Islamabad, "A meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Science and Technology was held under the chairmanship of Rehman Naseer Chaudhry at Pakistan Council of Research in the Water Recourses (PCRWR) headquarters on Monday." Dr. Muhammad Akram Kahlown, Chairman PCRWR "gave particular reference of Council's random tests of bottled water available in the market which revealed that the most of the brands were having bacterial and other contamination. He also gave details of the Council's production of arsenic removing kits and low cost filters which have proved helpful in reducing the hazards of arsenic contamination found on increased in some districts of the country." He sounds like he has be following my blog in his findings about bottled water and arsenic filters.

I want to take the opportunity to wish all of you who read my blog a very happy and healthy new year to you and your families. For all of you I hope you have a source of clear, clean potable water, and if not that you are filtering it so that is now that way.

"From All Corners, a Rush to Get Clean Drinking Water to Survivors in Stricken Areas" as reported by Denise Grady and Lawremce K. Altman for the New York Times."Nobody was prepared for a disaster of this magnitude, said Vanessa Tobin, chief of water and sanitation for Unicef." So for this last day of the year tanker trucks, pumps, disinfecting kits, and even bottled water, as reported in my blog are being rushed to the victims of this awful natural disaster.

"Forget OPEC. The next cartel may export drinking water." says Mark Clayton of the The Christian Science Monitor. An entrepreneur, Terry Spragg, is apparently filling ocean-going bags full of clean water for sale to water-poor nations. According to the article " If that seems far-fetched, consider that less than 2.5 percent of the world's water is fresh. That vital resource is threatened by pollution, waterborne disease, and shifts in rain patterns caused by global warming, recent studies show. All of which, in some eyes, leaves the world on the verge of a scramble by private companies and countries vying for rights to available water." Interesting and scary stuff.

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Well, as those who have been readers of my blog, you know that I am no fan of bottled water. However, in the case of the tragic tsunami in Asia, I certainly understand that an exception should be made. "Supplies of drinking water heading south" reports that the Waterworks Authority of Bangkok, Thailand is shipping 20,000 bottles of drinking water to the devastated costal provinces. Certainly this is a wonderful idea, and in this case most definately better than nothing.

The Orange County Water District (California) is suing several companies that it contends has failed to clean up toxic chemicals that could contaminate the underground water supply. "Orange County Water District sues companies for alleged contamination"tells the story. It is wonderful to read about a municipal water authority getting after those that pollute our precious water sources in the name of profit. As a supplier of water filters I truly believe that tap water is our best source for drinking. It is municipal authorities like the Orange County Water District who illustrate why I am right. If only the bottle water industry was so straight forward with the public.

I have posted many times here before about the bottled water industry's deception. How with all the false statements, and the most problematic of omissions, that of the actual sources of the water that is processed for each bottle, we are fooled. Well here is confirmation, once again, that others also feel the same way. "Bottled Water Flim-flam" by Krista Camenzind, says it all once again. "After testing more than 1000 bottles of water from 103 different companies, the NRDC uncovered microbial content in excess of state guidelines in one-third of the brands it sampled. The NRDC also discovered synthetic organic chemicals in one-fifth of its samples, usually at levels below state and federal limits." On another note, I do want to wish all who read this a very Merry Christmas, and also a good supply of water you can depend on, an by that I mean not from a bottle.

If you check out my December 16th blog, "A time for filtering water?", I wrote about the contaminents found in the drinking water in several Massachusetts communities. Well good news for one of them today. "State water ban lifted: No trace of perchlorate found" has said the drinking water in Tewksbury is clean. It gives me no greater joy than to publish this news, as a partial retraction of my previous blog.

A published report today from Suzhou, China, "300 mln people drinking unsafe water" says that some 300 million people, primarly in rural areas, are drinking unsafe water, despite the government of the Peoples Republic of China dedicating a lot of money to the problem. Wang Shucheng, minister of Water Resources blamed the poor drinking water on polluted rivers and lakes in China. "To safeguard drinking water safety is the top priority of Chinese government's efforts to protect water resources, Wang said." All I can say is their problems with drinking water sound much worse than here in the U.S.

Apparently EPA agrees that chorine being used to remove bacteria from municipal water supplies is not healthy and a substiute should be developed. Apparently according to "Drinking water treated with chloramines found to contain highly toxic chemicals, says EPA" the search for alternative additives to chorine for the municipal water systems, have been shown to be much more toxic than what they have found using the chorine. According to Michael J. Plewa a genetic toxicologist in the department of crop sciences,"This research says that when you go to alternatives, you may be opening a Pandora's box of new DBPs(disinfection byproducts),and these unregulated DBPs may be much more toxic, by orders of magnitude, than the regulated ones we are trying to avoid." Well, just get one of our maintenance free water filters and you will never have to be concerned about when and if the EPA mandates a change in the standards for the disinfection of municipal water systems.

The Boston Globe reports some problems with trace amounts of contaminants, including MTBE, found in 17 communities in the State. The article, "Report cites trace chemicals in water Warns of dangers from non-regulation" is alarming. Well, I hope these communities find their way to this website. It is for situations just like this that we carry such an array of water filtering products here.

There has been a rumor spread all over the internet that drinking water from plastic bottles, if frozen, was dangerous. In,"Researcher Dispels Myth of Dioxins and Plastic Water Bottles" written by Rolf Halden, PhD,PE, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Health Sciences at the Center for Water and Health, at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, he addresses that rumor. Quoting directly from the article, Dr. Halden states "First, people should be more concerned about the quality of the water they are drinking rather than the container it's coming from. Many people do not feel comfortable drinking tap water, so they buy bottled water instead. The truth is that city water is much more highly regulated and monitored for quality. Bottled water is not. It can legally contain many things we would not tolerate in municipal drinking water." I have been saying the same thing repeatedly in my blog here, as well as elsewhere on this website.

It seems that the government of Ontario, Canada, has taken step to beef up the laws protecting its water supply. "New rules to protect Ontario's water"says that these are "tough new rules on those who take water from the ground and is taking stronger measures to protect watershed-based sources." Nice to write here about a government that cares about their environment and puts it funds towards protecting it.

Go to the site Nestle Water North America. The brands posted there, and the sources of the water quoted simply boggle the mind. Under U.S. Brands, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Great Bear, Ice Mountain, Ozar, Poland Spring, and Zephyrhills. Imported brands Aberfoyle, Acqua Panna, Perrier, S.Pellegrino, and Vittel. While all these brands date back a long time ago, The Nestle Company wants you the consumer to believe that the source for them has remained the same. As I have written here in the past, Poland Spring for one, and it follows for all, with their massive distribution, have multiple sourcing for their product which is never revealed. If they did reaveal it for all these brands there would sure be lots of embarrassment I am sure.

The EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, has lowered the level of allowable arsenic in drinking water, and Socorro,NM has joined the pilot program for disadvantaged communities to test ways of dealing with the new guidelines. Arsenic in water has been a problem in mostly the western part of the US. The lowering of the standard for arsenic in drinking water is indicative of the Federal Government's policy to play roulette with the public health. Meanwhile the study is testing four methods of cutting arsenic in the drinking water. I wonder if one of them is the only NSF certified, carbon block filter system like our model cbtas Maybe the EPA should visit this website?

The Food Directorate is part of a national food safety system that involves Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and provinces, territories and municipalities. They have compiled a listing of questions and answers concering bottled water sold in Canada. As no surprise to me, the matter of bacteria in bottle water was discussed. The answer, according to the article is "Bacteria are found in most bottled waters sold for drinking purposes." Nice to know that in Canada, they are honest with their consumers, and admit what we in the U.S. sometimes fail to.

"To Filter or Not to Filter?"is the last section of that FDA article I wrote of yesterday. It correctly states that it is much cheaper to filter the water from your tap, then to purchase bottled water. It does make one statement, however that is incorrect. Stew Thornley of the Minnesota Department of Health in the article says "that consumers need to be careful about maintaining these filters. Typically, specific instructions are included with the purchase of the product. Without proper maintenance, he says, it's possible bacteria or other contaminants can build up in the products." I guess Stew never heard of KDF based maintenance free water filters which create a hostile environent for and bacteria to form, as in our Model 2400.

Forgive me for a bit of self-promotion. It seems to me that the one of the most thoughtful gifts you can give anyone on your list this holiday season, would be a water filter. As a reminder, our Model 2400 supplies 5000 gallons, maintenance free, or five years worth of pure tasting and odor free drinking water, at a cost of just $39.95. This is also suitable for those of you who have wells, as long as your source has been tested and showed that the only problem was taste and odor. Another wonderful gift, if there is a woman on your shopping list, would be one of our wonderful shower filters, which remove chorine, which takes the nutrients from their hair, and dries their skin. Just starting at $34.95 for at least a eighteen months of much more manageable hair and softer skin. Water filters, the gift that truly keeps on giving.

Deception can take many forms. One look at the Aquafina website and you will discover their deception though omission. Yes they explain in a very beautifully done demonstration how they use reverse osmosis to purify their water. The same system, by the way, you can purchase from waterfilters-r-us, model P3500ro, for the bargain price of $199.95. What Aquafina fails to tell us is exactly where they source the water to input into the reverse osmosis system. At least if you buy ours, you will know where yours comes from. What is Aquafina hiding? I bet we all would be surprised and very nervous about their product.

We have have always said the the best reason to filter your drinking water is to improve the taste and odor of it. Here is another surprising one. The Kansas City Star reports "Household chemicals contaminate drinking water, testing shows". Well once you read it, you will agree that the best thing the article says is that the contaminants found were trace amounts so small as not to create a risk to the populace. Still, it also could not hurt to use one of our maintenance free water filters, each featuring three micron filters. Just a thought.

I thought after years in this water filter business, I had heard it all, at least until now. The BBC reported that diluted amounts of Prozac has been detected in the drinking water accross the Pond. Fortunately they do say it was diluted amounts and did not pose a real threat to the British populace. What the article made me think about was that here at waterfilters-r-us.com, we offer one replaceable cartridge which removes vertually any contaminent to drinking water imaginable, except arsenic, our Model # P2901rc. Very honestly, we never considered the need to filter out Prozac or any drug for that matter. You never really know do you?

We've now added RSS to this weblog. What's RSS? It's a radio signal for a website, most commonly used for weblogs. More technically: "Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site." See Intro to RSS for more info. The Newspaper Association of America site has an informative article titled Syndication Made Simple. "Just as free e-mail newsletters enable publishers to directly reach readers and promote online and in-paper content, RSS "pushes" headlines and succinct, one-sentence article descriptions to those who subscribe to the no-cost feeds." The other side of syndication is aggregation. Here's an article from Wired News that explains why aggregators are all the rage: Aggregators Attack Info Overload. Lastly, here's the Wikipedia citation for RSS. This icon is the cue that we're RSS capable. So train your aggregator to grab content from the Water Filters R Us syndicated weblog. The live link is on the top right of the weblog page.

The pristine website of Evian Bottled Water describes in beautiful prose, just how their water starts as rain water in the Alps. This is most definately a fairytale. They admit to doing a huge business all over the world and that their sources of water match up with those from the Alps. Other than telling us that, they make no mention of where these other sources are. Well I for one think their beautiful website is just that and nothing more. There muliple sources of water are as great a mystery as any other bottled water supplier. Consumers beware.

We all would agree that most consumers think faucet mount water filters are the most efficient way to filter their water. Well a replacement cartridge for a PUR faucet mount water filter, Model # RF-4050, capable of a paltry 100 gallons capicity, and diconted for on line sale, is $23.98. Once again, if you are interested in efficiently improving the taste and odor of your tap water, our Model 2400with a 5,000 gallon capacity, will last for five years, and cost only $39.95. This may explain why we do not carry a faucet mount water filter here; they are simply inefficient and too expensive to operate.

Well here is proof that our model 2400 mantainence free water filteris far cheper than the ever popular Brita pitchers. Three Brita replacement filters at Amazon.com sell for $19.99. Each will filter 35 gallons of water improving the taste and odor. This means that six Brita filters would filter 210 gallons of water and cost $39.98. For $39.95, you can buy our model 2400, and improve the taste and odor of the water for 5000 gallons, and never have to change the cartridge. Need I say more?

It seems this brand "Sere Aqua Filtered Drinking water" was found to be bad in Ghana. To me this simply is further proof that bad bottled water is not just confined to the U.S. but reaches all over the world. No surprise here.

I was searching Dasani on google and came upon this statement by this division of Coca-Cola Company, concerning the voluntarary withdrawl of Dasani in the UK. It says "the withdrawal is a precautionary measure". You can read it and judge for yourself. To me it sounds like a screw up. Researching this a bit further I found this article published just when the withdrawal occurred. It is called "Coca - Cola Admits That Dasani is Nothing But Tap Water" Seems there is more to this withdrawl than Dasani wishes to admit.

Hey they even say they tested the water at Poland Springs, and offer this chart on their webpage. I thought the idea of bottle water was to eliminate all chlorine and dissovled solids? That is what our maintenance free water filters do. For that matter it is very apparent from this chart, that all our water filters do a much better job of supplying safe, clear water to you. Of course this is what I have been consistantly saying all along.

Well, if you really want to know, you may be sorry you asked. Just go to the homepage of Poland Spring Water Just go to "Our Natural Spring Water" and you will learn that "What it means to be from Maine" is maintaining 75 sites accross the country. A bit confusing? Here's more. They play an active role in the International Bottled Water Association. Now, that should make every consumer really comfortable with drinking their product. They are the industry marketing arm that protects and certifies the quality of the water; in 75 sites for just Poland Springs alone, not to mention all the other members. I open this site by telling you just why water quality experts agree, that properly filtered tap water is much safer and held to a much higher standard than any bottled water brand even if it has the nerve to state "What it means to be from Maine", and show an idyllic picture of a wooded natural spring on its bottles.

Inside the water filter industry, it is well known that all water filters that are certified by NSF International, are tested to double there published capacity. To you the consumer, that means that when those Led diode displays turn red on a water filter, indicating to change your cartridge, depending on your water quality, you do not have to act all that fast. Now, don't get me wrong, there is a reason for changing filters when indicated, and that reason is safety. All I am saying here is that there is no need to panic and to stop using the filter immediately. By the way, it is for this reason that we state that our model cbtas, replacement filter for the removal of arsenic, which has a 600 gallon capacity is still good for one year usage by a family of four, depending on water quality.

I came accross this most comprehensive article concerning the quality of bottled water, compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) It is titled Bottled Water Pure Drink or Pure Hype? Well, with that title, and my belief that properly filtered tap water is far superior to any bottled water brand, you can understand why I liked this article. I guess I am not the only voice which does not think much of this huge bottled water business. Let me know what you think.

Well, please for give me for some redundancy, but what brings this on is another article from CNN Interactive, this time from the Earth Study page titled Filter cleans arsenic-tainted water. It is about engineers from the University of Connecticut's Critical Tecnologies Program developing of a water filter that would remove arsenic from drinking water. Well, once again I feel it necessary to point out, that on this website we have the only carbon block water filters certified by NSF Internationl (National Sanitation Foundation) to remove arsenic from drinking water. The advantage of it being a carbon block filter is that it not only removes the arsenic, but also vastly improves both the taste and odor of the water. I guess this is just an example of how far water filter technology has come, as the CNN article is six years old.

Water Filters R Us, Inc. has just joined the Gold Beach Chamber of Commerce. It was this with this community in mind that we started this Company. I am pleased to be part of this wonderful group.

Some people in my own community of Gold Beach, OR told me that arsenic is a real problem in this state, so I am addressing that problem with the only carbon block filter that is certified by NSF to eliminate arsenic, while it improves the taste and odor of the water. It is kind of expensive, but if arsenic is their problem, this sure is the best way to fix it. I hope all of you who visit here and have some thoughts about this site, water filtration, or want to tell us of your success with one of our products, will use the Contact Us section of this web site to write us.

Watch for posts from Steve Betheil.... real soon now.