SafeWater Anywhere

["Pickett, Bruce D" <Bruce.Pickett@PSS.Boeing.com>]

I was just sent some information on some products of the SafeWater(tm) Anywhere Company of Durango, Colorado. They sell 1/2-liter and 1-liter filtering water bottles for sporting activities. Their advertising states: "The ability to provide dependable safe, clean water efficiently in the field is unique to our product and our research indicates that its performance is superior to anything else on the portable filtration market today, in fact it is superior to many far more expensive, larger, fixed home-based systems." On the SafeWater web page ( http://www.safewateranywhere.com/ ) is a section "What Does It Remove?", and following that link, you find these claims:

"What SafeWater Effectively Eliminates from Water: 
  - microbiological organisms such as E. coli, Giardia, Cryptosporidium 
  - toxins found in herbicides, pesticides, and petroleum by-products 
  - trace metals such as mercury, aluminum, lead, and cadmium 
  - radioactive materials such as radon 222
  - volatile organic chemicals such as PCB's, and DDT 
  - turbidity such as silt, sand and sediment 
However, the SafeWater microfilter allows calcium, magnesium and other materials important to health to remain in your water." 

Looking further at their reported testing results, you find that they claim a 99.0% reduction of radon by their products, but the testing methodology is not identified.

Here are a couple of comments regarding their claims:
(1) The SafeWater filters may work well on microorganisms and such, but I question  the efficacy of filtration units for removing dissolved gases such as radon.
(2) Since these filters would be used by sports enthusiasts primarily with surface waters, I suspect that there would be little to no radon in the water in the first place.

Does anyone have any other comments?

Bruce Pickett
Seattle, WA
bruce.d.pickett@boeing.com

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