Fluoride in Your Drinking Water—How Much is Too Much?

by Diana M Published 3.21.2014











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How does hard water affect my coffee and tea?

by Mark B Published 12.11.2013

A cup of tea or coffee is 99% water, so the water used for brewing makes a big difference in the quality of what you drink. There are hundreds of compounds that are released when hot water hits the beans and leaves. When we taste, we actually use both the tongue and the nose to create a complete picture. (Just try eating soup with one hand pinching your nose…it won’t taste the same.) So if the water isn’t especially good, it can rob you of what should be a pleasurable break—chlorine and hardness are major culprits.

Chlorine will attack the flavor compounds and may be strong enough to compete with the aroma from the cup. A good carbon filter is all that’s needed to eliminate this bad actor from your diet, and the rest of your drinking water will taste better too.

Hardness is typically Calcium and Magnesium and maybe a little Iron that’s dissolved in your water. (Learn more about hardness or iron). When these minerals combine with compounds in tea and coffee, they bind together to form solids. Flavors and aroma are tied up and taken away from your mouth and nose. A water softener and/or reverse osmosis system are effective ways to fix this problem. My personal preference is an RO system, because it has a carbon filter for the chlorine, a membrane to purify, and a mineral cartridge polisher to ensure a complementary balance of ions for the tea and coffee to steep in.

Here’s something you can try just for fun if you have hard water at home or work. It also makes a simple, but safe and effective science fair project. Buy a bottle of water at the supermarket, making sure to pick one that’s been treated by reverse osmosis. Brew two cups of tea at the same time in the microwave: one with hard water, and the other with RO water. About 90 seconds should do it. Take the cups out of the microwave and remove the teabags. Now compare color; is one muddier than the other? Smell and taste; the cup made with RO water will be brighter and livelier on the palate, and you may also detect a cleaner flavor. It’s easy to observe that just because a cup of tea is darker does not mean it is stronger or richer, or that is has a full range of flavors for you to enjoy.

I did this “tea test” with a standard bag of Lipton black tea and then took these photos.

Can you guess which is which?

The tea made with RO water was, you guessed it, the one on the left. I chose a black tea (instead of a green or white) because I thought the result to be visually more striking. Doing this with a highly aromatic tea such as orange pekoe, or a more subtle green tea also demonstrates what a profound difference the right water makes.

Life is just too short for a bad cup.

Contact Mark B.

How a Reverse Osmosis System Works

by Abbey R Published 9.27.2013

With every passing year we learn more about what is in our water and the effects those contaminants can have on our health. It takes the EPA years of study to figure out what is an acceptable level for contaminants in our water or how best to treat them. Contaminants in residential drinking water can include almost anything, from industrial waste that was dumped in a river, to fertilizers and household cleaning products. Many times, treatment involves adding a chemical to the water to neutralize the contaminant—for instance, chlorine is added to water to control the amount of microbes—but these chemicals can give water undesirable tastes or odors. Technology like reverse osmosis systems exists to remove contaminants from water without adding any chemicals.

Reverse osmosis (RO) systems are becoming an increasingly important, needed appliance in our homes. RO systems utilize your water pressure and a semi-permeable membrane to reduce contaminants for great-tasting water without adding any chemicals. They are typically used to purify drinking water which is where contaminant levels matter the most. Some areas, however, have such terrible water that an RO system is used for the entire home.

Every reverse osmosis system has at least four parts: a prefilter, an RO membrane, a storage tank and a postfilter. Water supplied by the city or a well enters the system through the prefilter, which protects and extends the life of membrane by filtering out the things that can harm it, like chlorine and sediment.

A reverse osmosis membrane uses a semi-permeable membrane to separate water molecules from other molecules. “Semi-permeable” means that some things can pass through and others can’t. A familiar example would be your furnace’s air filter, although, semi-permeable membranes for water treatment allow passage based on the size of the particle as well its molecular charge whereas typical air filters separate the contaminants exclusively by size. Holes or pores in the membrane are sized just big enough for the passage of a water molecule—even small contaminants such as tobacco smoke or paint pigments are too big to go through an RO membrane. At this point, because the membrane only lets certain molecules pass through, there is some waste liquid with a highly concentrated amount of contaminants that goes to the drain. The virtually contaminant-free water that makes it through the membrane, called a permeate stream, is safe to drink and tastes great.

Reverse osmosis technology relies on pressure to push the water molecules through the. Water pressure varies with your water source. City water is usually supplied between 40 and 100 psi (pounds per square inch). Well water is usually less pressure, delivered between 20 and 60 psi depending on your pump. The production rate of the membrane is dependent on factors such as temperature, pressure and Total Dissolved Solids levels. Because flow and production rates vary, most RO systems also have a storage tank, allowing more pure drinking water to be available on demand, so you can fill your glass or pitcher much faster.

Because the water is so pure, bad tastes and odors from the storage tank’s bladder and walls can find their way into the water during prolonged contact, so they must be taken out. That’s why a postfilter is an important part of the reverse osmosis system; any odors or tastes picked up from the storage tank are removed and the water is once again great-tasting.

To raise the pH if it is too low, whole house systems use a “polisher” after the postfilter, which adds minerals to the water which protect the pipes and which come people feel enhances the water’s taste.

Sometimes seeing is believing. Personally, I love seeing ice cubes made with RO water because they are virtually colorless. Ice cubes made from city-supplied tap water are almost white in color, which tells me that there are minerals mixed in with the water molecules. Whenever I see transparent ice cubes, I know the RO system must be removing a lot from my water. If your home has questionable drinking water, maybe it’s time to check out a reverse osmosis drinking water system—you won’t regret it.

Contact Abbey R.


by Guest Bloggers Published 8.5.2013







Ways to get involved:

  • We are able to offer our Wavemaker Program to a number of schools this fall because of the generous support of Kinetico Incorporated. Send us an email at info@drinklocaldrinktap.org if you’d like us to work with your school.

Faucets: An Unlikely Enemy

by Abbey R Published 8.1.2013

When I was in middle school, one of my friends once told me that you should always let the drinking water fountain run for a couple seconds before taking a drink. This would assure that all the germs would go down the drain. I remember thinking that as long as I don’t put my mouth on the fountain that I couldn’t be picking up any germs. After all, it is wasteful to let water just go down the drain. It never crossed my mind that the bacteria could be coming from inside the faucet. Now that I have been in the water industry for a while, I see how naïve I was.

Faucets do harbor bacteria and even promote its growth. The amount of bacteria is typically related to the style of faucet. Gooseneck faucets (looks just like it sounds) are notorious for harboring germs at their highest point, especially if the faucet is installed near a kitchen sink. The decaying food that you leave in your sink is a breeding ground for bacteria. So, instead of germs coming from your main water supply and out your faucet, as you may assume, the reverse is actually taking place. Germs work their way from the sink to the end of the faucet where the water comes out, up into the faucet itself and down toward the base.

Sink drains can be sanitized to lessen the amount of bacteria in your drinking water. To sanitize your drain, pour one teaspoon of bleach mixed with one quart of water down the drain. Sanitization of your faucet or your drinking water system and faucet will vary by manufacturer. Drinking water systems with proper sanitizing will ensure great drinking water for you and your family.

Contact Abbey R.

The Better Water Blog 1-Year Anniversary

by Kinetico Published 7.1.2013


Why are Boil Water Alerts So Important?

By Cathy J in The Science of Water


How a Water Softener Works—Mystery Solved!

By Stuart P in Water Treatment Technology



By Keith B in Water in the News



by Diana M Published 5.17.2013









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Using Our Oceans to Produce Drinking Water

by Mark B Published 4.2.2013

Learning to SCUBA dive at an early age in the chilly Gulf of Maine gave me exciting views of an incredible hidden world. This led to other adventures exploring the salty world beneath the waves, researching whales, coral reefs and fisheries. On one of these occasions I spent about six months on a tall ship, where our drinking water was taken from the ocean and filtered by a specialized, high pressure, reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. The RO takes in sea water and rejects the salts, leaving fairly pure, fresh water. People can’t drink sea water directly because it puts the body’s natural balance of salts out of whack—there’s so much salt in sea water that it actually drives the water out of our bodies. Not so good when you’re thirsty. I’m reminded of a line from an old poem, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, where a sailor and his boat were trapped far from land: “Water, water every where Nor any drop to drink.”

It’s incredible that the oceans hold over 97% of all the water on our planet. The remaining is fresh water, most of which is locked up in the polar ice caps and permanent ice on mountains; less than 1% of the Earth’s water is potentially available for drinking. If you filled a five gallon bucket and said that it represents all the water on our planet, nearly all of it would be too salty to drink. In fact, roughly ½ a cup from that whole bucket would represent all that we have in the ground, our lakes, rivers, and ponds. Consider that even less than that is easy to make safe for drinking—not so muddy, brackish or polluted that extra measures are needed. Unfortunately, there are many places where people can’t afford to treat the water and end up drinking it as-is, contaminants and all. The worse the water quality is, the harder we have to work to make our tiny existing fresh water supplies drinkable.

This means, for those who can afford treatment, we put in energy, equipment, disinfection chemicals, time and effort to make it potable. Is all that water in our oceans unavailable to us, like it was for the Ancient Mariner? Like on my ship, when it comes to salts, high pressure RO membranes are now used for many communities around the world (including here in the United States) to make drinkable water from the oceans. Another common way to do this is distillation. These are important technologies for areas with access to salty water but not enough fresh and as you may have guessed they do require significant energy inputs. 

Image courtesy of DewPoint Systems.

Another interesting technology, DewPoint Systems' RainDome,uses naturally cool sea water to draw moisture from the air without electricity or moving parts. In coastal areas where the conditions are right, the fresh water it makes can be used for drinking and even to irrigate crops.Using the oceans to produce drinking water is not only possible, increasingly, it’s a reality for a thirsty world.

Want to learn more? Check out the following resources.

Desalination by Reverse Osmosis:

Contact Mark B.

Weakening Nicaragua's Cycle of Poverty With Drinking Water Technology, Part 2

by Mark B Published 8.9.2012







Contact Mark B.

Weakening Nicaragua's cycle of poverty with drinking water technology, Part 1

by Mark B Published 6.21.2012








Photos courtesy of Dave Chew.

Contact Mark B.


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