Is Your Filtered Water Cloudy?

It’s that time of year again, when the snow is blowing, the wind is howling, and your water is… cloudy?

Probably the single most asked question we get in the wintertime from our customers is, “Why is my filtered water cloudy?”  Water can be cloudy for two reasons, one that is benign and one that can be very bad.

 

The benign answer is:  it’s just air.  If you are using a high quality point-of-use water filter, such as a Multipure Drinking Water System, you may be surprised to see cloudy or milky-looking water coming from your filter.  This most often occurs when the water is cold (coming from cold ground water or being transported underground through cold pipes).  One of the properties of water is its ability to dissolve gasses, including #air.  Cold water is denser than warm water, and therefore it is capable of holding more dissolved gasses.  The cloudiness or milkiness is simply dissolved air.  You can test this by filtering a glass of water and letting it set on the counter for a moment or two. The cloudiness (air) will dissipate upwards from the bottom of the glass, leaving a glass of clear filtered water.

 

Why is this not considered turbidity?  Turbidity is the measure of relative clarity of a liquid, or of how much material may be suspended in water and how that material decreases the passage of light through the water.  Turbidity refers to how clear water is, and indicates the presence of total suspended solids.  When solids are present in water, this indicates the water is not clear of particulate matter, and these solids may also be contaminants of great health concern.   An article on Waterontheweb.org states, “turbidity adds real costs to the treatment of surface water supplies used for drinking water since the #turbidity must be virtually eliminated for effective disinfection (usually by chlorine in a variety of forms) to occur.  Particulates may also provide attachment sites for heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and lead, and many toxic organic contaminants such as PCBs, PAHs and many pesticides.”

 

Of course, you must use a quality water filtration system such as a #Multipure filter to remove particulates and contaminants.  But just how does this filtration work?  For contaminants having a physical size, the solid carbon block filter provides mechanical filtration on a submicron level to remove particulates and bad tastes.  It also employs electrokinetic adsorption to attract and control charged particles.  Almost any carbon filter can reduce chlorine and address taste and odor problems.  The Multipure solid carbon block technology goes well beyond aesthetic improvements to remove the broadest array of #contaminants, including turbidity.  Each product in the Multipure family is provided with a Performance Data Sheet that details NSF’s product certification data and contaminant reduction test results.