Reverse osmosis water filters were the only method that was once available to provide purified water to your home. Better, more cost effective and efficient systems have since been introduced, and yet water companies still push the old system over the newer technology. There are many disadvantages to reverse osmosis systems, as we highlight below.
Why Are They Still Sold?
There are many people that are still led to believe by those selling them that the best way to filter water coming into your home is with a reverse osmosis filter system.
Newer technology allows whole house filtering systems for a fraction of that cost, and gives the user all the water that passes through the system filtered and ready to drink immediately much faster, and with vastly reduced running costs.
Waste
One of the major disadvantages of reverse osmosis systems is the huge amount of waste-water that is flushed down the drain in order to produce a small amount of purified water.
As an example, in order to produce 5 gallons of treated water, units discharge between 40 to 90 gallons of water as waste! This is bad enough, but if you are one of the thousands of people using a septic system to collect waste water from your home, then the chances are you will need to upgrade the size of your tank.
Power Requirements
This particular system needs plenty of power in order to turn waste water in to that which is drinkable. Certainly when you take into consideration the ratio of waste water to make drinking water a lot of electricity is required and this is not only bad for your home electricity bills but for the environment as well.
So Does Reverse Osmosis Make Water Safe To Drink?
The most important question that you should be asking when considering purchasing any water filtration system, especially when buying one that is costly and expensive to install.
There is no doubt that this system will make the water safer to drink than if left untreated, but the one word answer to “does reverse osmosis make water safe to drink?” has to be no.
Other disadvantages of reverse osmosis systems are their removal of healthy minerals and failure to remove some of the harmful cysts and chemicals in the ‘purified’ water.
One manufacturer has freely admitted as much with a proviso that these kinds of units are only designed to clean up the water’s aesthetic properties. They don’t actually act as a way of preventing waterborne toxic and microbiological chemicals from getting into the supply.
Another smaller but nevertheless important of the many disadvantages of reverse osmosis filters is the removal of all the health-giving natural minerals found in water. All of these facts should point towards using a less expensive and more efficient way of providing pure water for your family.
