carbon water filters?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at
8:47 am
We recently bought a water filter you install on the sink and it filters the drinking water. I wonder, sometimes the water has little blackk particles on it even though its been used many times. I gather its the carbon? Is it dangerous if we continue to drink it? It smells much better than our normal water and has been working but Im worried about those black things.
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Filed under: Water Filter System
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A lot of filters of this type are built around activated charcoal, that is carbon that’s been treated to have many micropores that can trap and hold pollutants. The filter should not leak charcoal (and this would be a reason to return it for replacement), at least not after initial use. If the residue you’re seeing id charcoal, it is pretty much harmless.
However, some filters also impregnate the activated carbon with an insoluble silver salt like silver chloride to act as a bacteriostat. This does not substantially kill bacteria in the water but does prevent its build-up and multiplication in the filter itself.
Silver chloride is toxic, though because it is insoluble, it would be hard to get a lot of it from the filter. Still, since the carbon particles could be carrying silver chloride, that’s another good reason to take the filter back to the vendor for replacement.
Remember, by the way, that a carbon filter alone mostly improves taste while removing some potentially harmful chlorinated hydrocarbons in tap water (which arise from the otherwise beneficial chlorination process). It does not make raw water bacteriologically safe. If you’re getting water from a municipal system, that’s usually not a worry, but if you getting it from, say, a well, you still need to have your well checked regularly for contamination.
These particals are probably activated charcoal. Harmless, but if I were you I wouldn’t want them in my water.
The filter is defective, and the manufacturer has some explaining to do. Next time it happens - save the water in a mason jar - remove the filter - tape it to the mason jar - and hand it to the filter guy - demand a replacement.
You didn’t pay good money to be drinking black specks of carbon!
The black particles are active coal witch is used in filters. It is not very toxic but extensive exposure could create problems. I suggest to use the filter but find a way to remove the particles.Perhaps it has a broken pipe.