How to Know What's In Your Drinking Water

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Speaker 16 A filter is not going to do anything bad to your water. So you're not adding to your risk by using one.

Speaker 16 And if it's important to you to just know, basically, that if there are any of the things that this filter is certified for in my water, They will then be gone, then go ahead.

Speaker 17 I'm Christine Zeer-Clissette.

Speaker 16 I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 18 I'm Rosie Garin. And you're listening to The Wire Cutter Show.

Speaker 18 Pod friends.

Speaker 16 Hello. Hello.
Today we're going to talk about water. Water, the essence of life.
Sounds exciting. Beautiful.

Speaker 18 I was in Philly last weekend visiting my father-in-law. We went out to dinner.
The waiter came over and offered us tap water, and he said something snarky: like, tap is fine.

Speaker 18 It's not as good as New York tap water, but Phillies will do.

Speaker 19 I mean, that's true.

Speaker 17 That is just like a Philly thing. They're feeling inferior to New York.

Speaker 16 What's new?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 18 It was funny because it came perfectly timed to us prepping an episode on water filtration. This is a thing that's in the news.

Speaker 18 I mean, we continue to see news reports about microplastics, PFAS, you know, Flint, Michigan, where the lead in the water crisis dragged on for about a decade, similar issues with water in Newark, New Jersey, near where I live.

Speaker 18 So these are things that come up in their big news stories, but I think people have questions about whether or not to filter their water, regardless of where they live.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think that's completely right. You know, water is one of those things you ingest the most during the day.
And I think people rightfully wonder, how is this impacting my health?

Speaker 17 How is it impacting the health of my kids? It feels like, you know, to me at least, filtering my water is something that I feel I can actually control.

Speaker 17 Like it's, it's, we can't control a lot of things in life and we're ingesting water all the time.

Speaker 17 So for me, I know that I feel like if I filter my water, at least I've got a little bit more security, whether it's a false sense of security or not, but a little bit more security that, you know, I'm keeping myself and my family a little bit safer.

Speaker 17 So I think in general, there has just been a growing concern about whether people should be filtering their water at all.

Speaker 19 Yeah, but luckily, you don't have to just keep wondering. You can actually find out.
And we have somebody on staff who can help us cut through that noise. And it's Tim Heffernan.

Speaker 19 He's our senior staff writer who covers air and water filtration. He was actually on the show almost a year ago talking about air filtration, air purifiers.

Speaker 19 So we thought it would be a good time to have him back on again and talk about water filtration. And he's just a wealth of knowledge.
We love Tim.

Speaker 19 He's been testing water filters and water test kits for Wirecutter for almost a decade now. It's crazy.

Speaker 17 We're going to take a quick break and when we're back, we'll talk with Tim about what you need to know about filtering your water.

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Speaker 16 Welcome back.

Speaker 19 With us now is Tim Heffernan, who is a senior staff writer on the home improvement team.

Speaker 19 He's been writing for Wirecutter for over 10 years and has been covering water quality for just as long, basically.

Speaker 19 He was featured on our second episode ever on this podcast, and he was chatting about air purifiers. And today, Tim, you're going to talk to us about water filters.

Speaker 16 I am. Well, Well, thanks for having me.

Speaker 17 It's great to have you.

Speaker 18 Thank you. Tim, I want to know off the bat, water filtration, water testing.
How do you do the testing? What's the setup like? Paint us a picture.

Speaker 16 The setup is usually my kitchen, basically. And I'm largely just going hands-on with the filters, living with them the way that our readers would if they use them.

Speaker 16 Maybe running them a little bit more intensively. I don't wait three months for the Brita filter to run through its life cycle.
I'll fill it like 10 times a day for a week or so. But that's it.

Speaker 16 I'm really doing kind of usability, maintenance, ergonomics testing, if you will, in terms of what the filters can actually do, what contaminants they'll remove from the water.

Speaker 16 From the start, basically, we've relied on NSF ANSI certification.

Speaker 18 And explain what that is.

Speaker 16 Yeah. NSF ANSI is sort of the standard certification in the United States for a filter's ability to remove contaminants.
For a pitcher, for example, they will run between 120% and 200%

Speaker 16 of highly polluted water through the filter versus what it's supposed to last for, and then measure if it meets the actual pollution reduction standard.

Speaker 16 So basically, they're making sure that at the very end of the life of a filter, it's still performing the way that it should be.

Speaker 17 And you're not just testing filters, you're also testing water testing kits, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I've done that quite a lot in the last few years.

Speaker 17 Tell us what that is exactly.

Speaker 16 If you've been to a hardware store, you've probably seen little off-the-shelf kits that you can get where you kind of dip a strip of paper and it changes color and you compare that to a little chart.

Speaker 16 We have tested those, but then there are a fair number of tests where you actually take a water sample and then send it away to a certified lab to have it tested. And we've settled on those.

Speaker 17 And what kinds of contaminants will that show you with a water test kit? What do you get back?

Speaker 16 There's various test kits. The basic ones tend to look for, I guess, what we would call like historic contaminants.
Lead is a no-brainer. That's always going to be on there.

Speaker 16 Mercury, cadmium, pesticides, industrial compounds. And then you can typically add on other tests that might be specific to PFAS, forever chemicals, and other things.

Speaker 18 Aaron Powell, can I ask why the

Speaker 18 sendaway test kits pulled ahead of the dip strips?

Speaker 16 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, the dip strips, especially the ones that test for more contaminants, are extremely hard to read, basically.

Speaker 16 You only typically have, I don't know, 30 seconds or a minute to compare the color of 30 different little contaminant detection things to this chart. And even then, it's very subjective.

Speaker 16 You know, are you reading that your lead is 10 parts per billion or is that closer to 20? You know, that's a pretty significant difference.

Speaker 16 The lab kits, you're filling sample bottles, sending them off to a lab. They're getting accurately analyzed with proper equipment.

Speaker 16 And the results that you get back are telling you exactly what they found.

Speaker 17 So stepping back a little bit from test kits and the filters themselves, most municipal water supplies, public water supplies, they are regulated by the EPA.

Speaker 17 So the water leaving treatment plants must meet certain quality standards, right? So I guess I want to know just big picture. Why do people filter their water?

Speaker 17 What are the concerns you hear most often from readers about filtering?

Speaker 16 Aaron Powell, it sort of breaks into two camps. One,

Speaker 16 what's called aesthetic concerns, at least by NSF ANSI, you know, who devised these tests. Aesthetic concerns is basically taste.
Most of the time, that boils down to chlorine in the water.

Speaker 16 Utilities very often use chlorine compounds to get rid of microbes in the water, and it leads to that swimming pool taste in your water. And most filters will get rid of that no problem at all.

Speaker 16 Then the other half are, I guess, what we can call sort of more serious contaminants that do have health impacts. And people are filtering their water because they're worried about them.

Speaker 16 It tends to follow the headlines. So the Flint lead crisis and then the Newark lead crisis, lead was on everybody's mind.
More recently, it's been microplastics and PFAS.

Speaker 16 So it's possible that your water will contain these things. It's also very, very possible that it doesn't contain them.

Speaker 19 So on a really basic level, can you just explain how municipalities clean their water in the first place?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I mean, there's a number of different ways they do it. I think step one is typically that they add a flocculant to it, which basically makes solids in the water settle out.

Speaker 16 And then for decontamination, that can include running ozone through the water. I think it can be UV light treatment and chlorination are really common ones.

Speaker 16 And then for some things, they will actually filter filter it in the sense that we understand it, like run it through activated carbon is probably the most common material that they use.

Speaker 18 So this is a perfect segue to a personal question, which is, do you filter your water, Tim? I do not. And why?

Speaker 19 Also, where do you live?

Speaker 16 Right. I live in New York and splitting time between there and the Jersey Shore.
I did filter my water for a long time.

Speaker 16 Part of that was just for wire cutter reasons, just for long-term testing some of our picks. But I stopped filtering it several years ago after I got the water in New York tested.

Speaker 16 I've had it tested multiple times with sendaway kits, and I also used some of the little dip strip ones. And it came back extremely clean.
There were very, very low levels of a few things found in it.

Speaker 16 And for me, they were so low that as a health concern, it just wasn't big enough to make me want to go through the hassle or continue going through the hassle of filtering my water.

Speaker 16 And then after my wife and and I bought this house in New Jersey, had it tested again. And again, very low levels of a few things, very low levels of PFAS.

Speaker 16 And similarly, I'm comfortable with that risk.

Speaker 17 Aaron Powell, that's a good point about risk, because everyone kind of has a different tolerance for risk depending on what your personal situation is, right? So like, I also live in New York City.

Speaker 17 I know we have great water. I do filter my water, though, because I have a much, I think I have a lower tolerance to risk.
Can you talk a little bit about how that plays into water filtration?

Speaker 16 I mean, that's really it. A filter is not going to do anything bad to your water.
So you're not adding to your risk by using one.

Speaker 16 And if it's important to you to just know basically that if there are any of the things that this filter is certified for in my water, they will then be gone or greatly reduced after I filter it, then go ahead.

Speaker 16 You know, when I began working on the water filter guide, Looking back, I think the mere existence of things like Brita Pitchers just sort of convinced me that these things are doing something and it's something that's quite necessary.

Speaker 16 And it took a long time and an awful lot of reporting, a lot of it prompted by, you know, the Flint and Newark lead crises and then PFAS and microplastics, looking into the United States water supply at like the utility scale, like what is actually being done to water before it's delivered to homes.

Speaker 16 And through that and through really closely reading the reports on where are these things problems, what levels are truly a health risk.

Speaker 16 All of that combine to make me comfortable saying, you know what, actually, I think this water is fine.

Speaker 16 And there are other health factors that I can control in my life that are like much more important. But that's a luxury to be able to have 10 years to do that.

Speaker 17 What's the first step that someone should take to determine whether they should get a filter? You mentioned water tests. How expensive are those? And is that the first place you'd start?

Speaker 16 It's not the first place I would start.

Speaker 16 If you're on a utility, if you've got a utility bill or your apartment building, you know, gets a utility bill, that utility has to release at least annually what's called a consumer confidence report officially, often just call it a water quality report.

Speaker 16 EPA has a site you can go on, and if you just type in like EPA CCR, consumer confidence report, you can go there and it'll tell you. who your utility is.

Speaker 16 Or if you get a physical bill or you pay your bill online, there's your utility right there and download it and read it.

Speaker 16 And most of them do a really good job, not just of showing what they've found in the water, but what it means, right? They interpret it for you.

Speaker 16 And that's a very good, and I think in most cases, sufficient way to know the risk of what is in your water.

Speaker 17 Is there a step after getting that CCR report that you would want to actually ante up and pay for a test on your home tap water?

Speaker 16 Yeah. The only way to know absolutely what is coming out of your faucet versus what is coming out of the water plant is to get a test that you take at home.

Speaker 16 If that's you, we do recommend getting one of these test kits. They tend to cost around $300 for a pretty comprehensive one.

Speaker 16 That price can go up if you want to look at specific things like forever chemicals. But the report is detailed.

Speaker 16 The actual analysis is done at accredited labs, and you will know exactly what came out of your faucet.

Speaker 19 What if you're not on a public water supply? I bought a house in a pretty rural area of upstate New York and it's on a well system.

Speaker 19 My understanding is that it's really up to me to make sure that my water is up to snuff in terms of filtration and drinkability. What do you do in that situation?

Speaker 19 How do you figure out what's in your water then? Right.

Speaker 16 So private wells account for, I think the number is like 15% of U.S. homes.
That number surprised me when I learned it. Those are not regulated.

Speaker 16 So many people who are on well water do get get it tested. Some states, unlike their ag extensions, will offer well water testing.

Speaker 16 Lots of people who are on wells live in agricultural areas, so runoff can be a concern. So it's worth looking to see if your state or ag extension provides testing or subsidizes it.

Speaker 16 Beyond that, you can get specific well water test kits. We have one in the guide.
It's the Simple Lab Tap Score well water test.

Speaker 18 Water, obviously, building block of life. And I think many people do have the privilege of feeling confident about their water quality.

Speaker 18 But there's real inequity at play for folks who worry about the quality of their water and can't afford to pay $300 or more to get it tested. Tim, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 18 And what did you find in your reporting?

Speaker 16 I mean, it's absolutely true.

Speaker 16 And it's also true that it took crises to begin to see some some change in that, to see funding and attention being paid, particularly on upgrading lead infrastructure, right?

Speaker 16 In that case, you know, a basic pitcher filter that does get lead, some of them will also get forever chemicals, is probably the most economical choice.

Speaker 16 And again, it's not going to harm your water in any way. And if there are contaminants in it, that it's certified for, it will reduce or eliminate them in the water.

Speaker 18 Aaron Powell, Jr.: And in smaller communities, I imagine the towns might not be able to afford the heavy-hitting filtration systems that, say, a New York state, a New York City can afford.

Speaker 18 So if you feel concerned, if you're not sure, if you can't find the information,

Speaker 18 find the most economical way to feel the safest.

Speaker 16 Aaron Powell, Trevor Bowie, Yeah, and that is a real issue, right?

Speaker 16 With these new regulations, as well from speaking with people in the utilities industry, a whole generation of water engineers is aging out and they're having a hard time replacing them.

Speaker 16 So a utility, according to the EPA, is any system that serves

Speaker 16 more than some very small number of homes. I think it's less than 10.
And there are thousands of these very small utilities around the country.

Speaker 16 And yeah, they many times will not have the money or the expertise to meet the new standards, basically.

Speaker 16 It's one of those situations where the economical thing may just be to get a good basic pitcher filter or other type.

Speaker 19 Can living in a polluted area affect your home tap water? For example, my parents live by this huge international airport and I am convinced that their water is terrible. It tastes terrible.

Speaker 19 It feels terrible to shower in.

Speaker 16 So is it the airport that's doing that to their water?

Speaker 19 Is that a thing?

Speaker 16 That's a big question. Can it? Yes.
Does it usually? I think the answer is no.

Speaker 16 Pipes are kept pressurized not just to make the water flow out of your tap at a nice speed, but to keep anything from getting into the pipes if there is a leak.

Speaker 16 Airports, of course, set off alarm bells because they are a known source of forever chemicals because of the firefighting foam.

Speaker 19 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's a surprise that you're saying it's the firefighting foam that is the assumed risk there, because I just assumed it was everything else that requires planes to move.

Speaker 16 Aaron Powell, I mean, they're probably not good.

Speaker 16 But yeah, firefighting foam, it turns out that PFAS are extremely good at making foams that will spread over fuel fires. And so airports and military bases have used them for decades.

Speaker 16 They run frequent testing where they're spraying the foam. And so airports and military bases are a known, assumed source of PFAS, even if they haven't tested.
Wow. Okay.

Speaker 16 But you were asking about your folks' place.

Speaker 16 Most of the time, what's in your water, comes from the water supply itself and where that water comes from. So, it could be a reservoir that's miles away, or it could be groundwater.

Speaker 16 So, our house in New Jersey, there's a chrome plating facility like a block and a half away, and it's been there for a long time.

Speaker 16 These are known sources of PFAS, but it's not in mine because our water comes from a reservoir like six miles away that it's not contaminated.

Speaker 17 All right, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, Tim's going to break down the pros and cons of each type of water filter and help us understand how to choose the right one for us.

Speaker 16 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 16 Welcome back.

Speaker 17 Tim, earlier in the show, you walked us through the reasons why people may or may not want to filter their water. Now we want to get into the filters that people can buy.

Speaker 17 You have tested a bunch of them. You have tested pitcher filters, the ones that go under your sink and on your faucet.
Let's break each one of those down, starting with pitcher filters.

Speaker 17 What should people know about pitcher filters? And is there a type of person that you would recommend these for?

Speaker 16 I guess the first thing to know is that pitcher filters and faucet filters and under sink filters, the standard ones, are basically variations on a theme.

Speaker 16 But taking the pitcher filter to start with, it's what's known as gravity-fed filtration. The filter itself contains activated carbon and ion exchange resin, which sounds kind of fancy and scary.

Speaker 16 It's just a material that will selectively capture metals in the water like lead or mercury, and then it kicks out typically a sodium ion, which is already in your water.

Speaker 16 I mean, that's what's in mineral water. And so pitcher filters, why should somebody get them? They're the least expensive.
They generally do a pretty good job. They're very convenient.

Speaker 16 And upkeep tends to be fairly simple.

Speaker 17 And what's the downside of a pitcher filter?

Speaker 16 I mean, I guess number one, you do have to lift them in and out of the fridge, or at least in and out of the sink.

Speaker 16 And even, you know, like a nine or a 12-cup pitcher, I think that weighs nine or 10 pounds, right? And so you're going to be doing that a lot.

Speaker 16 The other, I think, main factor is that the filters do have a tendency to clog.

Speaker 16 Basically, the combination of gravity is not a very strong force, so there's not a lot of force basically pushing the water through the filter. Sediment in the water can clog the filters.

Speaker 16 And actually, a big problem is the little bubbles from your aerator will clog them up. You can avoid that by not blasting the water right into the filter itself.

Speaker 17 And who would these be best for?

Speaker 16 If I were continuing to filter my water, they're what I'd use just because of the convenience, I think.

Speaker 16 In particular, not just pitchers, but many of these filters can also be installed in a dispenser that will go in your fridge. It holds more water.

Speaker 16 You can actually filter a whole tank full of clean water and then fill the top again with, you know, let's call it dirty water, keep it in your fridge, and then as you get water out of it, the stuff in the top just filters back down through.

Speaker 16 So you get a nice, essentially constant supply of filtered cold water.

Speaker 17 And these are also kind of more more affordable than some other options, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, considerably.

Speaker 18 So how about under-the-sink and faucet-mounted filters, Tim? What are those pros and cons and for whom might they work best?

Speaker 16 The pro really is kind of a mechanical one. They use the water pressure in your pipes to force the water through the filter.

Speaker 16 And that means that the filter itself can be made more dense, which has the effect of allowing them to remove a wider range of contaminants.

Speaker 16 So if you look at the list of what even the best pitcher filters are certified to remove versus like a faucet or an undersink, the latter are going to be removing sometimes twice as many contaminants as the pitcher.

Speaker 16 Downsides are

Speaker 16 you have to install them. Just taking the faucet mounted filters, one drawback is that they can't be installed if you have a pull-down sprayer.

Speaker 16 You need to have sort of a standard, I don't know, solid faucet. When you install them, you now have this little kind of outboard motor looking thing hanging on your faucet all the time.

Speaker 16 In order to get the filter water, you have to flip a little switch or lever so that you're sending water through the filter.

Speaker 16 And then to get unfiltered water, like for washing your dishes, you have to flip it back.

Speaker 16 I mean, that's not that big an ask, but if you leave it so that the water is going through the filter and then you accidentally run hot water through it, you can ruin the ion exchange. resin.

Speaker 16 And now if you have lead or other metals in your water, it's not going to capture them. Most, Most, not all, but most undersink filters go to a separate faucet.

Speaker 16 So you don't have to worry about accidentally running the hot water through it because you will only connect it to the cold water line under your sink.

Speaker 16 The undersink filters tend to have slightly higher certifications. I know that's true for our picks.

Speaker 16 It may be kind of marginal, but it's just because they have bigger filters that mean that the water spends more time in the filter, travels a longer path as it goes through, and it just improves its ability to capture whatever's in the water.

Speaker 18 I imagine a pro is that you're getting it through your faucet. So it's on demand.
It's fast. You're not waiting for the Britta to filter out, you know, and get your filtered water six minutes later.

Speaker 18 It's instantaneous.

Speaker 18 Not really. I was going to say.

Speaker 16 Is it not? Well, on demand is the term that they use.

Speaker 16 I think it's probably not going to be annoying typically for like filling a cup, but if you're wanting to fill a pot to like make spaghetti and you're getting half a gallon a minute, it takes a long time to fill a pot.

Speaker 16 The other advantage to both of these, to faucet mount and under sink, is that because they have these physically larger and more dense filters, they tend to have a considerably longer lifespan.

Speaker 16 So in the hundreds of gallons versus typically 30 or 40 for like a Petra type filter. So you don't have to replace the filters as often.

Speaker 16 The filters are considerably more expensive, so it probably kind of washes out in the end, but you don't have that maintenance nearly as frequently.

Speaker 18 Trevor Burrus: So what are the wire cutter picks for the under-the-sink and faucet-mounted filters?

Speaker 16 It's the Aquasana AQ5200 for under-sync and the upgrade pick, the AQ5300 Plus. The price fluctuates wildly, basically, so that they're constantly going on sale.

Speaker 16 But you're looking at $100 to, I think sometimes it'll go up to as much as like $180. But that's not bad.
It's not bad, but like wait around for it to drop again because it will.

Speaker 19 It always will. Yeah.

Speaker 16 And then for the faucet mount, it's the Pure Plus faucet filter. I think it's like $50.

Speaker 18 Tim, you've also reviewed this popular filter, the Big Berkey. I've seen it.
What is it? And what's your take on it?

Speaker 16 It's basically a really large Brita type filter. So it's gravity-fed, got a big tank in the top.
You've got some filters. Water flows through that.
fills in a tank in the bottom.

Speaker 16 Our take on it is physically, they're very, very big. They take up an awful lot of room.
The filters have this exceptional lifespan. I think it's like 3,000 gallons per filter, and they have two.

Speaker 16 So you're looking at 6,000 gallons before you need to replace them. The downside of that is that they breed algae and bacteria to the point that this is a known issue.
Also, they are not certified.

Speaker 16 For the Big Berkey itself, I actually spoke with the gentleman who runs a lab in New Jersey, who did the testing, and who's very open in saying, yeah, we were not able to to and did not test them to the NSF standards.

Speaker 16 But I think for most people, you can get just as good performance for a lot more convenience and not having to clean gunk off your filters constantly with one of our other options.

Speaker 19 Can we talk about some more homeopathic water filtration methods? My brother has these like weird charcoal sticks just sitting in his water pitchers in the fridge.

Speaker 16 Whoa, whoa, whoa. I had those too.

Speaker 16 Well, I'm still going to call them weird.

Speaker 19 I'm pretty sure they don't do anything, but I'm not the expert.

Speaker 16 You just talk about some stuff like that. Good news on the floating charcoal front.
I do plan to actually do some very basic sort of side-by-side testing of that.

Speaker 16 I think that they likely don't do anything basically because, yes, it's charcoal, but unless the contaminants are actually coming in contact with it, they're not going to, charcoal's not going to do anything, and there's no reason for the water to really be flowing through this solid object or porous object that's that's floating in your in your pitcher for filters to work the water in some way needs to be forced through the filter so that any contaminants come in contact with the filter media it's not just going to be drawn to this floating charcoal stick in the water just i don't think so okay i don't think so also i think if it is doing something i think a lot of the immediate effects would be on like the taste of chlorine but chlorine off gases from water very quickly anyway so you can just leave a pitcher of water out overnight and most of that chlorine will go away right yeah yeah Yep.

Speaker 17 So Tim, for listeners to this episode, if they're going to walk away with one thing to know about water safety in their home, what do you think it should be?

Speaker 16 I think it's that you can, sometimes just for free, really know basically what's in your water.

Speaker 16 And knowing what's in it will help you choose the right filter and the right amount of filtration that you need if you decide that you want to filter.

Speaker 16 Or you may learn that your water is actually fine or fine enough for you and you decide not to filter.

Speaker 16 It's really just the not knowing combined with these, frankly, really alarming headlines that keep popping up that

Speaker 16 concerns me about this. And I just want people to know that they don't have to be uncertain of what's in there and what they can do about it.

Speaker 16 Well, Tim.

Speaker 16 We're at our last question.

Speaker 19 What's the last thing you've bought that you've really loved?

Speaker 16 Can I say I think I'm going to love it?

Speaker 16 Oh, yeah. That counts.
Yeah. I bought off of Craigslist a

Speaker 16 belt and disc sander on Friday. It's for sanding wood and metal and they're really useful for like woodworking projects and good ones tend to be really expensive.
But this one was not very expensive.

Speaker 16 It was a Craigslist deal and I thought that is worth risking the health of my spine to lug it down to my basement, which I did and it will never leave.

Speaker 18 Love it. Thank you so much, Tim.
Shout out to Craigslist. Hope to see you soon.

Speaker 16 You too. This was fun.
Thank you.

Speaker 17 Well, Tim was lovely as always. What did you guys take away from this episode?

Speaker 19 I think that I'm going to check my consumer confidence report, aka the annual drinking water quality report. And it's definitely going to say that my water is fine, which means that I am good to go.

Speaker 19 I am not going to do anything. I'm going to keep drinking straight from the tap.

Speaker 18 The confidence.

Speaker 17 I hope you put it in a glass first, but if you, if you must.

Speaker 16 I mean, it depends on the day and the night.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think I felt pretty good after that episode.

Speaker 16 I think I might get a Brita again.

Speaker 18 I had one years ago, and I think I might reinvest. And what I like about it is that it is a fairly low barrier to entry for folks.

Speaker 18 So if you do have concerns about your water, the taste of it, what might be in it, it's a good starting place.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I am still very much team filter my water, even though I know that the water in New York City is safe to drink. I have an under sink filter.

Speaker 16 I love it.

Speaker 17 One other thing I took away from Tim is that proximity to pollution doesn't necessarily mean that your water will be polluted.

Speaker 17 I think I always kind of assumed, similar to you, Kyra, that if you live near some kind of very polluted area, like an airport like your parents, that you might have a problem with your water.

Speaker 17 But it really comes down to your water source and how the water is treated. So that's at least something I can feel good about.

Speaker 18 Bit of a comfort. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Well, if you want to find out more about Wirecutters coverage or Tim's reporting, if you want to check out any of the products we recommended today, check out our website or you can find a link in our show notes.

Speaker 18 If you listen every week and you like it, we hope you subscribe and we appreciate you listening.

Speaker 16 Bye. Bye.

Speaker 19 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.
Today's episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez.

Speaker 19 Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Baitu, Catherine Anderson, Rowan Nimisto, and Diane Wong. Cliff Levy is Wirecutter's Deputy Publisher and General Manager.

Speaker 19 Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's Editor-in-Chief.

Speaker 16 I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 17 I'm Christine Sear Clissette.

Speaker 18 And I'm Rosie Guerin.

Speaker 19 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 18 Well, to your point, Christine Toot, I don't know what I just called you.

Speaker 19 The Britter.

Speaker 18 Britter. Jesus, I'm so sorry, guys.

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