I’m currently in the process of getting a whole home RO system to clean all this garbage out of my water, but I can’t do anything about the water my purchased fruits and vegetables are grown in nor the water the animals raised drinking.
For anyone wondering if this works, the EPA seems to think it does:
>>> High-pressure membranes, such as nanofiltration or reverse osmosis, have been extremely effective at removing PFAS. Reverse osmosis membranes are tighter than nanofiltration membranes. This technology depends on membrane permeability. A standard difference between the two is that a nanofiltration membrane will reject hardness to a high degree, but pass sodium chloride; whereas reverse osmosis membrane will reject all salts to a high degree. This also allows nanofiltration to remove particles while retaining minerals that reverse osmosis would likely remove.
>>> Research shows that these types of membranes are typically more than 90 percent effective at removing a wide range of PFAS, including shorter chain PFAS.
You can dramatically increase efficiency by adding a permeate pump, search Amazon, they can be had very cheaply, they recycle the concentrate, increasing recovery and filter effectiveness.
That’s… not how it works. The RO membrane keeps contaminants on one side of the barrier, but it requires that they still be in solution. It’s not like you isolate all the bad stuff then mix it back in, you’re just siphoning off some clean water from the rest of the mix.
Obviously I don’t feel great about the waste, but I’ve got two kids under 6 and I’m trying to do what I can to avoid dosing them with this crap.
I do my best to make up for it in other ways - not watering any landscaping, scraping but not rinsing dishes, water off while brushing teeth/lathering hands, low flow shower heads and toilets, etc. But I'm not aware of another way to get sufficiently clean water.
The average 4 person house uses 190 gallons per day. About 4 of that is drinking water. So my wastewater contains about 2% more PFAS than a household not using an RO system. Assuming that all of it ends up in my body and not in the toilet.
Yes, I'm agreeing with you that you're doing the only remotely sensible thing. My calculation was considering only alternative disposal options for the RO wastewater, not your entire household water usage. (1 gallon of drinking water per person seems like an over-estimate as well, making your point ever so slightly stronger.)
Sure, but it works :) (except that one company that had a low quality membrane that leached ionomers, lol). Once plastics have leached off their manufacturing chemicals they really are very benign.
The membranes you mention are permeable, basically, only to water. Salt ions are pretty small - if the membrane blocks salt ions, they're going to block just about any molecule [1].
1. for the most part. You can have a molecule that dissolves in the polymer membrane and therefore gets through. A great example is polymer self-diffusion itself (fairly slow) and very short chains of the polymer (faster). But, generally, polymers don't like to mix with anything but themselves (see Flory-Huggins and DeGennes).
My daughter just told me, "If you really stretch it, you can make what you post on social media true."
Alas, I must concede the point: upon actual cursory research, drinking distilled water is NOT a health risk.
(I was once admitted to hospital because of crazy electrolyte levels, while presenting other symptoms as well. Is long story. Perhaps it's time for me to stop worrying about potassium...)
Its not just a US thing, other places in the world have fluoride in their water. In many areas fluoride just naturally occurs in the water at levels even higher than what managed services target. But other countries, such as Hong Kong, parts of Malaysia, Singapore, Ireland, parts of Spain, parts of the UK, parts of Canada, Mexico fluoridates table salt, most of Austrailia, Fiji is rolling out a program, half of New Zealand, about half of Brazil, and most of Chile all have some water fluoridation programs. Many other countries did at some other point in time but stopped doing it.
P.S. Note the "facility" where these products are manufactured are also listed. One might also want to note that [replacement] filters may also have different country origins.
I was quoted around 22k, which is on the high side, you can get whole home ro units starting around $2-3k mark, but storage tank + install puts you around 5k minimum, some higher efficiency units can’t also be had for around $10k.
I am willing to spend so much because of the high efficiency, live TDS monitoring and the $20 per month full maintenance plan.
Some of the higher end systems require a lot of fiddling and knowledge to run properly, and most plumbers where I live know next to nothing about whole home RO, so having the maintenance plan which covers, parts, labor and replacement filters is priceless in my book.
