The Berkey water filter system is a great choice when you want to have easy access to healthy drinking water. But some may be concerned that during the water filtration process, you not only get rid of the bad, but also remove the healthy and beneficial minerals in the water. So, the question is: does the Berkey remove good minerals from the water?
The short answer is: No, the Berkey water filters do not remove healthy minerals or electrolytes from the water. In fact, they are left in the water!
In a nutshell, the Black Berkey filtration elements that come standard with a Berkey filtration system remove heavy metals and toxic chemicals that are harmful to your body, but leave the beneficial minerals your body needs behind. This way, you can remove harmful contaminants, while having excellent water quality for you and your family to drink.
Why is it important?
What Happens When You Remove Beneficial Minerals From Water?
You might be surprised that drinking pure, distilled water is not a great idea. When you taste water, you are comparing the taste of the water to the saliva in your mouth, which like tears contains salts and minerals and is mildly saline. Consequently, pure water with no dissolved salts would not only be considered lacking due to its bland taste, but it also has the potential to be dangerous if consumed over the long term.
"Water molecules have a slight negative charge, which means they’re good at dissolving or pulling other molecules apart. When water is in an ultrapure state, it’s a 'super cleaner', sucking out the tiniest specks of dirt and leaving your computer’s brain squeaky clean," explains Scientific American guest blogger Kelly Izlar.
"[I]f you were to drink ultra-pure water, it would literally drink you back. The moment it came through your lips, it would start leaching valuable minerals from your saliva.
“Your mouth wants potassium, magnesium and other minerals,” says professional water taster Arthur von Wiesenberger. “It can tell when it’s being stripped.”
And that is why people generally object to the taste of distilled, reverse osmosis filtered, or desalinated water. All three of those purification processes remove minerals indiscriminately. Some scientists warn that communities with desalinated water or bottled water consumers may be missing out on minerals important to health.
Do Berkey filters remove good minerals?
Black Berkey filter elements, on the other hand, are designed to remove a wide range of impurities and contaminants from water, including heavy metals, chlorine, and volatile organic compounds without stripping good minerals such as calcium, sodium, magnesium, and potassium from the water.
Berkey filters use a gravity-fed, multi-stage filtration process that relies on activated carbon and other filter media. The primary goal of these filters is to provide clean and safe drinking water by removing harmful substances such as heavy metals, pesticides and other toxic chemicals.
While they are effective at removing more than 200 common drinking water contaminants, they do not selectively target specific minerals in the same way that water softeners or reverse osmosis systems do. This allows them to effectively remove the harmful contaminants without removing the beneficial minerals your body needs. Virtually no other filtration element can duplicate this performance.
The short answer is: No, Berkey water filters do not remove beneficial minerals from drinking water.
And by the way, think you are tasting the chlorine in your municipal water? Nope, explains Ilzar. You are smelling it. Luckily, your Big Berkey Water Filter System will remove that chlorine too!
Interested? Check out which Berkey water filter system is best for you!
