(Newswire.net — November 2, 2020) — What are water purifiers actually for? Are they a luxury item, designed to make your eight glasses per day taste a little better? Or, are they capable of protecting you from potentially harmful chemicals, metals, and microorganisms?
The answer depends on the type of water filter we’re talking about. When it comes to the typical purifiers we see in kitchens across the country—think pitcher jugs and those built into refrigerators—you can expect a product to reduce the levels of chemicals, disinfectants, and (to some extent) metals in your water. But they won’t generally provide any insurance against water contamination events, or the risks of untreated well water.
Whole-home and under-sink filters are a slightly different story. These models tend to be designed to protect against the sedimnts, bacteria, and agricultural run-off that can appear in homes using privately sourced water supplies.
While not all products are made equal, we expect that a water purifier will at least meet the claims made in manufacturer descriptions and advertising. If a product says it can remove ‘common heavy metals and pollutants,’ for instance, then it darn well should! When the filter in question is being used for aesthetic reasons, the consequences of misleading claims might simply be frustration and bad Amazon review. But if a family is using a mislabelled filter to protect themselves from lead, fertilizer, or giardia contamination, the risks to personal health are very real.
So what can consumers do to protect themselves from sub-par filtration products? NSF International is the leading authority on water purifier testing and certification. As a decades-old institution, they’re responsible for determining over eighty public health American National Standards and are fully recognized by the federal government.
Manufacturers voluntarily submit their products for testing at NSF’s world-leading labs in Ann Arbour, Michigan, and receive certification according to one or more internationally recognized standards:
- NSF/ANSI 42 certifies that water filtration products can non-health-related contaminants and improve the taste and appearance of tap water.
- NSF/ANSI 53 certifies that water filtration products can reduce specific health-related contaminants listed by the manufacturer, such as lead, Cryptosporidium, volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), and chromium
- NSF/ANSI 401 certifies that water filtration products remove contaminants which have been identified as recently occurring and/or increasing in drinking water, such as prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and herbicides.
(There are also specific standards for some filter types, such as reverse osmosis filtration, and the product integrity of filters themselves.)
If a product is tested and certified according to an NSF/ANSI standard, they’re listed in the NSF database and can display the NSF logo on product packaging.
Because the NSF logo is the best, and often the only, way to be sure that a filter is doing its job, Clean Cool Water decided to see how many of the top filtration products for sale on Amazon are actually certified by the NSF for the filtering benefits they claim—and the results weren’t great (read full water filter report here):
Of 590 filter products listed on the Amazon.com marketplace in October 2020, only 102 cited a relevant NSF/ANSI standard that matched their filtering claims.
This is worrying, as it suggests that manufacturers are choosing to make their own claims about their products, rather than letting a recognized independent body assess the performance of their filters. While unverified claims made in product descriptions and brand media may be accurate, we’d strongly recommend doing your own additional testing or research.
An additional 66 filters did possess NSF/ANSI certification in some form.
This is mixed news, as the presence of an NSF certification is certainly welcome. However, there are many NSF standards relating to different aspects of product manufacturing and performance. Therefore, one NSF certification alone doesn’t guarantee that a filter can do everything it claims to.
That means that 71.5 percent of Amazon’s top listed filters have no NSF/ANSI certification whatsoever.
It’s worth noting that some major brands are selective about which products they submit for NSF testing (Brita being the most famous example). But with so many retailers on Amazon neglecting to have their products certified by the leading filter safety body, consumers should practice extreme caution when using the website for purchasing health and safety products. If you’re shopping for a purifier to do more than remove chlorine or simply chill your water, it’s important to find out the exact details concerning a product’s filtering performance, and the contaminants it’s able to protect you from.