Home drinking water purification systems vary widely in performance and quality. It is not a good idea to purchase any drinking water purification system without first doing your homework. A good place to start would be to contact the manufacturers of the targeted product and ask them for a certified performance data sheet.

You can most often obtain this information directly off the manufacturers' website, and some states even require that the data sheet be part of the actual sales brochure. Be careful when reading the data presented as they may only allude to which chemicals their drinking water purification systems will remove and to what degree. There are times when the real facts will take some rooting out.

Despite what the company claims, a drinking water purification system may remove nothing other than chlorine. Chlorine does affect the odor and taste of your h20, but, while a noble cause, chlorine elimination by itself is a far cry from purity. There are many more contaminants to worry about blocking also.

Chlorine is very dangerous though, don't get me wrong. Researchers have deduced that the chemical causes everything from intestinal tract disorders to certain kinds of cancers. THMs, a byproduct produced by chlorine disinfection, is directly linked to breast cancer in women. These women all had levels of THMs in their bodies many times higher than non-cancerous women.

Even though deemed an unhealthy practice, the public drinking water purification systems absolutely must use chlorine in its disinfecting operations. There is simply no other way to remove the risk of widespread bacterial contamination. Despite the dangers that chlorine imposes, we have yet to come up with an alternative method for staving off typhoid and cholera outbreaks.

So with no end in sight to chemical disinfection, the only answer to protecting us from the very thing that is protecting us, is a home drinking water purification system. THMs pose maybe the greatest danger, and just because your system removes chlorine does not mean that it prevents THMs.

Along with breast cancer, THMs has also shown to be connected to an increased risk of colorectal and bladder cancer. It has been estimated that a person who has been exposed to THMs has about a 30% greater chance of getting cancer than someone who has never been exposed. 700 new cancer cases per year are directly linked to THMs exposure according to a Canadian study.

THMs can be absorbed by your skin, so swimming in a chlorinated pool regularly puts you at greater risk. You are not even safe in the shower as chlorine vapors can be inhaled directly through shower steam. That tells you right away that you'd better look for showerhead units to go along with your drinking water purification systems.

Birth defects can be traced back to THMs according to studies by researchers in the United Kingdom, but with careful choosing of the right drinking water purification system, you and your baby can be safe and sound.

These are just some of the many reasons why choosing quality drinking water purification systems are so important to you.