There are many reasons to buy home water purifiers and there are a lot of different companies that sell them. Each one claims to be the best, but they should have facts to back up their claims.

When you compare home water purifiers, you might think that the most expensive ones do the best job. The truth is that the most expensive brands on the market do not remove MTBE.

Methyl tertiary butyl ether or MTBE is a chemical with many uses, but the most common application is as an additive in gasoline. It exists in ground water and public drinking water reservoirs because of leaks at gas stations and from the underground tanks in which gasoline is stored.

The presence of MTBE in drinking water is a serious concern in many areas around the country. Only two of the ten most popular home water purifiers will remove MTBE from your tap water.

If you want to compare home water purifiers, you really want to know what they take out and what they leave in. You should ask, “Does this product remove MTBE, TCE, Benzene, Atrazine, Alachor, Lindane, VOCs, THMs and cysts?” Most any system, other than reverse osmosis, will remove chlorine and lead, but in order to get rid of the other contaminants, you need an advanced multi-stage system.

But, advanced does not necessarily mean more expensive. The best product that we have found takes out all of the contaminants mentioned above and it costs less both initially and on a yearly basis than products that don’t.

When you compare home water purifiers by price, you will see that they range from less than $50 for a faucet or pitcher filter and go up to around $1000 for a whole house filter. But, the cost per year is a different story.

Inexpensive home water purifiers have filters with a very short life span. If you replace the filter as often as you are supposed to, they cost more per year than some of the more expensive models. Some of them cost more on a yearly basis than the primary unit.

Brita, for example, is a highly advertised product. When you compare home water purifiers by price, Brita’s faucet filter seems like a good deal at around $35. The problem is that the Brita filter can only clean about 100 gallons of water. The pitcher filter which only costs about $25 initially can only clean 30 gallons. So, the cost per year based on 1000 gallons is almost $300, nearly 10 times the price of the initial unit.

It is true that everyone will benefit from home water purifiers, but some filters are simply better than others. Shop wisely.