Many people don’t think twice when they flip on the tap, fill up a glass of water and take a drink. They only really notice the quality of their water when they travel, or if they drink better water from a filtration system somewhere outside of their home. Then, suddenly, they start to notice everything about their water.
If you’ve recently had this experience, you’re likely thinking a lot about the quality of your water. If it tastes metallic when you drink it, what else is it doing that you are not thinking about? These are great questions to ask, and you might not like the answers you get—especially if your home has unfiltered municipal water.
The fact is, water quality is extremely important for so many reasons. Here’s a look at the three biggest reasons, and all the ways they affect our daily lives.
1. Essential for Health and Wellness
The most important aspect of water quality is the impact on our health and wellness. This has broad, wide-ranging implications for both short- and long-term wellbeing. Using water filtration methods, reduces the presence of 55 of the most common Volatile Organic Compounds without removing the essential minerals present in drinking water. This means that every glass of water you have can not only taste great, but be great for your health.
Here’s a look at some of the reasons why your water quality is important for health, inside and out:
- Unfiltered water may contain bacteria like giardia intestinalis, norovirus and shigella
- Contaminated groundwater can contain poisons like arsenic and mercury
- Municipal water can in some cases contain lead, which can cause neurological problems
- Removing chemicals such as chlorine from your water has numerous health benefits, from making your skin feel softer to reducing the presence of airborne chlorine which can be damaging for your lungs
- Pharmaceuticals in the water supply can cause hormonal imbalances
- Waterborne viruses and cysts can lead to dangerous infections
- When combined with Aquatomic systems, the overall bioavailability of your water is improved, allowing for more complete hydration
2. Take Out the Bad, Leave in the Good
Many water filters and water softeners on the market today work by removing almost everything from your drinking water, leaving you with a tap water that is similar in nature to distilled water. Unfortunately, this kind of water isn’t ideal drinking water, as it doesn’t provide the minerals that the body needs, specifically magnesium and calcium.
Being without these minerals can lead to a decrease in your body’s metabolic function, as well as increase in urination, which can result in increased loss of electrolytes. This, combined with the electrolytes lost through sweat, can result in a deficit for your body. Over time, this can have a detrimental effect on your health. In the absolute worst-case scenarios, this can result in serious health issues, like acidosis
3. Important for the Environment and Sustainability
Poor water quality has several big-time effects on environment. The first and biggest comes from the waste generated by water bottles. If you can’t trust your tap water and turn to bottled water, it generates millions of tons of plastic waste each year. This waste is easily avoided by making an investment in point-of-use water filtration, or even a whole-house water filtration system.
The second aspect of environmental sustainability is the perpetuation of poor water quality. Every drop of unfiltered water that leaves your home goes back into a system that’s not efficiently treating it. The cycle continues. But, if you have a filtration system, you have the potential to contribute less to that system by sending filtered water down the drain instead.
Should You Have Your Water Quality Tested?
Absolutely. Every person, no matter where you live, should at least know what’s in their water. The more you know, the more you can do to protect yourself—or the more confidence you’ll have in your taps when the report comes back clean.