Water Filters

[gharknes]

I'm going to buy a water filter system from carrfour, are these any good, can you drink water straight from them, I think these ones are none UV, I had a UV one in my last place and it seems OK

[backflip]

The water filters are safe. I'm not sure they produce safe water.

[autonomous_unit]

if you are taking what is supposed to be a regulated, safe, municipal water source and are just trying to clean out any biological contaminants that might be there due to a leaky pipe, a filter w/ appropriately small (rated in micron pore size) filtration should suffice. a UV light can help deactivate some viral contaminants or very small microbes which sneak past, as would sufficient boiling. the filter will not generally make the water _less_ safe than if you drank it without the filter, with respect to biological contaminants. it could be unsafe if it gives you a false sense of security so that you drink something you otherwise would have avoided. activated carbon filters may enhance taste, but their efficacy at removing, say, pesticide contaminants is not assured as far as I know.

the same cannot be said with water where the concern is mineral and metal contamination. it really takes a lot of hard science to determine an appropriate purifying method in such cases. even the experts have gotten things terribly wrong over the years, learning the hard way what combinations to use in certain regions. broad chemical assays have to be performed to try to identify important features of a potential water source. seeing what others are drinking, and what their short and long term survivability is, seems the only practical method for non-specialists, i.e. are there corpses around the watering hole? do users have unusual diseases or deformities?...

all that said, we're using one of those multi-stage under-sink filters with poly filter, carbon filter, and UV light with greater BKK municipal water and I haven't died or grown any extra limbs, yet.

[Gary A]

It's hard to say if the filter will make the water safe. The best I can answer is that I used a filter with no UV in Jomtien and I now use a non UV filter in Loei on the village water. I think the final ceramic filter does a pretty good job. In any case I have not been sick in Jomtien nor Loei so I am not afraid of drinking the water.

As a side note, I used to buy water in those big white translucent plastic bottles. One day I poured out a pitcher full and saw mosquito larvae swimming in my pitcher. I decided to take my chances on the filter.

[gwmss15]

what about the 1 baht water machine around the sois of bangkok are these safe to use