YOU ARE DRINKING CONTAMINATED WATER DESPITE OF INSTALLING A CUTTING EDGE WATER PURIFIER

YOU ARE DRINKING CONTAMINATED WATER DESPITE OF INSTALLING A CUTTING EDGE WATER PURIFIER.

Despite of the technological advancements in water purification processes, popular water purifier brands are still not able to dispense contamination-free water because they are not looking for pathogens in the right place.

RO filters, UV filters, UF filters and a plethora of other new-age filter types and storage tank disinfectors are fitted in a water purifier to strip illness-causing contaminants off drinking water but it’s surprising that the most-plausible and obvious hotspot of harmful bacteria, viruses and fungi have been completely overlooked since ever and ever – the faucet of a water purifier.

The reason is quite simple – water purifiers are “kitchen appliances” which obviously means they are permanently parked there, and a kitchen can be a real microcosm of all sorts of dangerous minute organisms.

These microorganisms and viruses lead a peculiar live which involves lots of dormancy until they find fluid content – mostly water – to spring into action, germinate and multiply in order to find potential victims.

Most families spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking, cleaning and eating at many instances but what they don’t know is that the kitchen can be an area dirtier than a toilet seat. It is no surprise that most cases of food poisoning manifest at home rather than outside and researches where information gathered from 20 homes in the UK, Australia, Germany, India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa pointed to such inferences.

The awareness isn’t entirely new as a research conducted and made public by The Institute of Environmental Medicine, Freiburg, Germany in March 1996 suggested after testing the microbiological quality of filtered water in a commercial water filter system (Brita) in households and 2 laboratories that in 24 of 34 filters used in households, bacterial counts increased in the filtered water up to a staggering 6,000 cfu/ml. In some cases colony counts in the filtered water were 10,000 times those in tap water. The filter material of 5 of 13 new commercial filters was contaminated with bacteria or fungus moulds. Even at low temperatures, a growth of biofilm was found around the faucet nozzle and filters.

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES?

A kitchen is a high-activity area of any house which involves the presence of a lot of people and of course, food stuff. Needless to say, there are lots of appliances present in the kitchen which are used all the time.

Here are a few hotspots in the kitchen which are brimming with microbial life and viruses.

CLOTHS AND SPONGES

Cleaning cloths and sponges are usually left damp resulting in rapid bacterial growth on them. These menacing bacteria are spread to other objects and surfaced all through the kitchen. More-often-than-not they are the breeding grounds for bacteria like E-coli, the worst of them all. Tests found that a shocking 80 percent of kitchen cloths used to wipe up kitchen surfaces were carrying a dangerous mix of bacteria.

CUTTING BOARD

“Technically, it would be safer to make a salad on a toilet seat than it is to make one on a cutting board,” says Dr. Charles Gerba, microbiologist and professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There could be 200 times more fecal bacteria from raw meat remains on cutting boards than toilet seats. Rinsing and basic utensil cleaning solutions can only remove so much of salmonella and campylobacter – most common bacteria causing food-borne illness, according to FDA.

KITCHEN COUNTERTOPS

Kitchen countertops are surely the dirtiest surfaces near the sink are because people are wiping them down with cleaning cloths and sponges that properly spread the germs all over the countertops.

SINKS

The sink is an ideal haven for microbial life of all kinds since there is lot of moisture to play around with. Bacteria feed on food left in dishes in the sink and food stuff people dump in the sink’s drain, creating ideal feeding grounds and watering holes for bacteria like E. coli.

RUBBISH BINS

What is rubbish for us is pure gold for these microbes. The longer rubbish stays in a bin, the more infestation there is. Even when people have started putting rubbish bags over the bins, these microbes stick to the lids, surrounding areas.

Other high-bacterial zones were found to be babies’ high chairs, TV remote controls (since a lot of families these days have open kitchens), microwave ovens, refrigerators and mobile phones.

WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR WATER PURIFIER?

This is where the investigation hots up.

The best modes of transport for these micro-menaces are water and air. Contaminated hands and kitchen cloths are great piggybacks for them though transporting bacteria with water can still be kept under check but there is practically no way of controlling indoor air. Call it their Air Force and the drop-zones could be anywhere, more still the nozzle of a water purifier’s faucet. Some purifiers have caps over their faucet nozzles but that is even more contaminating since every time you touch it, some of the microbes are transferred.

The Hygiene Council, an international think tank of leading practitioners in the fields of microbiology, virology, infectious diseases and public health, said that pandemics like swine flu spreads by sneezes, unwashed hands and surfaces which undoubtedly include water purifiers and their faucets.

The kitchen sink and taps become a serious threat to drinking water contamination through bacterial growth inside a water purifier’s faucet nozzle as most water purifiers are installed over kitchen sinks. Swab tests conducted by the Hygiene Council found one third of kitchen taps to be sustaining alarming levels of bacteria compared to 15 percent of toilet handles of public restrooms and those of homes.

THE SOLUTION

Using chemical disinfectants to clean up the kitchen surfaces and a water purifier’s faucet is a whole different disease ballpark altogether with new reports emerging all the time talking about the threat of these chemicals when ingested.

Cuckoo Appliances has just launched the Dew Pond water purifier with the game-changing Faucet Sterilization Kit. Along with employing cutting-edge filtration processes and through and through Auto Sterilization of the insides of the water purifier from storage tanks to drain tubing, the patented Faucet Sterilization Kit enables the cleaning of the faucet and nozzle without the use of chemical disinfectants. With this Faucet Sterilization Kit, families can rest assured that the water they drink meets their standards of health and purity.