Would really appreciate your taking a look at it. I am thinking about ways to remove more of the fluorine at this time.

Thanks for a great job.

J. Howell

Consuming electricity is better than drinking polluted water. If your electricity is coming from a dirty source, that is a different issue.

Also, I point out in the article and in the comments that using rain water is the best solution.

You don’t provide any solutions yourself.

Justin

I have to disagree with this reasoning, Justin. The same could be said of incandescent lamps.

According to my calculations, purifying 1 gallon of water with a distiller would use 2.75 kWh of electricity. If you made a gallon of water a day, that would be 1000 kWh/year for water purification *alone.*

Marinus and Brivari –

I will try and comment on toxins absorbed thru the skin – I am by no means an expert but I am a doctor (allergist) and have a B.S. in Biochemistry so I know some about the partition coefficients mentioned in Brivari’s google book link.

I have seen these filter showerheads sold on green websites for preventing toxins absorbed thru the skin. Chemicals definitely can be absorbed thru the skin. There are common medicines given by way of a transdermal patch system (think nicotine patch – birth control patch – clonidine patch and others.)

However remember in those examples you have a high local concentration of a pure chemical that is lipophilic (which is important because this only works for lipophilic things because only they get absorbed thru the skin (the cell walls of the skin are made of lipid membranes so to pass thru these a chemical needs to be lipophilic.))

Then recall that lipophilic things do not dissolve in water. They float on the surface (think oil slick).

Most of the data referred to in the google book link talks about bathing under a toxic “octanol” layer. Where as most people shower instead of bath.

Perhaps a toxic water filter is more important for bathing than showering.

Then also the book link talks about non human systems (rats) bathing not showering. Remember also that smaller things (rats) have a higher surface area to volume ratio and therefore abosrb toxins thru the skin easier. There were reports several years ago of toxicity from applying chlorhexidine to the skin but they were mostly in children because of the SA/vol ratio.

So in summary – although toxins can be abosrbed thru the skin and should be studied I think people shouldn’t be too worried because:

1. only lipophlic toxins can work this way.
2. the data mentioned here is for bathing – whereas most people shower.
3. the data mentioned here is for small mammals (high SA/vol)

I’d like to see some adult human data on toxic levels of things present in the blood after only a regular tapwater shower before I’d worry.

And remember – All toxicity is dependent on dose. We all have PCB’s in our body – hopefully just too low of a dose to matter. So even if they could measure toxins in the blood from showering it wouldn’t mean much unless they showed they hit a critical level.

Final thought – sunlight causes cancer – so if we want to avoid every possible carcinogen you either have to live inside all year.

Hope this helps – feel free to differ.

Todd

This site reviews products based on their meta-efficiency. Energy efficiency is only one factor in this assessment.

I stated that using rain water is the most efficient way to obtain pure water. It requires some filtration but not as much as ground water sources. However, it does require an expensive installation to retrofit an existing house.

Whole house filters are good. But as far as I’m aware they cost over $4000 to install. Affordability is an important in my assessment.

Distillers do use electricity, but they are effective and inexpensive. I also mention a non-electric distiller. They could be powered by renewable sources like biogas or even wood.

Distilling does remove minerals from water, but this is not particularly important — we get enough minerals from fruits and vegetables.

Solar distillers are inconvenient and the water does not get sufficiently hot from solar power alone. They should actually be called solar evaporators. They also get contaminated because they are not sealed.

Most reverse osmosis units do waste water. But recirculating RO units are more efficient, and the waste water can be re-used as like any other greywater.

I’ve yet to hear any efficient alternatives to the filters I list. Keep in mind that comprehensive filtration and affordability are important.

All those countertop distillers you’ve listed are most certainly NOT efficient! They are all energy hogs since they work by boiling water and then condensing the steam. And you’ve totally ignored the potential health issue they pose since they remove all the healthy minerals from the water that are needed for good bone health etc. If you’d mentioned just one solar still I’d have not been so appalled by the list of energy pigs.

Thanks to Todd I’ve no need of adding an additional rant over the inclusion of reverse osmosis water pigs!

Aside to marinus:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FsTJIOgt3RIC&pg=PA593&lpg=PA593&dq=skin+absorption+of+water+contaminants&source=web&ots=hEj_X-lRsq&sig=tPidmVtQQnzGIouq0r1cSwbtQG0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

If the link doesn’t work just google “skin absorption of water contaminants”. For that reason the truly metaefficient choice would be the appropriate whole house filter with perhaps an additional undersink passive filter as a backup.