It's Hard to Remove Fluoride Once It's Been Added

Fluoride Filtration: Fluoride is a pale yellow, gaseous element. It is toxic and has been linked with a variety of ailments, including Alzheimer’s and learning disorders. Fluoride is very hard to remove from water because it’s so small. It gets past even the .01M filters. It even gets past RO [reverse osmosis] to some extent [although the slow-flowing action of the water going through the carbon filter of the RO is somewhat effective in removing a good deal of the fluoride]. 

Tricking the Fluoride Out of the Water

The best way to remove fluoride, though, is to use activated alumina. Activated alumina is aluminum oxide. Activated, means it’s very porous and will take out much more than it’s weight in the contaminant it’s targeted for, fluoride.  It’s not aluminum, although it is related to aluminum. What activated alumina does is, using its natural attraction of metals, the fluoride is attracted to the alumina and bonds to it. It then becomes a stable compound which is trapped in the filter. The more time the water spends in the highly porous activated alumina filter [i.e., slower water flow] the more fluoride is removed and trapped in the filter. Under 8 liters per min. flow-rate is recommended. 

Water Ionizers Will Naturally Remove Fluoride

A water ionizer usually calls for a 2 liters per min. flow, which is a perfect match for an activated alumina pre filter. Activated Alumina filters will typically remove 99% of fluoride [better than anything else…even better than distillation and RO]. Even without the Activated Alumina as one of their stages, 86% of the Fluoride [by independent laboratory testing] is documented to be removed from the water produced by the Melody water ionizer with a regular Biostone filter in it.  

Not many water ionizer companies up to this point have had this level of extensive lab testing done of their water ionizers’ filter results [or they haven’t shared their results], therefore I can’t say which other ionizers filter out Fluoride, but I know from these results that the Jupiter water ionizers filter out about 85% of the Fluoride. 

Getting Arsenic, Lead & Fluoride Out of the Water

If you use a prefilter, called the ALF filter, you can trap much of the fluoride in the filter (thus removing it from the water). Make sure of two things though: 1) flow the water slowly through the filter, and 2) change the filter about every 6 months or 500 gallons of use.

Getting Chlorine Out of the Water

Chlorine and Chloramine Filtration: Chloramine is a chemical complex formed from ammonia and chlorine. This is being used by many municipalities to disinfect water supplies. Using chloramines reduces the formation of THMs [Trihalo Methanes: which is a byproduct of chlorinating water, and is sometimes linked to causing cancer] Chloramines are hard to filter out, because they are so stable [as opposed to chlorine, which is unstable and easily filters out]. Distillation won’t remove chloramines, they would just be carried over to the product water. The only reason RO is effective in chloramines removal is because of the slow speed with which the water passes through the carbon filters of the RO system. Lots of contact time is the key to chloramines removal. The best way to remove chloramines is with a slow flow through an activated carbon filter. Activated carbon is a very porous carbon. Its porosity makes it a good media for chemical removal of anything that is attracted to carbon. 

Leaving the Good Minerals In

Calcium, magnesium and sodium are not attracted to the carbon, and so pass through the filter. GAC [granular activated carbon] has finer granules and more rapidly removes the chloramines than a carbon block filter would. At the speeds of which an ionizer uses to ionize water, a filter or pre-filter containing GAC is a good match for removing the chloramines. An additional GAC filter would be even better than one, because with chloramines a longer exposure to the carbon is required to break the strong bond made by chlorine plus ammonia. GAC filters also remove volatile organic compounds, pesticides, herbicides, trihalomethane compounds, radon, solvents, and other chemicals in the tap water. Some people have whole house GAC filters and some have only point-of-use filters, which are obviously much cheaper [but then you don’t get the chlorine or chloramines out of your bath and shower water]. Most water ionizer filters contain GAC. 

KDF Specialty Filters

KDF There’s one more filter media worth mentioning, and that’s KDF, or Kinetic Degradation Fluxion. KDF is made with a copper-zinc formulation and uses a chemical process which removes iron, chlorine, mercury, lead, and hydrogen sulfide from the water, It reduce heavy metals, microorganisms, scale, lower total cost, and decrease maintenance of filters and ionizers. The KDF redox process works by exchanging electrons with contaminants which converts many contaminants into harmless components. When you’re dealing with lots of toxins in the water and even now pharmaceuticals, it’s good to have a wide variety of filter media. Because of its speed and effectiveness in getting out a large variety of toxins, KDF filter media is a good choice for people who want the cleanest water possible. You would install the KDF filter first [in a series of filters] so that the other filters will remove the compounds made by redox reaction in the KDF filter. KDF-55 Media Reduces: Arsenic, Lead, Aluminum, Mercury, Cadmium, Chlorine Taste & Odor, Heavy Metal Removal and Bacteria KDF-85 Media Reduces: Iron and Hydrogen Sulfide KDF-85 also controls scale, bacteria and algae. KDF 85 may be used alone or may be used to protect existing water filtration/purification technologies. Like KDF55 media, KDF 55 and KDF 85 Process Media remove up to 99% of water-soluble lead, nickel, mercury, chromium, and other dissolved metals. Also, KDF Process Media control the buildup of bacteria, fungi, algae, and scale. They can be used in GAC beds, ion exchange resins, carbon block filters and inline carbon filters. KDF Media eliminate the need for harmful or costly chemical treatments. KDF filters are often used with an activated carbon filter because they help reduce chlorine build-up which will prolong the life and increase the effectiveness of carbon filters. KDF Filters also supplement the activated carbon filters by removing heavy metals, which carbon-based filters do not remove very effectivel Product Recommendations: You can get all three of the above high-quality prefilters in one product [which can be placed in-line with any water ionizer, on the counter, under the sink, on the refrigerator, or mounted to the wall].