Water is crucial to our survival. Clean water is a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, even with the most stringent government regulations and ideal water treatment conditions, our tap water can still contain all sorts of hazardous chemicals, dissolved solids (TDS) and heavy metals. Sadly, the effects of consuming contaminated water oftentimes only show up 10-20 years later.

Some of the most common and well-known yet difficult to remove water contaminants are heavy metals. This is because heavy metals are present naturally in many water bodies worldwide. The issue with heavy metals is that they are incredibly minute in size, yet many of them are toxic even at very low concentrations.

Water is crucial to our survival. Clean water is a matter of life and death.

In 2014 during a water crisis, news broke out that one of the state governments in Malaysia had been pumping water from disused mining ponds into a river often used as a source of water. There was a public outcry¹, especially when an independent report allegedly claimed that the water contained metal elements above safe limits (asl) such as manganese (135% asl), iron (554% asl), nickel (240% asl) and lead (460% asl).

For decades, scientists have shown solid correlation between drinking water contaminated with heavy metals and harmful chronic illnesses.

Some health effects of heavy metals in drinking water

Toxic heavy metals are found in drinking water in every continent¹⁰. For example, high concentrations of arsenic have been found in drinking water in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Nepal, India, Chile, Western United States and central New Mexico as well as Northern Ethiopia¹¹. Mercury pollution has been found in Venezuela while in Denmark, nickel was detected in 3,362 wells.

Meanwhile, half of the hundreds of millions of people living in China’s cities are using tap water containing harmful pollutants¹². In Egypt, concentrations of heavy metals including iron, zinc, copper, manganese, cadmium and lead have been found in water and sediment in northern Delta Lakes.