Whether you have just celebrated the birth of a new baby or have already gone through a few sleepless nights with a young one that arrived a few months ago, you know you need to keep your baby safe from danger… so you have car seats, plugs for electrical outlets, gates by the stairway, childproof locks on the lower cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, etc. You may have even stopped smoking and/or invested in a better air filters for your furnace and/or air filters for your air conditioning unit to make sure your baby has clean air to breathe at home.

Now think about this: The last time you made bottles for your little one, did you give any thought to the quality of the water you mixed in with that nutrient-rich, and usually very expensive, formula or cereal?

Even if you boiled the water before use, which would effectively kill off most microorganisms, contaminants such as heavy metals (i.e. lead and mercury) will remain in the water and actually become greater in concentration.

So if boiling the water first may not make the water safe, then what will?

If you take a stroll down through the baby section of your local Wal-Mart or Kmart you will see that you can buy purified ‘baby water’ in various bottle sizes… which means purchasing the products would a support the bottled water industry and many people do NOT want to do that.

With pretty much all other options exhausted, it looks as though point-of-use water filtration systems such as countertop, faucet, and undersink water filters may provide the most economical, convenient, and environmentally friendly solutions.

How Do Know If I Have Good/Bad Water?

We get emails asking that question in an email at least three or four times a week and we answer the same way each time: TEST YOUR WATER or HAVE YOUR WATER TESTED.

Another good place to start involves requesting a copy of your local water system’s most recent Consumer Confidence Report (CCR). If your local water system serves more than 100,000 customers the Federal Government requires that it make its CCR for the previous year available on a public web site by July 1st.

Keep in mind, though, that the CCR reports the quality of water as it exited the water treatment facility, not the quality of water as it came out of your tap. Only testing water at your tap will tell you the full story about the quality of your tap water.

For assistance with drinking water testing, take a look at the following links:

• EPA List of State Certification Officers for Drinking Water Laboratories
• National Testing Laboratories Test Kits
• SenSafe Water Test Kits
• WaterSafe Test Kits

A while back we posted an article about the extent of mercury contamination in freshwater streams and rivers in the United States and in that article we told you how fish from ALL 291 bodies of water tested came up positive for mercury. Therefore an article which recently appeared on the Denver Post web site about smallmouth bass in the Juniata Reservoir coming up positive for mercury contamination did not surprise us.

How certain government officials proposed to DEAL with the problem, however, DID shock us.

GRAND JUNCTION — A reservoir that provides drinking water for Grand Junction is closed for fishing because smallmouth bass there have tested positive for mercury contamination.

Steve Gunderson, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s water- quality division, says the mercury levels in Juniata Reservoir are extremely low, but mercury accumulates in fish. He says state health officials are meeting with city officials about keeping the reservoir off a list of bodies of water that don’t meet water- quality standards, if they can get rid of all contaminated fish or isolate the reservoir. ( source )

Sounds to use like the officials seem more concerned about keeping this body of water off the ‘contaminated list’ than they do about the actual underlying problem: Mercury in the water!

Granted the article only gave a brief overview of the situation at Juniata Reservoir, but we really find it strange that the proposed method of ’solving’ the problem involves removing (killing) all the smallmouth bass… and/or keeping those fish from migrating to another body of water.

No matter how you look at it, once again it seems that certain government bodies care more about regional revenue from tourism, revenue from sport fishing, and revenue in general than they do about finding the underlying cause of all the problems… and this means, to some extent, that the general public must keep a vigilant eye on issues involving contamination of lakes, rivers, ponds, streams, and any other bodies of water because government agencies have their own agendas which may or may not include keeping toxic materials out of the water.

Testing for Metals in Water

A quick and efficient way of testing for the presence of metals in your water involves the use of a water testing product such as the SenSafe Water Metals Check which provides users with semi-quantitative water metals levels in under three minutes.

SenSafe Water Metals Check requires no iodine indicator solution, no meter, and no specialized training. Just dip the strip for 20 seconds, wait two minutes, and match color on the end of the strip to the color chart provided on the bottle.

Metals detected by SenSafe Water Metals Check include, but are not limited to, copper, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, and nickel.

SenSafe Water Metals Check has a low detection limit of 10ppb (parts per billion), much lower than any comparable product on the market.

What About Testing for Mercury in Water?

Simple test kits exist for testing mercury levels in drinking water as well. SenSafe manufactures two different Mercury in Water Test Kits and both, like SenSafe Water Metals Check, require no meter or special training to use and yield results in a matter of minutes.

If we had a dollar for every time we got asked the first question below, we’d all drive expensive cars and dine on lobster for lunch… instead of taking the bus and eating Ramen Noodles every day.

T_RadioMan in Clifton Park, NY asked…

Why do I always get staining in my sinks? Is my well water polluted? Is it dangerous?

Slow down, killer. Slow down. One question about the quality of your water at a time, OK?

Staining… of fixtures often happens when water contains dissolved metals. Have you tested your water for metals?

• Iron in Water — may leave brown, yellow and/or orange stains in sinks and on fixtures

• Manganese in Water — may leave dark brown, black or deep purple stains in sinks and on fixtures

• Copper in Water — may leave blue, green or dark stains in sinks and on fixtures

Polluted… drinking water may not ever show any signs of contamination. Only testing the water will tell you if your water contains dangerous contaminants and if you know nothing about the quality of the water, it definitely makes sense to opt for a thorough water quality analysis conducted by a qualified laboratory such as National Testing Laboratories or a local laboratory w/ similar qualifications.

National Testing Laboratories offers three levels of certified drinking water testing and their customers get test results within two weeks.

• WaterTest Basic tests for 27 water quality parameters

• WaterCheck test for 83 water quality parameters

• WaterCheck w/ Pesticides tests for 97 water quality parameters

Dangerous… water also may not show any obvious signs of it malignant nature so having testing performed by a qualified laboratory to find out if the water contains harmful contaminants or a dangerously low/high pH makes sense if you know nothing about the water and have ‘problems’ with it such as skin irritation, staining of fixtures, foul odor, nasty taste, or unexplainable recurring gastrointestinal troubles.

To conclude, T_RadioMan, you really won’t ever know the cause of your water woes until you get that water of yours checked out by a certified water testing laboratory.

SusanB wrote us recently to ask a question that many people people have probably asked after reading some of the postings here on the Water Testing Blog, but never bothered to ask anyone at the Water Testing Blog…

Your site and many others talk about ‘reverse osmosis‘ water treatment systems all the time but never really explain how they work. Are they just some sort of fancy carbon filter or something? I really want to know because I need to do something about my bad water and if they’re no different, except in price, than a simple carbon filter then I won’t waste my money on one. Can you explain the difference? IS there a difference? Thanks!

Actually, SusanB, we have posted information on Reverse Osmosis Water Filters in the past that addresses most of the questions you asked…

• What is Reverse Osmosis
• How Do Reverse Osmosis Systems Work
• Why Install a Reverse Osmosis Water Filter?
• Where Can I Buy Replacement RO Membranes?

And now, after re-reading our own posts we have decided that we really ought to locate and re-post a more user-friendly definition and explanation of reverse osmosis water filtration.

There are a range of water filtration systems available to today’s consumer to meet the different challenges of raising water quality. Often, a simple activated carbon filter does the trick, but many people have more complicated water problems, and find that they need more complex water filtration systems because of this. A reverse osmosis water filtration system will, in many cases, solve these more advanced problems.

Reverse osmosis (RO) water filtration is a multi-step water filtering process which works slowly but is extremely effective. Reverse osmosis systems are generally used to treat cooking and drinking water supplies. It’s often used in industry but works very well in the home. Reverse osmosis uses the principles of osmosis (in which material passes slowly through a membrane and is concentrated and purified in the process) to produce very clean water.

The first step is that a simple sediment filter is installed and all water to be used passes through it; the filter catches large particles of materials such as rust or calcium carbonate (a compound which is not at all harmful but which isn’t desirable in your drinking and cooking water – it’s commonly used as an antacid). Sometimes a second filter of a similar design, but more fine, is used after the initial filtering. An activated carbon filter traps organic chemicals, and then the RO filter, which is a very fine membrane, is used. It may be helpful to think of all these filters as being similar to sieves with differently-sized holes. Basically, the process of reverse osmosis water filtration would be akin to draining cooked food through a series of increasingly-fine sieves, rather than just emptying the pot into a basic perforated colander. Reverse osmosis water filtration systems, being more complex and increasingly sensitive, can trap far more contaminants than just one simple carbon filter. Some RO systems will, even after the water has passed through the RO membrane, use yet another carbon filter or, alternatively, an ultra-violet lamp, to purify the water even further. The result of all of this filtering is extremely high quality water.

Reverse osmosis is not the most efficient of all water filtration systems, and some have expressed concern about the fact that it takes approximately four gallons of processed water to result in one gallon of clear water. However, its effectiveness makes it a preferred water filtration method for many. Some describe it as “ultrafiltration,” which gives a sense of how powerful RO is. RO results in very pure water. The Water Quality Association says that RO filter systems produce water purity levels as high as 95 percent, which is extraordinary.

The fact remains that reverse osmosis water purification systems remove an astounding range of contaminants from your water. Arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium (hexavalent), chromium (trivalent), copper, lead, nitrate, nitrite, radium 226/228, selenium, iron and TDS are all removed from your water with an RO system.

A reverse osmosis water filtering system is obviously more complicated than a simple carbon-filter water pitcher, but the benefits of its complex design are also obvious. For those who are concerned not merely with the aesthetics of their water – taste – but have more concrete problems with water quality, an RO water filter may be the best solution to your problem. ( source )

Well, SusanB, and everyone else reading this, we hope the information above helped you to understand a little bit more about the ways in which reverse osmosis water filters operate and the benefits they offer. Below you will find links to three popular reverse osmosis water filters units available from WaterFilters.Net.

Even though the USEPA lowered the maximum contaminant level for arsenic in drinking water to 10ppb (parts per billion) several years ago, many people still find themselves plagued by water containing much higher than acceptable levels of arsenic — because they get their water from a private well.

If only one person used and owned the well tainted with arsenic, the responsibility for periodic testing for arsenic in drinking water and remediation of the well water (if needed) would fall on the shoulders of the well owner. Open and shut case.

What happens, though, when a small collection of users share the well and a third party owns the well?

Situations just like that happen all the time and recently some State lawmakers in California have decided to see what they can do to get safe drinking water into the homes of people currently in those situations.

Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit and state Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez toured mobile home parks across the eastern Coachella Valley Saturday, to better grasp the widespread problem of arsenic-contaminated groundwater there.

“We’re here to work together to try to solve these problems,” Pérez told about 40 residents at the 80-unit Sunbird park in Thermal. Thousands of east valley residents live in areas that potentially contain hazardous levels of arsenic in their groundwater, a recent Desert Sun report found.

“It’s just a matter of the political will” to provide those residents with safe drinking water, Pérez said.

The strategy likely will involve a mix of short- and long-term water fixes, officials said.

At the 96-unit St. Anthony’s mobile home park in Mecca, officials showed Benoit and Pérez a “reverse-osmosis” filter — resembling a more advanced kind of tap-water purifier — that could be installed at each trailer to remove the arsenic.

The filters, priced around $135 to $300 apiece, could serve as short-term solutions in large parks like St. Anthony’s while valley officials consider a proposed pipeline that will serve many east valley parks roughly from Vista Santa Rosa to Mecca, estimated to cost $22 million.

Such a pipeline is years away, though, given the economic recession and budget deficits, officials said.

The reverse osmosis filters could be a permanent fix for the arsenic woes at smaller, remote parks to the southeast, where it’s not feasible to connect to the Coachella Valley Water District’s water supply, said Sergio Carranza, a longtime advocate for east valley water issues.

…

The local lawmakers also toured Desert Mobile Home Park, known as “Duroville,” where several thousand residents still drink water from wells testing at 26 parts per billion arsenic levels, officials there said. State and federal officials say water testing above 10 parts per billion is unsafe if ingested regularly over decades.

…

After the tour, Benoit and Pérez agreed that to solve the east valley’s arsenic problem, valley officials and water agencies first must unite under a regional water quality board.

That would give the area access to more grants and funding, to help ensure thousands of east valley residents have clean, arsenic-free drinking water, they said.

St. Anthony’s resident Francisco Mendez said he’s lived at the park for about 25 years, and he worries how the park’s arsenic-contaminated water might affect his four children, ages 5 months to 12 years.

Mendez said he was encouraged by the lawmakers’ visit and that safe conditions at the park are long overdue.

“We’re people who work in the fields, in construction,” Mendez said. “We pay taxes. We have rights.” ( source )

It may take a while for programs to get set up for those people and others like them but at least someone with a little political power has taken an interest in their situation. Hopefully the necessary changes in policy (and enforcement) won’t take too long and become a reality.

Testing Your Well Water for Arsenic

we cannot emphasize enough that the responsibility for the quality of the water coming from a private well rests solely with the well’s owner and that public policy set forth by the USEPA in no way, shape or form applies to private wells. In other words, if your well water has arsenic concentrations greater than 10ppb, no one from the government will send you a warning letter telling you about the problem.

The USEPA, health officials, and well water organizations all suggest that well owners have their water tested annually for contaminants — including arsenic.

Options for Arsenic in Well Water Testing

As usual we will tell you that no form of drinking water testing can, or should ever, take the place of drinking water testing performed by a certified water testing laboratory if you have good reason to suspect that dangerous levels of contaminants may have gotten into your water supply.

For all other times though, a simple at-home drinking water test kit from the Arsenic Quick line of field-ready arsenic test kits may work just fine.

Arsenic Quick test kits claim to have the shortest testing time on the market, an independently verified testing procedure, the simplest test instructions, and the safest reagents.

You can find more information about Arsenic Quick test kits on the following web sites:

• www.ArsenicQuick.com
• www.Arsenic-Test-Kit.com

Some people live in older homes where the plumbing may still contain copper and/or lead pipes. If the water entering those residences has a low pH value, meaning the water is acidic, the possibility definitely exists that the water may corrode the piping and pull dissolved and potentially dangerous amounts of metals into itself.

Maximum Contaminant Levels

For copper, the USEPA suggests that people ingest drinking water containing no more than 1.3ppm (mg/L) of free dissolved copper. Health officials have determined that short term exposure to high levels of dissolved copper in drinking water can cause gastrointestinal distress and that long term exposure can result in liver and/or kidney damage.

When it comes to maximum contaminant level for lead in drinking water, the USEPA set the limit at 15ppb. Routinely ingesting higher quantities of lead in water may result in delays in physical or mental development and in infants and children. Problems with attention span have also resulted. In the case of adults ingesting higher than acceptable amounts of lead in drinking water, kidney problems and high blood pressure have resulted.

Acidic Water Causes Other Problems

Not treating, or correcting the pH of, acidic water can result in costly corrosion problems in plumbing and it may also drastically shorten the life expectancies equipment that uses water such as dishwashers, washing machines, hot water heaters, etc.

Treating Acidic Water

If you have acidic water and wish to treat it, installing a device such as a Whole House Acid Neutralizing Water Filter will help to keep your water’s pH level in an acceptable range.

The Acid Neutralizing Water Filter works by slowly dissolving calcium carbonate into water with a pH level below 6.8. The dissolved calcium carbonate acts as a pH increaser.

According to the manufacturer of this unit, Crystal Quest, the calcium carbonate media in the tank will last approximately 2 to 3 years and the system has a backwash feature to help prevent compaction which would impede the flow of water through the system.

For more information on the Whole House Acid Neutralizing Water Filter manufactured by Crystal Quest, visit the FilterWater.Com web site.

Suzanne from Temecula, CA wrote in and asked,

Shortly before leaving me, my ex-husband installed a monstrosity of a water filter for the whole house that he claimed would remove 99% of this, that and the other thing. He said we needed it. Too bad I still have to pay it off… But anyways, I now travel a lot and have noticed that the water tasted funny everywhere I go — and i really don’t like it very much at all. I’ve started carrying bottles and 1 gallon jugs of water with me on my trips but I think there has to be a better option. Do they make a travel-sized whole house filter? Thanks for your time and I look forward to reading your response. — Suzanne

We thank you for your question, Suzanne, and sorry you got stuck paying for that ‘monstrosity’ of a whole house filtration system. At least you have safe, clean, and good tasting water at home, though, right?

We completely understand your not wanting to carry jugs of bottled water around in your car, assuming that you drive everywhere. Although one can usually pick up gallons of purified water for small amounts of money from the local grocery store, the inconvenience of lugging them around all the time definitely sounds like a miserable experience.

You could pick up travel-sized sport water bottles with built-in filtration units, but those typically work better for short trips, hiking trips, etc. and that does not sound like what you want. It sounds to us like you want a portable version of the ‘monstrosity’ you have at home.

After doing a little research, we came across a Countertop Portable Water Filter made by Crystal Quest. It has multiple filtering stages (like your monstrosity at home) and claims to remove hundreds of contaminants (like your monstrosity at home most likely does).

Stage 1 — Water passes through a 5 micron filter pad which remove suspended particles such as silt, sediment, cyst (Giardia, Cryptosporidium), sand, rust, dirt, and other un-dissolved matter.

Stage 2 — Water passed through a specially blended bed of high purity media known commercially as KDF-55D ®, and KDF-85D ®. This media uses an oxidation-reduction process to effectively neutralize chlorine and remove metals.

Stage 3 — Water passes through through granulated activated carbon (GAC), a compound known for its ability to adsorb a wide variety of organic contaminants such as chlorine (99.9%), chemicals linked to cancer such as trihalomethanes (THM’s) and benzine, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), PCB’s, MTBE’s and many of other chemical contaminants which if present in water may also cause bad taste and odor.

Stage 4 — Water passes through a final 5 micron filter pad to filter out suspended particles such as silt, sediment, cyst (Giardia, Cryptosporidium), sand, rust, dirt, and other un-dissolved matter.

Unlike the ‘monstrosity’ you have not, yet finished paying for, the Crystal Quest Portable Countertop Water Filter has a pretty good price (around $70) and will supposedly last for up to 5,000 gallons.

Compare that to paying $1 per gallon for purified water from the store…

Worried about a time-consuming installation? From the looks of things, the Crystal Quest Portable Countertop Water Filter attaches to a common sink faucet via an adapter that screws into where the aerator goes. Should take less than a few minutes, though instinct tells us you may want to carry a pair of pliers in your travel bag — in case no one has removed the aerator in your cabana, cabin, or hotel room in a while.

Amy wrote in with a few questions about city water testing…

Hi ~ thanks for this blog! Do cities provide free water testing as a service?

How would I know if my apt building has lead pipes?

Thanks!

Amy

To our knowledge most cities and municipalities do not provide free water testing as a service, though we have read that some areas will offer deeply discounted testing rates through local laboratories, or their own labs, in response to localized events such as regional flooding.

You can, however, call your local water company and request a copy of its most recent Annual Drinking Water Quality Report. Some cities opt to post their reports online and you can check to see if your area water company posts its report online at the EPA’s Safewater Project Web Site.

With regard to your question regarding whether or not your apartment building contains lead pipes, first determine the approximate age of the building.

Older houses are more likely to have problems with lead than houses built since 1988. Before that time, lead piping and lead solder were widely used in household plumbing systems as well as in the service lines that connect houses to street water mains. In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of lead pipes and lead solder in plumbing systems because lead is an insidious and dangerous poison. The EPA set an “action level” of .015 milligrams per liter of water for lead, stating that levels higher than that in water could pose a risk to human health. ( source )

In all honesty, though, even if your building does not have lead someplace in its water delivery system, lead can enter your drinking water other ways…

Lead rarely occurs naturally in drinking water. It’s far more common for lead contamination to occur at some point in the water delivery system. It isn’t well known, but household plumbing is usually the culprit when it comes to high levels of lead and copper in drinking water. Lead and/or copper pipes, fittings and other components are commonly found in many plumbing systems. Metallic alloys such as brass and bronze often contain lead, so brass faucets or plumbing fittings may also release lead into home water systems. ( source )

With so many ways for potentially harmful levels of metals such as lead and copper to enter one’s drinking water, the only way to know for sure if you have lead in your water (which is what REALLY matters) involves testing your water.

Now of COURSE we suggest using a certified water testing lab such as Suburban Water Testing Laboratories, or another similarly qualified water testing service, but that does not mean you cannot test your own water from time to time for dangerous metals such as copper and lead.

Water Metals Test Kit

Water Quality Test Kit

Lead in Water Test Kit

It always pleases us to see companies thinking outside the box when it comes to coming up with new and efficient ways to produce safe, clean drinking water. In this case, a company called Puralytics has developed a chemical-free solar powered water purification system that creates no waste stream.

By combining the work of five photochemical processes at once, Puralytics water purification systems break down or remove contaminants from water by actually destroying contaminants rather than capturing them and creating a hazardous waste disposal problem.

1. Photocatalytic Oxidation — Previously unobtainable, selected wavelengths of UV light generate unprecedented levels of hydroxyl radicals (OH-) without any chemical additives.

2. Photocatalytic Reduction — Reduces toxic species such as mercury (Hg II), silver (Ag I), arsenic (As V, and chromium (Cr VI) to more readily adsorbed materials.

3. Photolysis — Direct disassociation of contaminants by high intensity UV light, including atrazine, amoxicillin, DEET, and all estrogenic chemicals.

4. Photoadsorption — The catalyst strongly adsorbs heavy metals including mercury, lead, selenium, and arsenic, permanganate, and other compounds.

5. Photo Disinfection — Multiple wavelengths and high intensity UV disinfect pathogens more effectively than standard UV germicidal.

Below you will find the Press Release issued by Puralytics on January 14th, 2010 from their Beaverton, Oregon office:

Puralytics, an emerging leader in advanced water purification technology, announced it has been selected as a finalist in the first Imagine H2O prize. This year’s prize focuses on water efficiency, and Puralytics is able to remove contaminants from water without water loss and without generating a waste stream, which is common with other technologies.

Imagine H2O is a non-profit organization founded in 2007 by a team of leading venture capital firms and financiers, water technology leaders and academics from Harvard Business School. The Imagine H2O Prize Competition highlights new technology that can address critical water challenges. Puralytics was selected as a finalist because of their unique, chemical-free purification capability, and water savings of thousands of gallons per day.

Puralytics has developed a new photo purification technology for water which uses precise wavelength LEDs in conjunction with a fixed photocatalyst to effectively remove organic compounds, heavy metals, and pathogens from water. For more information on the Puralytics technology and products, please visit: www.puralytics.com. The Shield 500 is available for industrial and commercial applications, and the sunlight powered SolarBag for developing world and disaster relief applications will be available in early 2010.

About Puralytics

Puralytics is an early stage company in Beaverton, Oregon, developing water purification products that effectively remove all of the emerging contaminants such as petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals, eliminate heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and mercury, and provide disinfection of bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. These products have wide applicability for ultrapure and laboratory processes, well water purification, waste and grey water processing, and remote drinking water purification. Puralytics was also chosen by The Artemis Project as a Top 50 Global Water Technology Company competition winner, announced on Earth Day 2009.

Contact:
Dave Moser
Vice President of Business Development
Puralytics, Inc.
15250 NW Greenbrier Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006-5764
USA
Ph: +1 503 913-5194
dave.moser@puralytics.com
www.puralytics.com (source )

So you may now wonder what exactly this company has created that has gotten them all this attention. Stay tuned for future Water Testing Blog entries on the topic of Puralytics Water Treatment Devices.

We have had many people ask us about potential problems and/or dangers associated with the presence of iron in drinking water since we started the Water Testing Blog. We attribute the public’s interest in iron in drinking water to its ability to stain fixtures, clog certain types of filters, stain clothes, ruin the taste of food and beverages, cause water to have an unpleasant taste, etc.

Despite all those drawbacks to the presence of iron in drinking water, it does not, at least according to the current Primary and Secondary Drinking Water Standards set forth by the USEPA, pose much of a health risk.

Note: The USEPA has set the Maximum Contaminant Level for iron in drinking water at 0.3 ppm in their Secondary Drinking Water Standards, which deal more with aesthetic properties of water than with health-related issues.

Most often when testing for iron people will test for Ferrous Iron:

* Ferrous — This form of iron results in the most complaints and reasons for examination of water for iron content. If allowed to remain in a state with little oxygen present, this type of iron remains in solution and the water will appear colorless. However, in the case of tap water allowed to remain in service lines coming from a well or other source, rust colored iron particles may begin to precipitate out of solution. These particles obviously ruin water clarity and give the impression of unsafe drinking water. Additionally, they clog certain types of water filtration systems and cause the owners of those water filtration systems to replace them well in advance of their expected replacement dates. Water professionals often refer to this type of iron in water as ‘clear iron’. ( source )

To test for the presence of iron in water yourself, you can choose from several different methods:

• Liquid, Tablet and/or Powder Test Kits — see Taylor Iron K-1716 Test Kit
• Electronic Meters — see eXact Micro 7+ and Color Q PRO 11
• Test Strips — see Ida’s Iron, Iron Check, AquaChek Iron, and Visual Total Iron