water enters the filter cartridge. Another filtration media is a layer of KDF that utilizes the principle of electrochemical oxidation reduction, more commonly known to the population as the redox process (Redox reaction) to eliminate a vast number of water contaminants. KDF is known to kill algae and fungi, control bacteria growth, remove chlorine, pesticides, organic matter, rust, unpleasant taste and odour, hydrogen sulfide, iron, lead, nickel, chromium, cadmium, calcium, aluminium, mercury, arsenic, and other organic compounds. The ceramic plate at the bottom serves as a final filter and also removes most bacteria that might be present in the water.

In addition to removing chemicals and impurities the filter also adds back much needed trace elements to the water, including magnesium, zinc, iron and potasium, while also increasing the pH level of the water.

In addition to an advanced filtration system our dispensers offer top of range quality features: cold water, hot water, room temperature water, digital temperature control, as well as single or double child lock features.