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Posts Tagged ‘berkey water filters’
Water Shortage In the Midst of a Flood?
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010As bizarre as it might seem on the surface, recent flooding on the Cumberland River in Tennessee has caused the mayor to ask people to cut their water usage. “If you don’t need a bath, don’t take it,” he pleaded.
The problem is not that the Nashville area is short of water. That is obvious after thirteen inches of rain over the weekend in early May, 2010 as pictures show expensive homes, cars, and property submerged with damage in the billions of dollars. No, the problem is a lack of clean and safe potable water. Often with flooding comes damage to the water distribution piping systems that feed the homes. This includes both city water and well water systems. When disease-infected or contaminated water mixes potable water, the result is of course, unsafe water.
Nashville Neighborhood Under Water
We all know that we are totally dependent on safe water for survival. We can live fifty or sixty days without food, but only a few days without water. Lack of potable water is one of the world’s biggest threats to human health. Everything about the functioning of our bodies requires water; the digestive system, nervous system, reproductive system, etc, and every cell in our bodies contains water.
Therefore, even in prosperous America, a crisis such as the one being experienced in Tennessee demands fresh, clean water for survival. Some residents are relying on whole house filter systems, reverse osmosis, or distillation to provide safe water. However, these systems do not operate when a power source is not available. And in the case of the Nashville flood, many parts of the city and towns have been without power for weeks. During these instances, those with gravity water filters are still able to produce clean purified water.
Flooding in Nashville
A gravity filter such as the Berkey filter works on a simple principle. The water is poured into an upper chamber and cannot get to the bottom chamber without passing through the black berkey filter element. The amazing adsorbing properties of the combination of over 6 different types of filtration media removes heavy metals, chlorine and chlorine compounds, volatile organic compounds, and pathogenic bacteria. In short, the unsafe water poured into the top is rendered safe just seconds later when it reaches the bottom reservoir.
Affected Tennessee residents are facing a long road to recovery and we should support them by any means possible as it will be weeks and months of cleaning up to get their lives back to normal. It’s important that the rest of us take heed to the challenges they are facing and understand that a Berkey water filter means safe drinking water in a crisis such as this.
Berkey Water Filters For Emergency Situations And Daily Health
Friday, May 7th, 2010Over the past couple decades there has been a growing concern about the quality of the water we drink. This has helped to fuel both the sales of bottled water and home water filters. However, as consumers have become more educated about their drinking water, we’ve seen a clear movement to greener product choices. Many have recognized that continually buying bottled water becomes very expensive and also has dramatic impacts on the environment, leaving millions upon millions of plastic bottles across our land and in our dumps, rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Bottles Upon Bottles
In 2009, for the first time in bottled water history, the bottled water consumption uptrend took a pause, while at the same time there was an even larger increase in home water filter purchases. There are many different types of water filters available on the market these days, but one of the best available for your daily health and emergency situations is the Berkey water filter.
All Water Filters Not Created Equal
There are people who think that “a water filter is a water filter,” but that could not be farther from the truth. Simply put, there are water filters out there of basic quality, water filters of premium quality, and everything in between. The Black Berkey filter used in all our Berkey systems was specially formulated using the highest quality ingredients in balanced proportions to provide the highest in water purification quality. It’ shouldn’t come as a shock that the quality of your drinking water and ultimately your health is directly correlated to the quality of the water filter you’re using.
Many water filters on the market today are only capable of filtering treated water. If one were to try filtering untreated water from a source such as a lake or pond using one of these other filters, the end result may be water with residual pathogenic bacteria such as E-coli or Giardia. This is due to the fact that these other water filters use cheaper ingredients, is part of the reason why they need frequent replacements, and are not designed to remove the dangerous bacteria that is found in many rivers, lakes, streams, and ponds.
Water Filter For Emergency Preparation
During an emergency, or even a remote camping trip, treated water may not be available. In this situation, the Berkey water filter shines. The berkey is capable of taking raw water and removing bacteria and cysts to a Log 7 degree, which in lamens terms means water purification, a higher removal level than the term you typically read about; filtration. Even if you’ve never been camping or ever had a desire to, when an emergency strikes, it can take days and even weeks for an emergency management group to assist with basic needs like water. In these situations, you want to be fully sure your water is purified to the highest degree.
Flooding in Tennessee - May 2010
We have seen plenty of disasters in the United States over the past few years and even more recently around the world in Haiti and Chile. Just this past week we’ve had massive flooding in Tennessee that has disrupted the majority of well and municipal water sources in that region, and a major Massachusetts water pipe break that cut water availability to 2 Million people. As a result, BigBerkeyWaterFilters.com has experienced a sharp rise in orders for berkey water filters in both of these regions as residents deal with this problem head on. The Berkey water filter will not only keep you and your family supplied with safe drinkable water in events such as these, but can be used to support your friends, neighbors, and other citizens, giving you an opportunity to help others in need.
Berkey Water Filters For Peace of Mind
Even if you believe you will never be a victim of a disaster or an emergency situation, the Berkey water filter is still a great choice for daily consumption. Think about it this way; if the berkey water filter is capable of turning raw pond water into something drinkable, then just imagine how clean it will make your well or municipal water. Let’s also not forget about the fact that the Berkey does not filter out the beneficial minerals that your body needs. This is something reverse osmosis filters and distillers cannot claim.
Every time you drink a glass of water, your body washes out toxins, but it also washes out important vitamins and minerals. If you’re not putting these vitamins and minerals back into your body at the same rate, you will eventually become deficient and body function will suffer. Let me reiterate that the more water you drink, the more important it is that you feed your body with a dense nutritional diet high in vitamins and minerals to counterbalance this continual flushing. Berkey water filters leave the beneficial minerals in your water that your body needs.
The cleaner and healthier your drinking water is, the more your body will love you for it. Start enjoying peace of mind and the health benefits that the lineup of Berkey water filters has provided to countless people over many decades.
Berkey Water Filters Cannot Be Shipped To California
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010This past November 2009, California signed into law AB 1953 / SB 1334 & 1395 / HSC Section 116875 and as a result directly affected the sales of all water filter and purification systems to the state. This revised “no lead law” as it’s commonly known, went into effect on January 1, 2010. Currently this law prevents any Berkey water filter from being sold to the state of California, and canvasses all Berkey products that comes in contact with water intended for drinking. This would include upper/lower chambers, all filters, and sport bottles.
The law stipulates that any “end-use device intended to convey or dispense water for human consumption through drinking or cooking,” as well as each of their individual components, materials and “pipe, pipe or plumbing fittings, or fixtures,” or flux, must be “lead free” as defined by California law. Under SB 1334, certification MUST be performed by an “independent ANSI-approved third party testing organization.” It appears that even if a product and each component of that product has no metal alloys and if a purification system actually reduces lead, under Section 116875, it must be be certified. An example of this would be the Berkey sport water purification bottle.
The Berkey sport bottle body utilizes LDPE, which must be certified, even though it is common knowledge that LDPE contains no lead, is very commonly used by food and water companies, and is monitored under federal regulations. Further, manufacturers are expected to reveal proprietary information regarding their systems, suppliers and manufacturers, without an absolute guarantee that such proprietary information will be kept confidential. This is of utmost concern due to the fact that if such proprietary information is conveyed to competitors, we would have no recourse. It also worth noting that if Berkey water filters desires to change any of their suppliers after certification, it appears that permission must be obtained by the certifying organization and that re-certification is mandatory, all at the expense of the company. Change of suppliers is a common occurrence as improvement of the Berkey product line is continually occurring.
Research indicates that there are at least two different certification standards available, but there seems to be disagreement as to which standards are acceptable to the state of California’s review Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the agency in charge of reviewing products and their certification. There is further confusion regarding testing protocols. While DTSC has issued an outline, it appears that the final protocols have yet to be settled upon. Throughout Berkey water filters ongoing research on this issue, they were unable to get clarification on the above requirements, instead it was suggested that “lawyers review the wording of the law to determine” how “they interpret the scope of the mandatory certification…”. Unfortunately, many questions were not answered by the January 1st deadline and as such, “strict compliance with the law” was recommended and is now being adhered to.
Here’s an example of one of the requirements:
…Listee shall promptly furnish to CC, in writing, the street address, hours of operation, anticipated dates when plants will be temporarily closed or shut down, anticipated dates when plants will temporarily cease production and all local or state holidays of each plant where the listed product is being manufactured or to be manufactured by or on behalf of Listee, and each location where the listed product is warehoused or stored by or on behalf of Listee. Listee shall also provide the name and telephone number of a contact person for each such plant or storage location, both at the time of application for evaluation and in the event of any changes in this information. Listee shall provide such information for all plants and storage locations, whether foreign or domestic. If the product is imported or to be imported, Listee shall also provide the name, street address, telephone number and contact person of the importer and the consignee…
Note: Berkey Water Filters does not have manufacturing plants or warehouses in the state of CA
This revised law has put the burden of proof on the manufacturer and is understandable, however the great additional expense will be difficult for Berkey water filters to absorb into the cost structure. To be clear, Berkey products do not contain lead and testing results from NSF/ANSI certified labs show that these systems reduce lead in water. If every state were to establish their own specific overarching certification criteria such as CA, small companies like Berkey would not be able to meet these requirements and would be put out of business.
Big Berkey Water Filters will continue to monitor the situation and hopefully gain clarification on the issues for which there are currently no definite answers. While many water purification and water filter companies are ignoring the law due to it’s vagueness, there is no interest on Berkey’s behalf to go this route. Berkey water filters considers it a high priority to support the tens of thousands of current CA customers in addition to potential future customer who have interest in the product and hope to come to a resolution soon.
Dan DeBaun of Big Berkey Water Filters on the George Berry Radio Show
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010This past Friday 1/29/2010, Dan DeBaun, owner of BigBerkeyWaterFilters.com appeared for 1 hour on the George Berry radio show. Titled “Crash, Are You Ready?”, this show on the GCN network covers diverse topics ranging from food and water shortages to political and financial corruption.
George and Dan spoke about recent Haiti relief efforts and how Berkey Water Filters were being used by individuals and large relief organizations alike to provide potable drinking water in the region. Other topics covered were the degrading drinking water conditions here in the US and how the Safe Drinking Water Act passed by congress in 1974 has failed to protect the environment and the public’s drinking water. Click here to listen to the show, or right click and “save as file” to download and play in a media player of your choosing.
Dr Oz on Home Water Filters
Saturday, October 24th, 2009Just recently on Oct. 20th, 2009, Dr Oz did a segment on water quality showcasing some options for filtering your water. This is a great primer for understanding why home water filters, including a quality shower filter, are critical for the health of you and your family.
Home Water Filters Comparison
Given this is only a 7 minute segment, Dr Oz is unable to explore in detail some of the other water filtration solutions on the market. He covers filters representative of top consumer brands such as Pur, Aquasana, and Reverse Osmosis. While these are quality filters, they do lack some filtration capabilities, and their yearly costs are significantly higher than a basic Berkey water filter. I’ve gone ahead and created a berkey water filter comparison chart to stack up some of the more common and highly advertised water filters such as Pur, Aquasana, and Brita filters to our own Berkey filter. In a follow-up post, I will go into a more detailed analysis on this comparison.
Berkey Water Filters vs Berkey Water Purifiers
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008Interest in home water treatment products such as Berkey filters has grown tremendously over the past 15 years. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy for consumers to know whether or not a particular product will actually be as safe and effective as the manufacturer claims at reducing various contaminants from your water supply. This is where the NSF, a international public health and safety company, plays a critical role.
The NSF (National Sanitation Foundation), headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an independent testing laboratory that performs comprehensive testing and certification of filtration products. In order for a product to earn “certification” for reduction of a contaminant, it must be able to reduce a specific amount of that contaminant. Certification is voluntary, so it is important that the consumer ensures that the product they are considering purchasing has attained certification.
One critical filter feature that sometimes gets overlooked is the level to which the filter removes contaminants from the water. For carbon filters, focusing on the pore size has some value, but the most important statistic is at what degree this filtering occurs. For instance, there is a significant distinction between water filters and water purifiers. A water filter like the ceramic berkey filters must remove pathogenic bacteria at the 99.99% level, also known as log 4. On the other hand, a water purifier like the black berkey elements, must be able to demonstrate a 99.99999% reduction in pathogenic bacteria, known as log 7. This is a much stricter standard and NSF certification in this regard gives confidence to the consumer that they are getting a high quality water purifier. If you are interested in water purification, double check to make sure the manufacturer and/or seller is not just throwing the word “purifier” around as it does have technical significance.
As a general rule, look for filters labeled as meeting NSF/ANSI standard 53. This standard applies to point-of-use (POU) and point-of-entry (POE) systems with a focus on removing bad tastes, odors, and chlorine. Standard 53 certified filters substantially reduce many hazardous contaminants, including heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury, disinfection byproducts, parasites such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium, pesticides, radon, and volatile organic chemicals such as methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), dichlorobenzene and trichloroethylene (TCE). For those interested, Berkey also has a separate class of filters called pf-2’s that filter out arsenic and fluoride.
Don’t forget that no filter will give you good performance over the long term unless it receives regular maintenance. As contaminants build up, a filter can become less effective and actually can make your water worse by starting to release harmful bacteria or chemicals back into your filtered water. The more contaminated the water, the more often you should clean the filters. Happy filter shopping!
The Thirsty Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Emergency Preparedness - Berkey Water Filters to the Rescue
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008For the majority of suburbanites and city dwellers, the food supply rests solely of the effectiveness of large scale farming, transport supply chain systems, and local supermarkets. Rarely nowadays, do we find self sufficient households with the ability to live off the land via their crops, gardens, livestock, and local water sources. Compare this to 100 years ago when self sufficiency was much more prevalent, neighbor could rely upon neighbor to barter and trade for essentials, and the local town store filled in the gaps. Today, our idea of bartering with our neighbors lies more along the lines of borrowing the snow blower for the power washer.
The more our current model of food supply evolves, the more dependent our population becomes. This is a dangerous road we’ve been traveling down for a very long time. The dilemma can be compared to that of raising an animal in the zoo for 10 years and then releasing it into the wild and expecting it to be able to fend for itself. Under those circumstances that animal will not survive, and on many levels the majority of the US population is just as vulnerable. If a natural disaster does strike and our zookeeper can’t tend to us for a few days, where’s our food and water come from? We can’t expect relief organizations to pick up immediately where the zookeeper left off as it takes days and weeks to address those in need.
The percentage of the population that is prepared and has a backup plan is sorely low and is only trending lower due to the nature of our technological pursuits and progression. Due to the fact that you can go weeks without food but only days without water, emergency preparedness begins with potable water. The popularity of Berkey Water Filters stem from the fact that they filter and clean the dirtiest of water using gravity, without the need for electricity. This fact alone speaks volumes as to the inherent value that these systems possess, not to mention the piece of mind it brings to the owner. There’s an argument to be made that a water filter such as the Big Berkey is considered the most, if not one of the most important forms of emergency preparation. Stop and adjust your perspective for a moment and this reality becomes abundantly clear. If we spent just a tenth of the time preparing for a potential emergency that we do preparing for a economic downturn, we’d have a garage stocked full of food, water, supplies, and equipment. Unfortunately, I feel as though we’ve been hypnotized by our own technological advances into a false sense of security. New Orleans residents had the wake up call of a lifetime, and my hope is that the rest of the population is still not sleeping.
Click here for more information on how many berkey filters are needed.
The Thirsty Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Indianapolis - Polluted River Water, Pt’s 1 & 2
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008A water treatment plant in Indianapolis has been dumping sewage overflow into the White River for over 40 years now. This is a river that people swim and fish in…even though there are warning signs posted. Pay attention to the amount of E-Coli they find from a river sample.
It makes you wonder how much of this contaminated water made it into the water supply of the downstream popuation over these 40 years. What seeped into the well water systems? Was it filtered out in some way? I’d be real interested to see illness or cancer rates across this potentially affected population to look for correlations. Environmentally speaking, this is just sad.
How Many Berkey Water Filters Are Needed?
Thursday, October 30th, 2008This seems to be one of the questions I receive the most. And, it makes sense because there are many ways in which Berkey Water Filters can be set up. The more you read, the more confusing it can get, and the information out in cyberspace doesn’t always clear things up. Below, I’ve assembled 7 basic facts and guidelines that will help you understand the world of Berkey.
- Basic systems all start out with 2 filtration elements in the upper chamber. You then build upon the system from there depending on your needs and system capacity.
- The larger the system, the more elements you can fit into the upper chamber. It ranges from 2 elements in a system like the Travel Berkey or Berkey Light, to 8 elements in the Crown Berkey.
- Traditionally, filter / purifying elements are designed for either the upper or the lower chamber. Ceramic filters & Black Berkey filters are upper chamber. PF-2 Fluoride / Arsenic and PF-4 Arsenic / Lead / MTBE / Fluoride filters are lower chamber. In theory, if you wanted to pimp out your Berkey, 16 filtration elements could fit into the Crown Berkey (8 up / 8 down).
- Black Berkey’s only match up with PF-2’s, and Ceramics only match up with PF-4’s. This is because the PF-2’s are designed to complement the improved filtering abilities of the Black Berkey elements. Similarly, PF-4 filter technology is designed to complement and fit with the Ceramic filtration elements. So, if you buy 4 BB’s up top, you’ll need 2 sets of PF-2’s down below…not a PF-4 set.
- The amount of lower chamber elements in any given system must match the amount of upper chamber elements. i.e. 2 BB’s up top must equal 1 set of PF-2’s down below, 4 Ceramic’s up top must equal a set of PF-4’s below…etc. Keep in mind, lower chamber(pf) filters are not required. A system can function with only upper chamber elements, like 2 BB’s, but not the other way around.
- You cannot combine different types of filtration elements in one chamber. In other words, if you have 2 Black Berkey purification filters in the upper chamber and you’d like to expand to 4, you cannot add two Ceramic filters to the mix. You would need to add 2 addt’l Black Berkey filters.
- More Filters = Faster filtration; not better filtering. If you’re buying a larger system, you most likely have a requirement for water to be available quicker and in larger volumes. In this case, you would want to opt for 4, 6, or 8 upper chamber filter elements.
Hope this gives everyone a good foundation. Couple this information with your filtering intentions and you’ll be able to select the right system and elements combination that will meet your health needs. Please feel free to contact me with any other questions that I can help you with - Dan@Bigberkeywaterfilters.com.
The Thristy Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Arsenic in Your Well Water?
Sunday, October 26th, 2008I remember when someone first told me that arsenic can be found in the drinking water coming from the taps of many homes in the United States. I took it as one of those scare statistics at first, until I came across a newspaper article on the subject a couple months later. It’s at that point that I decided to do a little research. I’ve written an article posted on ezine that gets into the details, but let me cover some of it here.
Arsenic is deadly, period. It is known for causing all sorts of cancers including bladder, lung and skin and possibly kidney and liver cancer. In 2006, the EPA set the arsenic standard for drinking water at .010 parts per million (10 parts per billion) to protect consumers served by public water systems from the effects of long-term, chronic exposure to arsenic. However, the limit was set at 50 ppb up until that time and the EPA readily admits that it reduced the maximum in part due to studies revealing health deterioration at these levels.
It’s a step in the right direction that public water systems are required to stay below 10ppb, but if you get your water from a well, you may be drinking water with much higher levels of arsenic contamination. Many areas of the country, particularly the western United States are known for naturally high levels of arsenic in the ground and well water. Being an element found in the earth’s sediment, arsenic has the ability to leech into your well water source and you may be none the wiser. Hopefully, if you live in a particularly vulnerable area, your town and/or state officials require arsenic testing as part of a home inspection or house transfer. Unfortunately there are also many towns that do not require this, or are simply not aware of new studies highlighting the need for more stringent arsenic thresholds.
State and federal governments do not require regular testing of well water for arsenic, so what develops is a gap in public safety. The public water officials must report their arsenic levels on a regular basis to state and federal officials, but many homeowners have been drinking from wells that haven’t been tested in decades. The distress of researchers pushing this issue is that even at levels lower than 10ppb, the continuous consumption of low doses may result in cancer 15-30 years down the road.
Fortunately, arsenic testing can be done for as little as $50 and it may be well worth your while to get it checked out. You can also invest in a full home filtration system, but these installations can cost upwards of $4000, with additional annual costs of $300. I recommend point of use water filters as an inexpensive and highly effective option. I’m partial to Berkey water filters since they are distinguished for their arsenic removing filter technology and the systems last for many years without needing regular filter replacements typical of others on the market. Regardless of your choice, if you drink well water, please take a few moments to learn if you may be affected by this chemical and explore your options.
The Thirsty Berkey – For the Love of Clean Water
