After learning that my water district is using Fluoride and our water pitcher and refrigerator filters were not supposed to be removing it, I bought a Clearly Filtered water pitcher to try why we looked into reverse osmosis filtration for the house or kitchen sink, though we could probably get by with the pitcher along with our shower filters to remove chlorine based on activated charcoal. The more I learn about the Clearly Filtered product, I’m really impressed with how many other contaminates it filters out that are in our BOPU water (check your water district) with one of the bigger items being PFAS, forever chemicals, being that we’re near a military base and a portion of our water comes from underground aquifers. Consequently, the Clearly Filtered water pitcher filters 365 contaminates with impressive testing results. But this comes at a price as the pitcher isn’t inexpensive, $90 (lifetime guarantee), and replacement filters are expensive, 3 pack $139 (with yearly subscription), with each filter lasting about 4 months and 100 gallons. But can you put a price on keeping all these harmful chemicals and elements out of your body along with the negative health consequences they might bring? And it’s still good to supplement in order to help your body remove harmful chemicals and elements as they’re in our food supply and beverages consumed outside the home. But at least this solution exists so we can enjoy much cleaner water at home as the regulations are insufficient.
There are more than 151,000 public water systems in the United States serving residential communities, schools, office buildings, hospitals and other sites. It is especially challenging for small communities to fund infrastructure upgrades and monitor water quality. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. drinking water delivery system a D on its most recent infrastructure report card, based on the high number of leaks and the presence of both legacy contaminants like lead and new threats like PFAS.
https://theconversation.com/the-us-drinking-water-supply-is-mostly-safe-but-thats-not-good-enough-115028
Update March 4, 2023: The video below deals with five brands of water filter pitchers, and of course the Clearly Filtered was the top performer with a score of 98 out of 99. They actually took water filtered from each and sent them to a lab to be tested for over 100 contaminants with a top score possible being 99, and the source water they used had a score of 44. Of interest the Brita filter actually filtered out fluoride even though a lot of information says that it doesn’t, but the Brita also added other contaminates not in the source water and only improved the score from 44 to 45 (fail, actually added nitrate and cobalt to the sample though it did filter some contaminants). So as far as pitcher filters go, you can’t get much better than the Clearly Filtered unless you jump to reverse osmosis which can filter out over 1000 contaminants primarily because of a very small mesh filter element, but these need to be installed at a faucet/sink or be a whole house system.
Update Mar 5, 2023: If you want to get a lot deeper into your local water quality, this interview with the CEO of SimpleLab who owns Tap Score that provides the scores and testing from the video above, will give you a foundation for why you would want to test your water giving you the areas of concern for picking your best filtration option. They also have the City Water Project site where you can look up your city water with data from government testing along with samples that their lab has processed. They will then give you areas of concern, like for Cheyenne, WY, they flagged uranium and radium as being above recommended MCLG levels.
Update March 10, 2023: I don’t know if psychological or not, but I’ve been drinking more fluids since getting this piitcher. Interestingly, my coffee tastes a little different in the morning (water is a slightly acidic verses akaline), but teas have been tasting a lot more flavorful and they don’t last in my cup (I don’t use sweetener). It reminds me of my backpacking water filter that filtered down to the viral level, and how refreshing and good the water was and how much I would enjoy it out in the wild, especially filtered from a cold lake or stream. Consequently, since it removes a lot more solubles, the water absorbs more CO2 for fantastic sparkling water.