It probably won’t surprise you to know that your tap water may have contaminants in it. From nasty chemicals to who-knows-what, there are hundreds of things that turn up in tap water in the US. (I won’t even start on Mexico, where I am living till the spring… we don’t even brush our teeth with tap water here!)
There is an excellent website, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) where you can t ype in your zip code and find out what is in your water — they have analyzed almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials and found 316 pollutants in the drinking water from 45 states.
Go through their step-by-step process of choosing a water filter:
- Step 1. Decide what is most important to you.
- Step 2. Consider what type of filter would work best for you.
- Step 3. Determine what contaminants you need to remove.
- Step 4. Find a filter.
This site gets very technical for those who want it, but it is written clearly enough for you to find out what you need. I specially liked their table in step 2.
By the way, all that research costs them and if you end up buying a water filter through their links to Amazon, that helps support their work. I’ve done this.