• Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Stapleton said she now relies more on filtered water at her home in New Jersey.

    But study co-author Beizhan Yan, a Columbia environmental chemist who increased his tap water usage, pointed out that filters themselves can be a problem by introducing plastics.

    “There’s just no win,” Stapleton said.

    Oh, man.

    • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been saying this to people for a long time. Here in my country, most water filters are based on charcoal and a final filtering element. That element used to be made of cellulose and other organic materials, but in the last decade, they started coming with that element made of polypropylene, until all the cellulose ones disappeared from the market. Just imagine your water passing though a porous layer of plastic, like a rigid sponge… this is a serious microplastic source.

      • ripcord@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You’re talking like .01% as much plastic use per liter as plastic bottle water packs. Is that not…much much better?

        • nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br
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          1 year ago

          I’m not sure how much microplastics are released in that way. It can be better than bottles, but if we used non plastic materials for so long, and it worked fine, I see no reason to put plastic in there.

          • ripcord@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            It’s like it in that this is true, but there’s a big, big, big difference in how big a deal a given amount being in our systems is.

        • porkins@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Not necessarily. It just requires excitation at a molecular level. You can get creative with your source. They have been playing around with low energy methods like LED or even just using the sun, geothermal, etc.

          • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Yes, I’m aware of different way to distill, but if this were to work in a home/commercial setting, it needs to be accessible/affordable.

            I’d personally love to get a home distiller, but I read they were very expensive to run :(

            • porkins@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              I was about to write back that we are not far off the advances to make these affordable and then did a google search and found that you can get a distilled unit on Amazon for $180 that is capable of making a gallon in 5 hours for about $.45 worth of electricity. That is far less than what it costs to buy distilled water at the store, which is around $1 a gallon. If you look at this from a break-even analysis, you technically start to reap the rewards of ownership after about 800 uses since the first 400 uses basically cost you $1.45 per gallon, then the next 400 costs you $.45 per gallon, but you are recouping that extra cost over the $1 retail price, so by the 800th use, you are getting water at less than half the price of the store.

              • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                A gallon is not much though, not for a family. If you have to double or triple that amount, the electricity costs will really add up. If you’re talking European electricity costs, you might as well drink expensive wine instead 😂

                If cost was more in line with traditional filters, then it may be a more accessible option. But electricity costs are only going up.

                • porkins@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Even with fission, nuclear is a panacea of energy with almost no waste for modern reactors. I can see there being an initial rise in energy costs to get those projects built out though. If they are phasing out nuclear, that would be dumb.

                  Additionally, researchers at MIT recently found that you can evaporate water without heat, so that should hopefully be a thing in the near future.