As we are all aware the water that comes in the taps of the Indian cities is not good enough to drink. It contains many types of impurities
that can lead to several diseases and medical complications. I will just briefly list down the type of impurities that municipal, ground or other sources of water can contain.
Dissolved Impurities – These consist of mainly mineral salts and toxic metals. Whereas some minerals are actually essential for our bodies and may be useful if we consume them, other toxic and heavy metals like arsenic, lead copper etc are very harmful as they can damage the internal organs like liver and the kidneys and can in the long term also cause damage to the arteries etc.
Suspended Impurities – These consist of particulate matter like sand, algae, virus bacteria etc. These also can cause several diseases like diarrhea, gastroenteritis, roundups, and other such diseases.
Methods of Purification – There are several methods of purification of water, the major among them being the following
1. Filtration – This has been one of the oldest methods used in our households. It consists of passing the water through a candle type of filter from one chamber to another so that all the suspended impurities are removed. However this method can only remove the larger sized suspended impurities, whereas all the other smaller particles like bacteria, virus etc cannot be removed.
2. Ultra Filtration – This method uses a polymer film in the place of the regular granular candle. However the rest of the procedure remains the same as filtration. By this method particles of somewhat smaller size can also be removed from the water. The size of the film determines what size of particles and organisms can be eliminated from the water.
3. Boiling – This is also a very old and popular method of treating water. This method does neutralize the bacteria and virus quite effectively, however the rest of the suspended and dissolved impurities are not addressed here.
4. Chlorination – During certain epidemic hit times, the municipal corporations also use chlorine tablets which when added to water effectively destroys the bacteria and virus which are the main diseases causing organisms. Excess of chlorine however can be harmful to our body and also this method does neither address the rest of the insoluble impurities nor the dissolved ones.
5. UV Treatment – In the past couple of decades, this has been the most popular method used in most urban homes. This method when combined with some pre filter treatments does address many of the impurities present in the tap water. Bacteria and viruses can be effectively neutralized, but the major problem with this method has been that it did not address the dissolved impurities at all.
6. Reverse Osmosis – This is a method that uses the technology of osmosis that worked with the help of a semi permeable membrane. Only now it has been reversed to ensure that water flows from the side with dissolved impurities to the side with no impurities under artificially applied pressure. When combined with other pre filtration treatments provide the complete freedom from all types of water impurities dissolved or suspended.
As we can see from the above analysis, RO purification is the one, which addresses all type of impurities present in tap water. RO type of water purification systems started becoming popular in Indian households some 8-10 years back, mainly as replacements for the then omnipresent UV based filters. But then within a few years’ only companies whose economic fortunes suffered at the hands of the new technology became spec tics and started punching holes in this new technique. The logic that they came out with was that the water treated in this RO manner lacks all dissolved particles and thus also does not have any essential salts or minerals which could have been good for the body. Now I must explain here that water is not the only source of such minerals, which are required for the nutrition of the body. In fact the main source of all the nutrients that the body needs is the food that we eat. We are supposed to get all the vitamins, minerals as also proteins, carbohydrates and fats from the food and not water. Even though if minerals were present in water that would be good and add to the tally available from the food.
However unlike me the RO water companies could not explain this logic to all their prospective customers and so to counter the propaganda being carried out by the UV companies who were loosing out on business, they decided to address this issue. And so came out a new technique known as
7. Mineral RO System – Now what is done here is that after the pre filtration stage water is subjected to the UV chamber filtration. It is then treated by the RO method. However some water from the UV stage is tapped and added to the finally filtered water after the RO treatment so as to add some of the lost minerals.
Like I have explained earlier the advantage of this system over the earlier pure RO system is not much and is disputable, however this has effectively neutralized the propaganda that the UV companies were doing against the RO system of filtration. Therefore this has now become the new buzzword in water filtration.
So in the category of RO and mineral RO, there are several companies but the leading ones being Kent and Eureka Forbes. Eureka Forbes is the same company who has been selling us the Aqua guard system for last several years and to take on the competition has now come up with this technology water filters as well. There are also certain local companies doing good business in certain states or local markets.
There will not be enough space left in this review to elaborate the advantages of these companies to arrive at the final purchase decision and I shall do that under the head of the specific system that I purchased in the next review.