Are you concerned about lead in your drinking water? Lead is one of the greatest environmental threats.
The EPA has set the maximum contaminant level goal for lead in drinking water at zero because lead is a toxic metal that can harm human health even at low exposure levels. It is persistent and can bioaccumulate in the body over time.
Water is normally lead-free when it leaves the water treatment plant. However, contamination usually occurs when the water enters your property. Many homes have lead pipes, fixtures, or solders that leach lead into the water.
Even if you don’t have lead pipes, lead can get in your water after leaching from faucets or solder on pipes.
Health Risk of Lead
Exposure to lead presents serious health risks to children's brains and nervous systems. The recent Flint, Michigan, crisis has increased attention to the challenge of lead in drinking water systems across the country.
Over the past decade, epidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated no safe lead level.
In particular, studies conducted in diverse populations of children consistently demonstrate the harmful effects of lead exposure on cognitive function, as measured by IQ decrements, decreased academic performance, and poorer performance on tests of executive function.
Lead exposure is also associated with decreased attention and increased impulsivity and hyperactivity in children.
In adults, long-term lead exposure results in increased blood pressure and hypertension.
In addition to its effect on blood pressure, lead exposure can also lead to coronary heart disease and death from cardiovascular causes and is associated with cognitive function decrements, symptoms of depression and anxiety, and immune effects in adults.
Even though lead water pipes were banned in the US several decades ago, they are still used in water distribution networks that supply drinking water to millions of households nationwide.
Corrosion of these aging lead pipes risks leaching lead into the water supply, putting children at risk of neurological and developmental disorders resulting from exposure to this hazardous contaminant.
According to a CNN report, 5,300 US water systems are tainted with lead, exposing approximately 18 million Americans to dangerously high lead levels.
Use the Berkey water filter for drinking and cooking to limit your family's exposure to lead.
Does Berkey Water Filter Remove Lead From Drinking Water?
Berkey water filters can remove at least 99.9% of lead from drinking water. Berkey's activated charcoal and self-cleaning filters remove all the lead and nearly all the aluminum from the water supply.
Your best protection against lead is to have a water filter that is rigorously tested. Not all water filters have been tested to the extreme measures that Berkey Water Systems have.
To see what would happen in an unfortunate real-world crisis, Berkey Water Systems contracted a lab to set the pre-filtered water concentration of lead at the extreme contamination level of one part per million (ppm). The same lead concentrations had been reported at some residences in Flint.
At one part per million (1 ppm), the lead contamination level is about 67 times more contaminated than the EPA Lead Action Level. The above charts demonstrate that Black Berkey Elements successfully reduce lead at these excessively high contamination levels by over 99.9%.
How Does Berkey Water Filter Work?
Several methodologies are used to produce the Black Berkey elements.
The first line of defense is that Berkey elements comprise a proprietary formulation of more than six different media types, all constructed into a very compact matrix containing millions of microscopic pores.
These pores are so small that they produce what we refer to as a “Tortuous Path” that herbicides, pesticides, organic solvents, VOCs, detergents, cloudiness, silt, sediment and sedimentary minerals, foul tastes, and odors must travel through.
These paths are so small that pollutants cannot physically pass through them and become trapped, eliminating them from drinking water. This process is known as microfiltration.
Secondly, our media formulation uses unique adsorption and absorption properties. Adsorption creates an ionic barrier similar to surface tension. This barrier is perfectly suited to the micro-porous water filter because it effectively allows the tiny pores to block water contaminants smaller than the pore size.
Next, heavy metal ions such as cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, aluminum, and other dangerous heavy metals are extracted from the water through an Ion exchange process. The ions attract to and transform the media by electrically bonding to it.
Finally, Berkey systems effectively remove contaminants from water because of their extremely long contact period. Other filtration systems use pressure to force water molecules through the 60-90 PSI elements. These water molecules come into contact with the filter media for a mere fraction of a second.
By comparison, water molecules passing through the structure of the Black Berkey elements are gently drawn by gravity and stay in contact with the media for a long period. This allows the filter media to capture contaminants more efficiently.
If you're not confident that your home's drinking water is lead-free, consider buying a Berkey Water Filter System.
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