Do water filters like Brita pitchers actually work?

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Do water filters like Brita pitchers actually work?

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

In between being properly activated and being used up (after about 40 gallons). They should filter as designed/advertised. Yes

Lead is just one of dozens of contaminants not filtered by the majority of pitcher-based water filtration systems. Most contaminants you probably don’t even realize exist because filters only describe what they do filter, not what they don’t.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes, you can test in a place with poor water. Note there are different degrees of filtering though.

I can speak from experience using clean water in Mexico and being fine… to getting bad unfiltered water used in my drinks and getting pretty sick.

You can also boil water but that takes time and will leave you with hot water.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I can give you an anecdotal example:

Before COVID, Rio de Janeiro had dinner kind of contamination in the water. The entire city went crazy, buying water on the stores. Literally everyone was buying water…. Except me, because I have a Brita/PuR water filter. My water was consistently perfect through the crisis.

They really do work.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Britta filters are able to filter certain types of contaminants out of the water. Their advertising does not mention the kinds of things their filters are not good at doing. For instance, you can’t fill a Britta filter with pond water and expect not to get sick.

Most commercial filters have two filtering mechanisms. The first is a layer of very fine sand. The water flows through the sand, and any large particles of dirt should get stuck in the sand. The second filtering mechanism is a layer of activated carbon. Activated carbon is very good at bonding to a lot of different chemicals. As the water flows through the activated carbon layer, these chemicals will stick to the carbon and be pulled out of the water.

Eventually, the sand layer gets clogged up with dirt, and the activated carbon gets “full” of chemicals and can’t absorb any more. The filter stops working, and water run through it will not be purified. This is why you have to replace your filter every so often.

These filters are not effective against dirt particles which are too small to get caught in the sand layer, or in chemicals which will not stick to activated carbon. Britta filters are usually used in countries which already have good quality tap water. In these places, the filter really doesn’t do much, except maybe remove some harmless chemicals that cause a funny taste to the water. In places that have REAL bad water, a Britta filter is not adequate to make the water drinkable.