Do Water Filters Really Purify Your Water? | Talking Point | Full Episode

[Music] so sales of water filter systems in singapore have been climbing steadily over the years with one company even reporting a 100 increase in unit sales year on year be perfectly honest i'm actually fine drinking tap water my wife we first filtered water we got this under the sink system which i believe cost about a thousand dollars now that's a whole lot of money so in this episode of talking point i want to find out if we really need these water filters i'm starting my investigation with joysly who is the founder of kampung sinha an eco-conscious charity which promotes the use of natural remedies for health and wellness joyce has been using water filters from as early as 1999 when she used charcoal sticks like these to purify her water it can accept many impurities including bacteria so this was how it all started just using at least that is how we started nowadays we have very modern technology filter i can show you yeah yeah yeah this wasted ah here is the system all right the filter is actually here yeah eight filters here yes wow okay what does it do the first four are reverse osmosis so using the basic ingredient white chakra to remove all the impurity or the chlorine fluoride heavy metals and the last fall is to add back the good thing the essential minerals like magnesium calcium zinc and do you really think this is beneficial for our body the senior they find that they do not have to go to toilets so often although they can drink more water are you saying the water is um well yes some of them they slim down some of them with diabetes they also improve so how much does a system like that cost about 2 700 and do you feel that that is worth the money to me i look upon it as a responsibility to our beneficiaries because the people who come to us are either chronically ill or they are seniors who are physically weak and even if you had to pay for it on your own at home would you feel that this is worth yes i i i do pay for it because it's important to have good water to take good care of our health water that is cleaner and healthier that is what some people believe these water filters bring us i'm going to put these claims to the test and i'm starting right here with joyce's center i'm taking two different samples from her center regular tap water and filtered water and bringing them to the lab for testing i want to know if filtered water truly has higher levels of essential minerals like calcium and zinc and lower levels of chlorine and fluoride which some fields has promised to remove from our tap water before the results are out i'm tracking singapore's water journey tap water comes to us at the turn of a faucet but it often travels a long way to get there [Music] from our water treatment plants water enters a network of portable water distribution pipes five thousand seven hundred kilometers long to our homes and industries while some buildings are served directly by pub water mains others like this hdb block are served by rooftop storage tanks where water is pumped up before flowing by gravity to our homes [Music] so how is our water kept clean throughout the entire process to find out i've arranged to meet liu shenyu he's responsible for ensuring water quality throughout our distribution network so why are we here at this fire hydrant flying hydrants like this are not just used to draw water for firefighting pub also uses these hydrants to collect water samples from our extensive underground pipe network oh water quality monitoring do you want to help me take a sample yeah sure let's go for it oh there we go okay so this is just regular tap water right yes this is regular tub also this is the look of it all right we got our tempo we also routinely inspect more than 80 000 water tanks on 20 000 buildings across the island come let me show you okay let's go oh wow what a view it is quite a view so this whole patch that we're on is actually the water tank that's right we're standing right on top of the water segment so what are we checking for up here over here we want to check that the tank cover is properly locked we also want to ensure that there's a stainless steel bracket to properly secure the tank cover are we able to open it yup okay oh looks a bit like a swimming pool in there it is pub takes samples from each step of the water journey from the source to our taps in order to ensure that water remains clean throughout the samples are then taken to its water quality lab where they are tested for over 300 parameters including ph color and ammonia singapore's tap water is recognized internationally to be one of the cleanest in the world but why do many still seem obsessed with even cleaner more purified water i'll soon find out if filtered water is indeed cleaner so you tested both tapped and filtered water what do the results tell you i'm investigating the need for water filters i've send water samples from eagle conscious charity kampung sunung to a lab for testing i want to know if filters can really add more minerals and reduce the amount of chlorine and fluoride in our drinking water the results are out [Music] so you tested both tap and filtered water what do the results tell you let's first look at chlorine and fluoride okay as these are the two chemicals of concern which the filter promises to remove for chlorine you can see that the concentration has actually remained the same it is 0.1 milligram per liters so there's no significant decrease in the concentration but if you were to look at fluoride we do see a decrease from 0.5 to 0.1 so the reverse osmosis filter did remove fluoride from the water itself but the permissible level for fluoride in our water is actually 0.7 milligrams per liter right so as long as you do not go above that it is safe some people believe that the filter will actually add more minerals into the water is that true if we were to look at the results between the tap and filter magnesium level only went up by one milligram per liters and if you look at zinc basically there's no change to the concentration and for calcium there's actually a decrease from 30 milligrams per liter to almost uh one milligram per liter so if we were to add all three minerals up that we are observing in our report it's actually a drop in overall mineral contents so in other words this filter is actually removing more minerals from the water instead of adding minerals into the water you're correct so water filters may be able to remove fluoride from your water if that's what you're concerned about but if you are looking at adding minerals into your water well filters may not necessarily live up to their claims but yet there are so many varieties of water filters in the market these days let's see i'm just doing a bit of online shopping and i'm finding they have a truly dizzying array of water filters available on the market you've got your relatively simple ones those are cloth filters that cost about 30 cents a piece there are also water filter pitches now those go between 30 to 100 and then you've got your faucet filters which attach to your tap was a price between 50 to 200 but ooh look at this they've got the more fancy counter top systems those can cost as much as 3 500 but with so much to choose from and they all have terms like activated carbon ion exchange and alkaline ionizer i really have no idea what they all mean so today i've enlisted quark chenco to help me break it all down chenco runs a blog called water quality in singapore and he has a special interest in water filters you know there's so many different types of water filters out there what's the difference between them there are two block categories okay one group remove contaminants from the water the other group actually modify your water or add something into your water there are two common kinds of filters which claim to modify water ion exchange filters and alkaline filters chenco is going to show me what really goes on in each of these filters so what's this one that we're looking at this one that you are looking at is an ion exchange filter it acts like a water softener imagine your hot water going into the filter and what makes water hard well basically if you have calcium and magnesium ions inside your water it contributes to the hardness so hard water has more of this the calcium and magnesium yes that's right all right how does it work imagine this part here is your water filter and the yellow magnets are your iron exchange resins okay hot water goes in from the top and this is calcium it gets captured by the iron exchange resin releasing some of the hydrogen ions into your outlet water so eventually most of your calcium and magnesium ions will be captured by the iron exchange resin and out comes salt water the lack of calcium and magnesium ions make the water soft softer water is often desired by coffee enthusiasts because the lack of minerals can prevent limescale buildup from clogging your coffee machine some also believe that using softer water can brew a more flavorful cup of tea now over here we have what we call electrolysis it's basically used to produce alkaline water you need an electric current to go through your water and split it and in the process it produces hydraulic water if you can see one of these electrodes has a lot of bubbles coming out where alkaline water is produced if i put this into my electrolyzer here you can see a deeper green which indicates alkaline water according to the color oh yeah so it is converting the water in there by running a current through it yes and alkali water is also supposed to be beneficial for us yes a lot of people do believe it's more beneficial it's healthier nyx is the other kind of filter that is designed to remove contaminants from water the activated carbon filter activated carbon is a very common component in a lot of filters chenko proceeds to pour some blue dyed water through a coffee filter lined with activated carbon that's the black powder you see there you can see the water dripping up now as blue that's right so essentially this carbon is absorbing the blue dye yes and imagine the blue dye is your contaminant in the water that is what your activated carbon is doing it's removing certain pollutants for example sovereign chlorine and certain chemicals it can't remove bacteria unless it's specially designed to do something okay for people who are out there looking for water filter what should they be looking out for first point they must already know what they want to remove from their water or modify their water for example are they going to remove chlorine and fluoride if that is the case they should look for a water filter that can handle that particular task second point a water filter which is certified by a third party not related to any of these manufacturers or retailers my third point for consumers is to think about how often you need to change your filters now the problem is this filters over time can actually allow bacteria to grow within them and of particular concern will be the activated carbon because it absorbs organic matter which actually serves as food for bacteria so we are talking about bacteria growing on your filter and coming up into your water which you are drinking right so if you don't change it regularly it's like the clean water going in getting mixed up with all the bacteria and then coming out into your cup yes which is even worse right yes that's right could bacteria really grow in overdue filters and leak into the filtered water i need to find out i'm collecting two samples each from five different households who drink filtered water including my own the filters are all multi-stage filters which contain different types of filter medium but they all have one thing in common they all contain activated carbon the one thing that chenco has warned me about i'm sending my samples to the lab for another test in that particular filter there is an additional opportunity for the bacteria to regrow i've just found out that if we don't change our water filters regularly bacteria can accumulate in them and contaminate our filtered water [Music] so i gather water samples from five different households who use water filters including my own i've taken two samples each from these households one a filtered water and one of regular tap water i'm sending the samples to the lab for testing today i want to know how effective water filters really are in our homes as we're waiting for the results i investigate one more thing water filter and alkaline water companies alike advertise a laundry list of health claims from improved gastrointestinal health to detoxification improve skin condition better blood circulation and even preventing cancer i know water is the essence of life but can all this really be true to find out i'm consulting dr lyong lai ping dr leong is a food scientist she's been looking into some of the claims companies have made ever since she took on a part-time job selling water filters when she was still a student so dr leung i have here a bunch of health claims that all these water treatment companies say they are water can do for you from helping your body detox even improve my gastrointestinal health is that true according to the claims some of them said because it is alkaline water it helps to neutralize the acid the acid in the stomach but the thing is that the acid is there to help with digestion if you neutralize it it doesn't digest as well anymore right there's no reason why anybody want to neutralize the acid in their stomach okay let me ask you about this it says it can help my body absorb water better because the water molecules are smaller now the water molecules doesn't change in size whether they go through the filter or not it's still the same size water is water there shouldn't be any difference at all between filtered water or normal tap water it will both help you to hydrate what about this claim that it can help prevent cancer well there are actually no evidence that it can prevent cancer no evidence whatsoever any group of people that would benefit from drinking these treated water so there are some water treatment system that is able to get rid of some germs so people undergoing cancer treatment for example or people who are immunocompromised who are very vulnerable that's a benefit if they take this water that can filter away the microorganisms that they wanted filtered away [Music] so it turns out that the claims are more often than not just persuasive marketing gimmicks but while it might not give me better digestion or prevent me from getting cancer it should at the very least ensure that my water is free from dangerous bacteria right it's been a week since i dropped off my water samples at the lab for testing and the results are out i've also invited the households i took the samples from [Music] turns out the bacteria account for tap water taken from four of the households were all under 500 some as low as less than one a bacteria count of 500 is the safe limit imposed by the singapore food agency but when it came to filtered water from these four households three of them had bacteria counts that were between 9 000 to a whopping 25 400 but one household bugged the trend household 5's tap water had a bacteria count of thirteen thousand six hundred it's filled with water a bacterial count of less than one dr guillaume drillet spearheaded this test he's going to help us make sense of the numbers there are reason to explain why you could have regrowth of bacteria in the different filters my number is about 25 000 which is like a lot more yeah that sounds pretty high was your filter changed recently or it's changed one month past the supposed so you have used it longer than what the manufacturers recommends right okay okay that could explain the high factorial count so the longer you keep your filter running the higher probability that you will have a regrowth of bacteria so it's very important to follow the schedule proposed by the manufacturers but even then so i actually did just change my filter about a month ago i would have thought there should be well almost no bacteria since it's almost a brand new filter right so bacteria are regrow very fast so as soon you have nutrients and surface to regrow you will have development of a biofilm so if you look at it this way having a filter add one more step after the water you receive from the tap and in that particular filter there is an additional basically opportunity for the bacteria to regrow so even when the filters are not past their due date for replacement they could still be introducing higher bacteria accounts into unfiltered water so is this bacteria harmful for us yes and no not all bacteria are bad there are some good bacteria if you drink probiotics you will ingest a lot more bacteria than that so it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad it means that you have an increase of bacteria meaning potentially there could be some pathogenic bacteria regrowing in your filter if you don't have a control of this it could be a problem so in the filter we may be collecting bacteria both good and bad and we just don't know which one and you can't control it and this is why technically the water from pob is safer because there is a control here so the water you receive at the tap has been treated by the public utility boards and contain chlorine to forbid regrowth the filter may remove some of this chlorine and act as a place where the bacteria can actually start regrowing but wendy has some unusual results wendy is from household five where our tests show that the level of bacteria for her tap water was shockingly at a count of 13 600 compared to her filtered water which had a bacteria count of less than one the question to ask here is what could have created those higher presence of bacteria directly from the tap right so you may consider that the the filter here has done the job but for for me i will take this results with a cautious step and maybe start investigating to find out where the source of the issue in that case could be knowing these results will you still continue using your water filter i would say yes because the water filter makes my water taste a bit better but definitely i would change my filter on time and also boil the water one last thing to investigate the findings from household 5's tap water why is the bacteria count so high i took my findings to the pob who did their own tests and found the tap water taken from household five had a bacteria count of less than one pob told talking point to avoid any external contamination of the water doing sampling it's standard practice for taps to be disinfected first so the high bacteria count from our sample may have been due to contaminants in household 5's tap not from the water [Music] so are water filters really necessary well if you think about how rigorous our water treatment process is the answer is no our tap water is perfectly safe to drink and even though filtered water isn't a miracle cure for say cancer it gives me better digestion and some people believe it does it could be useful for those who are vulnerable to infections so as long as you do proper maintenance and change your filters regularly otherwise this supposedly cleaner water could actually do you more harm than good

Channel: CNA Insider

Views: 643,757

Rating: 4.8086915 out of 5

Keywords: CNA, CNA Insider, Channel NewsAsia, People stories, Asian perspectives, Talking Point, water, water filter, drinking water, alkaline water, water purifier, clean water, health, fresh water, filtration, tap water, filtered water, purified water, water treatment, bacteria, inhouse, full episode, hosted, documentary, Singapore

Id: LObbHbx_2fY

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Vasoliner]

No they filter the water

[u/Kiosk99]

tldr:

tap water is still safe to drink

change your home water filter regularly to prevent bacteria growth (got chance for bad bacteria to grow as well)

is it worth it? no idea. If your purpose is to remove minerals / add minerals then probably not.

My opinion is filtered water does not taste the same as tap water.

and the unsolve mystery: why does tekong cough exists haha

[u/financial_learner123]

This guy have some good stuff on talking point. Randomly show up on YouTube. But good stuff I think.

[u/precipiceblades]

Nothing can convince those who are already adamant on using filters to give it up.

I mean that first woman basically had a whole reverse osmosis newater factory. Lol imagine if you were to sell some water filter for thousands and sell a filter replacement subscription to gullible ppl. Ezpz money

[u/DaydreamHotbox]

Incoming downvotes from water filter mlm sellers

[u/InterTree391]

Is there a tldr version? I like to read texts :(

[u/Raphiel_Shiraha_Ains]

Alex jones water filtration system to keep out those chemicals that turn the frogs GAY!!!

[u/vtankuku]

The lady who had a $2700 filtration system says added minerals….that would need to be compared with tap water. I find the tests not conclusive based on the metrics being compared as it seems to be bias to tap water. It seems that bacteria is the main point but once it’s boiled, it’s all gone. Steve should also check with experts on the impact of various characteristics of the filtered water and if those are even necessarily eg. Alkaline, minerals , the reverse osmosis…any good at all.

[u/boiniqqua447]

Probably better to have than not, don't know maybe one day the tap water end up with 10% lead