Residential reverse osmosis systems used to be very popular types of water filters. Lately, however, their popularity has been diminishing. Turns out, reverse osmosis is not the best water filtration technology you can use at home. Reverse osmosis systems residential water purifiers work! It's just that they leave your water somewhat tasteless. More importantly, they filter out minerals that you actually need for good health.

Let's discuss this in some detail.

I'm assuming you understand the need for filtering your water at home. Just in case you don't, let's go over this.

It's very probable that the water coming out of your taps at home has impurities that you certainly would not want to drink. Also, I'm sure you wouldn't want your family to drink them, either. Pollutants like pesticides, prescription drugs, lead, and microorganisms in cyst form are now routinely found in our water supplies.

Ralph Nader's group found over 2,000 carcinogens in their study of American water systems. Another study of 29 American cities found traces of pesticides in all 29 of them! (One city even had traces of three different pesticides!)

Bottled water is not much better, if any. Federal regulations that cover bottled water are more lax than those that cover tap water. If your bottled water hasn't crossed state lines, federal regulations don't cover it at all!

In other words, the inescapable conclusion is that you must filter the water you drink, cook with, and bathe in. The only question is what's the best method for doing this?

There are several water filtration technologies on the market--carbon and ceramic filtration, ultraviolet radiation, distillation, and residential reverse osmosis systems are just a few of the most popular. Carbon and ceramic filtration work fine, but they have to be used along with other filtration methods.

Ultraviolet only kills organic impurities. It won't do anything for lead, for instance. Distillation is prohibitively expensive. Also, if you're distilling chlorinated water, you can actually be creating carcinogens while you distill. Finally, reverse osmosis systems residential water purification actually filters out too much!

You see, there are actually "impurities" in our water that we want to keep. Trace minerals such as calcium and potassium are essential to our health, and they also are what make the water you drink taste so good. Without these trace minerals your water would taste flat.

Some of the cheaper bottled waters taste like this. That's because they don't contain these minerals.

Residential reverse osmosis systems used to be popular, but because of the taste of the water they create and also because of this problem with lack of minerals, they are not so popular any more.

The best water filtration systems actually are two step systems. One step filters out the inorganic impurities, the other handles the organics. They work much better than reverse osmosis systems residential water purification. A good two step system can filter out the bad stuff while leaving in those all important trace minerals.

If you've thought about buying any of the residential reverse osmosis systems currently on the market, maybe you should do a little more research and find a system that's better for your health, and also that creates better tasting water. There are several on the market.