What You Need to Know About UV Water Purification

UV water purification works well. With ultraviolet light you don't have to add any suspicious chemicals to your water. Also, there's only the ultraviolet bulb that can go bad. These units are durable, and easy to maintain. UV is great! That is for a limited number of contaminants.

The only problem with UV water purification is that it works only for living contaminants. This includes bacteria, viruses, and larger microorganisms. UV works by actually killing the contaminants, which it does by disrupting their DNA. The living impurities are rendered harmless this way.

UV is cost effective. It costs much less than a distiller, and it's much less wasteful than a reverse osmosis system. The only technology that directly rivals it would be carbon and ceramic filters, especially when used in tandem.

The only real problem with UV water purification is that it only works on living contaminants. It can't filter out chlorine, or other volatile organic chemicals. It does nothing for lead, other heavy metals, pesticides, or prescription drugs. For that, you would have to have another filtering system along with the UV that handled the inorganic stuff. Which is exactly what the best UV filters do.

Another issue with UV that's not discussed much is the fact that the dead microorganisms are left in the water, presumably for you and I to drink. The jury's still out on this, but there is some concern that these animals are toxic, even when dead. The completely best deal would be a filtering system that filtered out the dead animals, after they're sterilized.

A potential problem with UV water purification is that you really need some sort of pre-filter to go along with it. If your water is cloudy, or has any kind of sediment, then it's very conceivable that some of the critters you're trying to kill will not get their full dose of UV radiation. In some sense, they'll be protected by the sediment. With pre-filtering, you can address this issue.

But with all this pre-filtering and post-filtering, you might as well just go with a carbon and ceramic filter combination and use that to filter out both the living and non-living contaminants. Ceramic filters can even filter out viruses, which are really, really small!

The only time you would use a UV water purification system all by itself, is if you were absolutely sure that your water had no other contaminants. Well water from a deep well, which has been thoroughly tested, would be an example of such water. Anything else needs filtration for the non-living impurities. Also for microbial cysts, which UV might not kill.

For certain specific types of situations, UV water purification is great. For more general situations, or to cover a broader spectrum of contaminant, you're probably better off going with a carbon/ceramic filter combination, with or without the UV component.

To learn more about home water purifiers, visit my website!

R. Lee Cole is an avid health and exercise enthusiast who loves to make his research available to everyone via the Internet. Check out Lee's website for more information about this important topic.

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