Quick Drips

Heating season started, humidifiers came back out, and the white dust followed. EPA recommends low mineral content water, and a carbon pitcher filter is not the tool for that job.

A new national report put PFAS back in the headlines and filter shopping back on the to-do list. Here is what reverse osmosis removes, what a carbon pitcher does not, and how to choose using your own water report.

The chlorine you can smell in a glass of cold tap water is a deliberate safety net, carried through miles of pipe on purpose. Here is what the residual is doing, what EPA limits it to, and where a filter honestly fits.

Researchers found an ultra-short-chain PFAS called TFA in 64 of 70 New Jersey tap water samples. Here is what the study shows, what is regulated, and the honest limit of what a pitcher filter can do.

Pennsylvania told anglers not to eat fish from the Wissahickon Creek basin after PFOS turned up in fish tissue. That is a watershed finding, not a tap water result. Here is how to tell the two apart and find your own system's numbers.

Maricopa, Arizona spent a day under a boil advisory over a possible E. coli result, and a lot of households asked the same question: does a filter pitcher count? The CDC answer is no, and here is why.

In a system meeting federal standards, tap water is generally considered safe to drink. The qualifiers are local, and lead and nitrate are the two worth a deliberate look during pregnancy.

Water prices at the 500 largest US systems rose 62 percent in a decade, faster than inflation, groceries or incomes. Here is what that bill actually pays for, where the line falls between your utility and you, and how to run the cost math before buying anything.

A water softener is a scale machine, not a drinking water filter. What ion exchange actually adds, the sodium numbers that matter, and the lead question softening makes more relevant, not less.