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If you’ve read about the problems with drinking contaminated water you might be getting interested in water filtration. You will have heard of charcoal water filters or carbon water filters or even activated carbon water filters. What are these water filters?

Charcoal is a substance created by heating organic matter to high temperature in the absence of oxygen and a charcoal water filter is one that uses charcoal for the filtration process. The organic material commonly used is coconut husks.

Charcoal has various properties, primarily that it is extremely porous and this is what is necessary for successful water filtration. These pores allow water, and contaminants, to pass through and for the contaminants to be absorbed by the carbon by means of chemical attraction, because many carbon based or organic compounds are chemically attracted to carbon.

That is what charcoal, or carbon, water filters are. So what are activated carbon, or what is known as AC, filters? These filters use a form of carbon that is way more porous than normal carbon, and this is created during the manufacturing process.

It’s so porous in fact that it can have up to 20000 square yards of surface area per ounce of activated carbon. That’s really porous.

You need to replace the filters occasionally in an AC water filter because the filter gradually clogs up with contaminants as they are absorbed by the carbon.

An activated carbon water filter works well filtering a wide range of contaminants, but doesn’t filter all of them, and for this reason the best water filters use a multi stage water filtration process. Not only is the carbon block, or activated carbon filter used but there is a second stage to the process that removes the contaminants that are not removed by activated carbon filtration.

And in the very best water purifiers available there is no reliance on AC filtering only, because very good it is not sufficient on it’s own. There is a second stage to the filtering process and this stage is used to filter contaminants that the first stage leaves behind, like nasty lead. And the removal of lead is achieved by an ion exchange process replacing lead ions with harmless potassium ions.

And the second stage of the best water filters removes tiny organisms that remain in the water after stage 1 like giardia and cryptosporidium through the use of an extremely fine filtration process. These are the most dangerous water contaminants.

There you have the basics of water filtration by use of carbon, or what is known as charcoal water filters, or activated carbon water filters. The activated carbon is not 100% successful in removing all contaminants, but when used in a 2 stage process designed to remove the contaminants that are left behind by the AC filter, it works exceedingly well. You should expect around 99% of lead to be removed, for example.

I spend time discussing the worlds best water filters on my website.

Would you like to learn more about the Best Water Filters? Or about Charcoal Water Filters? Visit Peter’s Website the Best Drinking Water Filters.

Over the years water filters/purifiers have been underrated and overlooked. Water contamination has been a plague in not only locally but also in foreign communities too. In North Africa, Algeria and other third-world countries, millions of people continue to suffer from the lack of access to uncontaminated drinking water. There is still an overwhelming number of people dying from water borne diseases everyday despite many initiatives to combat the problem.

We often think of water contamination as a foreign problem, but the truth is contaminated water lives in our own backyard. Many people do not believe that water filters/purifiers are a solution to this problem, but many people are not even aware of the potential harm they are exposing themselves to by consuming contaminated water every day. The chlorine found in water has been linked to many serious diseases, including heart problems, birth defects and even cancer.

People think that our drinking water doesn’t contain harmful micro-organisms and is healthy to drink, but it actual fact it has small concentrations of bacteria that can be potentially deadly at a high enough concentration.

Your water may not be safe to drink, whether it is well water or city water. In the case of city water sources majority of them are from municipal water sources. These sources contain potentially dangerous chemicals used to disinfect recycled waste water. It is no wonder that an increasing amount of people, armed with this knowledge, are turning to filters to make their tap water safer to drink.

How Exactly Do Water Filters/Purifiers Help?

The choices for water filter/purifiers abound. Each of them uses different mechanisms but they all aim to purify your tap water. Some of the options are countertop, undersink, or faucet filters. Whole house filters are the most commonly used. These systems free the water from bacteria, sediments, and chemicals that might jeopardize your health. Most of these water filters are not terribly expensive, except for the more complicated ones, which can be a bit costly. The best option is the whole house system. They are affordable, of good quality, and do not require much maintenance. You should look at a water filter/purifier system for your family as an investment in your family’s future health; after all you dont have anything to lose but your health to gain.