With a newborn in the home, there are some steps you will want to take to ensure that the environment is safe, and that the resources that your baby is exposed to are safe as well, and this includes water. While babies under six months old shouldn’t be drinking straight water anyway, if you are feeding your baby formula, then your water quality is directly relevant, and the water that you drink, and that you bathe your baby in is also a potential cause for concern, if there are contaminants present. In this article, we will consider a few basic facts about water safety, the nature of some common water contaminants, and how a home water filtration system can benefit you and your family.
Why Water Safety is Crucial for Babies
Babies are constantly growing and developing, and the fluid they intake, much of which is water, whether in their mother’s breast milk, or in a pediatrician-approved formula, has a lot to do with how they grow. Water acts as a solvent within the natural world, breaking things down into their more basic chemical components. In a living animal, water aids in all stages of cellular growth, reproduction, and apoptosis, and is a crucial factor in healthy organ development, blood flow, and every other bodily process. It’s no surprise to say that water is essential for life, but understanding the role that it plays in our physical development and bodily processes helps us to understand what happens when we drink contaminated water. The same processes unfold, but the contaminants in water are present during these critical processes. The effects can range from mild to devastating, with contaminants like lead causing permanent and irreversible brain and bodily damage.
Even though they aren’t drinking water directly, babies are exposed to water indirectly, even under six months of age, whether through the water used to mix an occasional (or regular) bottle of baby formula, or during baths. Most tap water in the United States is deemed safe, even for use in baby bottles, but legally safe and ideal are not the same thing, and many times contaminants break through, systems malfunction, pipes break, and in all manner of ways, water ends up getting dirty.
Common Contaminants in Tap Water and Their Impact on Babies
Water contaminants come in many different forms, and can be made up of tens of thousands of different underlying substances. Common contaminant classes include sediment, which is any undissolved particulate matter in water, such as dirt, dust, clay, rust, silt, or microplastics; disinfectants, which are used by municipal treatment plants to sterilize water, and include chlorine and chloramines; volatile organic compounds from pesticides, herbicides, paints, solvents, fertilizers, and fuel additives, minerals and heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and chromium, and a variety of other contaminants both natural and synthetic. Well water can contain dangerous microorganisms that pose a very serious risk to everyone, especially critical groups like the elderly, pregnant women, and newborn babies, and all water can contain emerging synthetic contaminants like PFAS, a common non-stick polymer used in everything from pizza boxes to cosmetics to teflon pans.
Different contaminants affect physical systems in various ways, but none of them are desirable. Some of the more serious and dangerous contaminants, such as heavy metals, can give rise to physical, behavioral, and developmental problems. Lead, as was mentioned before, is particularly devastating, with no amount being deemed safe. Many lead pipes are still in use around the country, and are normally safe, due to their being treated with anti-corrosive chemicals, but some extra assurance in the form of a home water filtration system, against the possibility of leaching, is always a good idea. Other common chemical agents in water, such as chlorine, will have less dire effects, but can still irritate a baby’s skin, mouth, and throat, and upset their digestive system.
How a Water Filter Protects Your Baby
A robust, multi-stage home water filtration system protects not only your baby, but your whole family, by cleaning up a wide range of common contaminants that can be found lurking in municipal water. Well water is a slightly different animal, and complete treatment of well water will often take a few more steps than municipal water, so let’s start with city-treated water, as that is what most people in the country are on.
Water filters work in a variety of ways, depending on the media type and the underlying filtration technology employed. A comprehensive water filtration solution will typically employ a variety of filtration methods and media types, such as sediment filters, activated carbon, and reverse osmosis. Different filter types tackle different jobs, which we will get into in detail below. Look for a multi-stage system with a broad range of protection to tackle the most common contaminants.
How to Choose the Right Water Filter for Your Home
Usually, a single filter isn’t quite enough for maximal filtration protection. You could simply install a single inline carbon or sediment filter under your sink, but then you would only be getting a single type of filtration. Mechanical filters, like sediment filters and membrane-style filters, work solely on principles of physical restraint, blocking the passage of particulate matter in the case of sediment filters, and physically straining out offending molecules in the case of a membrane filter such as a reverse osmosis membrane. Both of these are excellent filter types, one simply working at a much more aggressive level than the other.
In addition to mechanical filters like these, there are also chemical filters, such as activated carbon, and the ion exchange resin used in water softeners. Unlike mechanical filters, which work along the same basic lines as a screen door or a colander, chemical filters work through chemically pulling dissolved contaminants out of solution in water, and adhering them to a given media. Activated carbon is one of the most commonly-used filtration media in the world, and has been for thousands of years, because of its excellent ability to reduce chemical contamination, and to improve the taste and odor of problematic water. These filtration types are ideally used in conjunction with one another, with a very common set-up consisting of a sediment pre-filter, various carbon filters, and a reverse osmosis membrane, to take care of physical particulate, dissolved chemicals, and nearly all dissolved solids. Parents can rest assured that water filtered through a system like this is a safer bet than regular tap water for use in their baby’s formula bottles.
The Bottom Line
Your newborn’s health is too important to change it with water of dubious quality. Even if most city water is deemed potable for people of all ages, and while it may be, there is something to be said for an extra level of protection, right in your own home, and the peace of mind afforded by a robust home water filtration system. Protect yourself, and your new bundle of joy, and be on guard against unwanted invaders in your water.
Thank you for reading.
