One danger we all face when purchasing a water filter: It doesn’t remove all the things we want it to remove. Yep, this can definitely happen to people if they do not have a thorough water quality analysis performed prior to purchasing a water filter for their home or place of business.
Today’s question comes to us from someone in NYC (Brooklyn to be more precise) who has apparently installed a water filtration system in their home… but still has ‘floating white stuff’ in their water.
M. Elbaz wrote, “How can i check if water has copeds or bugs or parasytes? I use filter in Brooklyn ans still see white things floating around
Please advise asap”
Quite frankly, this question has a number of possible answers, but from what you have described, one of many situations may have resulted in the floating particulates you described:
- You have installed a water filter with too high a porosity rating, meaning the contaminants you want to filter out have too small a size for your filter to remove them.
- The installation of your water filtration system requires adjustment because some part of the unit is allowing unfiltered water to bypass the filtering process — or the actual filter itself has started to break down.
- Since we don’t know what class of filter you have installed (i.e. undersink, countertop, whole house, etc.) we will just throw this one out there for the heck of it: Often when people install filters that will still allow water to pass though existing faucets they fail to replace the screens in their faucets.
Studies have shown that screens in faucets, if left unchanged for too long, will tend to collect specific deposits of contaminants in contaminated water — and then potentially release those contaminants into the water stream at a later time.
- Floating white particulates make us think more of mineral deposits than parasites, but it should still trigger an alarm that something isn’t quite right. Perhaps, and those kind of goes back to the last bullet point, the lines in your home post-filter have collected mineral deposits over the years and those now appear in your water?
As for your question regarding the possibility that your water contains parasites, bacteria, etc., contact a certified water testing laboratory in your area and have them perform a thorough analysis of your water.
Steer clear of water treatment companies offering ‘free in-home testing’. Why? Simple: For one, no in-home test kit we have ever found can provide the thoroughness of testing required if you suspect parasites or other unwanted biological contaminants exist in your water supply.
Besides… a person from a water treatment company going to your home has one goal in mind: to make commission off the sale of a (potentially useless or otherwise unqualified) water treatment system.
Need help finding a qualified water testing laboratory in your area? Take a look through the EPA’s listing of State Certified drinking water laboratories. The laboratories on this list have passed rigorous qualification programs designed to weed out labs whose testing programs lack what it takes to accurately and professionally analyze drinking water samples.
Does that mean at-home bacteria test kits such as the WaterWorks™ Bacteria Water Test Kit have no purpose? Nonsense! Periodic testing for coliform bacteria — especially for well owners since no one government agency checks the quality of their water on a regular basis — will always make sense.
Important factors to think about when it comes to deciding when and/or how often to test the quality of your water:
- For Well Owners: Changes in weather patterns (i.e. excessive rain, long periods without rain, flooding, etc.) can have adverse effects on the quality of water coming out of your well.
- For City/Municipal Water Customers: Anything can happen to the miles of underground piping between the water treatment facility and no one will ever investigate until people start to get sick.
Performing regular spot checks on your water’s quality may allow you to detect potential problems well in advance of anyone becoming ill.
“It’s your water, your health… and ultimately your LIFE!”
