The Quest for the Best Water, Part 1

Written By Courtney, you can follow her at Alkaline Mom 

Several years ago I bought a $2000 counter-top alkalizer/ionizer that was supposed to give me amazingly pure, non-toxic alkaline water. After years of use, I was told that said machine did NOT remove fluoride, but the new affordable unit available does. After a year of use, I discovered that it is useless for fluoride removal. Infuriated, and a bit panicked that I have been unwillingly poisoning my children, I went on an emergency quest, involving massive amounts of research, to get clean, non-toxic water into our home. This series will share all that I learned on that journey and why I made the final decision I did on what is actually the best water for my home (and maybe yours!)

Part 1: The day I found out that my expensive water machine did not remove fluoride I drove an hour and a half to get the new one. Admittedly, it did make my water taste great—even my 4-year-old could tell the difference. And I believe it removes plenty of toxins for $680, but it does NOT remove fluoride, which is what I was promised.

The bottom line is…I’m embarrassed. I’m known for diligently doing my research and not only did I not do my research and took someone’s word for it, but I even sold this junk to my friends and poisoned their families as well as my own. Believe this, the research I did after I discovered the truth was thorough and even down right annoying to the salesmen. Day after day I asked questions following the research I did, based on their answers from the day before and those answers then led to more questions the following day. Almost all of them told me on more than one occasion “I have never had someone ask about that” and “I have never had anyone concerned about that issue before…let me check”. And after they checked, I checked. Again and again.

What else would I have done besides use that cheap little filter? Anything! I would have taken out a second mortgage if I needed to in order to avoid poisoning my kids. We drink a lot of water around here. In fact, we came to the conclusion that we didn’t even want them bathing in the toxic waste and went on a search for pure water for the whole house. Fortunately, after weeding through several hours of salesmen’s pitches and explanations and answers, dozens of hours of online research, and asking about 1,000 questions, I found what seems to be the obvious choice for the best water available, and it is surprisingly affordable.

The first guy that came was the only one with a fluoride meter and tested my water. Really, he wanted to prove to me that my counter-tip alkalizer/ionizer/purifier was useless, but with class enough that he didn’t say that…he just said, “Let’s see how this is doing…” knowing full well what the result would be. I learned that the federal limit for fluoride dumping in our water is .7ppm. As far as I’m concerned the limit should be 0ppm. My tap measured up at 1.15ppm! And if steam wasn’t already coming out of my ears then, when he measured my trusted machine and found the fluoride content to be 1.12, my gracious smile did not hide the fact that my blood was boiling. I have been unwillingly poisoning my kids based on a lie their entire lives against my will.

Honestly, I had to activate some kind of “ignore” button in my brain to get through the rest of that meeting, in addition to several parts of the next week. I still get worked up if I think about it long enough. Honestly, if I did not love and care for the man that sold it to me…I need to confess an unhealthy temptation to go practice Krav Maga on anyone that would lie to me and promise me their machine would remove a neurotoxic poison from the water I would be giving my children. I don’t believe that he lied to me intentionally, but I think that he was misled and might even have wishful thinking on the matter. I can’t even…”focus on good things”…I keep reminding myself, the good thing being I found out early and I found the solution, moving on.

Over the next 3 meetings and week following I learned the difference between Jacobi Catalytic Carbon and Activated Carbon, water softeners with purification systems built in and those without, activated alumina versus bone char, potassium or sodium for flushing water softeners, the softening pellets…and silica quartz??? (this end conclusion was unsatisfying, to say the least), dirty dealings with unscrupulous companies, those that actually know the industry compared to those that only know what their company taught them (strangely similar to essential oil companies, ha!) and how varied in quality a reverse osmosis system can actually be. Stay tuned for Part 2 where I go into detail on some of these questions and the process of weeding through the options, hopefully taking the work out of the research for you.

Part 2

Part 3

Courtney is a contributor for Vaxxter.com. Connect with her on her website, AlabasterLiving and follow her on Facebook at Alkaline Mom.

Photo by sfxeric