With each passing day, more news stories and scientific reports come out about how bad bottled water is for us.  We wound up spending millions for something we usually received for free.  ABC News show “20/20″ famously sent famous brands of bottled water to a lab and they discovered that the contents were identical to tap water.  The plastic bottles are also found to be not biodegradable.  So, are portable water bottle filters the same bill of bad goods?

What Are They?

Portable water bottle filters are found mostly in sporting goods, camping and RV supply stores.  They look just like a usual plastic water bottle – only they have an intricate logo and a small unit inside containing water filtration media.  These are sturdy bottles to be used again and again.  You definitely don’t want to use these just once, especially since the average price is $15 – and that does not include replacement cartridges.

Many times, portable water bottle filters are made of a plastic that is not derived from hard to decay petroleum but from corn oil or other botanical materials that are biodegradable.  Others feature designs that don’t have many problems leaking, which stops any waste of the precious water inside.

Some feature a filtration media that’s in a plastic unit while others are portable ceramic water bottles.  The ceramic bottles will usually be more expensive than the plastic, sometimes three or four times as expensive.  These bottles will look more like small pumps or fire extinguishers rather than the typical water bottle.

How Safe Is The Water?

There are pros and cons to using portable water bottle filters.  The pros are that it can filter out dirt, even asbestos and bacteria like salmonella.  They also are lightweight and can be easily packed with you.  They are also far less expensive than many other kinds of water filtration systems.

But you can’t live on strange bodies of water strained through a portable water bottle filter.  For one thing, the bottle only holds about as much water as a soda can.  You need to keep refilling all of the time.  Also, many dangerous chemicals are much smaller than the filtration media can handle and will slip into your water anyway.

If you are taking a hike, twist your ankle and have to wait a couple of days for help next to a trickling stream, then a portable water bottle filter is better than nothing at all.  But for more practical use in camping, you should boil your water and let it cool before drinking it.

In comparison to other types of water filtration systems, portable water filters don’t make the grade.  They are usually slow to filter water, have expensive replacement cartridges and can only filter water about a gallon at a time.  However, they do have a couple of things going for them.  First off – they are portable.  You can move them from room to room or house to house.  Secondly, they are initially less expensive than getting many other kinds of water filtration systems.

You Can Do It Yourself

Another plus on the side of portable water filters is that you don’t need to hire anyone in order to install or remove them.  However, there are also some POS water filters (point of use) that can be easily screwed onto the faucet, whether or not you are a plumber.  But even POS water filtration units need filtration material changes.  It’s that stuff that does the actual filtering of your water – not the actual unit that holds the filtration media.

Finding replacement filtration media is generally easier with portable water filters or even portable water bottle filters than with other kinds of filtration systems.  Pitcher-type portable water filters are considered standard merchandise to sell in nearly any department or hardware store in America, Canada or Europe.  All of these stores also sell the replacement cartridges or filtration materials.

What They Can’t Do

Portable water filters can make your water safer to drink – but only to a point.  They’re not going to be able to filter out nuclear waste, for example.  If your local government puts out a warning about not to use the water, don’t think that you are safe just because you have a Brita or another brand of small water filters.

There’s been a lot of talk about distilled water not being as healthy for you as mineral water.  Distilled water is usually what public tap water is.  It’s taken out things like dirt and bacteria, but also strips the water of healthy minerals.  One of the advantages of portable water filters is that they don’t strip any more of these minerals from your water.

Is This For You?

If you need a lot of water filtered immediately, then a small portable water filter won’t fulfill your needs.  If you’re just looking for drinking water for you, then it will fulfill your needs.  Think long and hard before buying any kind of water filtration system.