Pharmaceuticals In Your Water

Are these in your water?

As news reports about pharmaceuticals in water circulate, more and more people are concerned about their drinking water. Evidence shows that traces of certain drugs in your water could be extremely harmful to your health. So I'm just thinking out loud here, but if you had Viagra in your water, would that count as a stiff drink?

All joking aside, drugs in your water is no laughing matter. Here are some facts for you to consider:

According to Utah State University Extension, up to 90% of oral drugs can pass through humans unchanged. These often then move through wastewater into streams and groundwater. It is generally cost prohibitive for utilities to use systems such as nano-filtration, long contact activated carbon, and reverse osmosis.

Pharmaceuticals found in drinking water can be life-threatening for people with health issues, compromised immune systems, pregnant women, children, or those taking certain medications that might react negatively with drugs found in their drinking water.

Here's the good news...The Water Quality Association assures consumers that filtering systems in the home provide the highest technology available for treatment of drinking water. Less than 2% of all water consumed is ingested by humans, making these "point-of-use" systems the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Recently, another water filter company posted an announcement on their web site, claiming that their faucet filter can remove over 99% of pharmaceuticals in the water. We felt a need to respond to that misleading claim, although we noticed that their ad has now been pulled from their site.

Dr. Kenneth E. Smith, Multi-Pure Vice President of Technology, former NSF VP of Technical Services, and current NSF Task Force member, stated in a press release today: "It is important to understand that this claim of pharmaceutical removal is not part of their NSF certification. You will notice that the NSF mark is not shown in the ad. In addition, you will note that in the fine print of this ad it states that testing was done by a "manufacturer" and only twelve compounds were tested."

Dr. Smith continues "Since the stories were published in March 2008 about pharmaceuticals in drinking water, a specialized NSF Task Force was formed, consisting of manufacturers and regulators. The task force has been diligently working to develop a protocol for testing that could lead to a certified claim. This group must take into consideration which compounds to test for (there are many more than twelve), the pH of the water, how compounds react together, and much more. When NSF makes this testing available, it will be the comprehensive and reliable test consumers depend on. That work is still in progress."

Multi-Pure is proud to claim that our drinking water systems are still certified to remove more contaminants than any other on the market today!