Have you ever thought about how much fluoride is in your water? While fluoride can help reduce tooth decay, too much can be harmful.
Unfortunately, you can’t remove fluoride from water for free, but don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with four effective and affordable methods: reverse osmosis, distillation, adsorption, and anionic exchange. We’ll also include highly rated products that use these methods.
Whether you’re concerned about your local tap water or your private well, keep reading to find out how you can reduce or remove fluoride from your drinking water.
- Process: Affinity Technology
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.5%
- Warranty: 1-year Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.75%
- Warranty: 1 Year
- Process: Gravity Filter
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 96%
- Warranty: Lifetime Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 90.7%
- Warranty: Limited Lifetime Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.9%
- Warranty: 1 Year
What is Fluoride and How Does it Get into Water?
Fluoride is a mineral found in rocks, soil, and water. It’s naturally present in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Sometimes, it forms when fluorine interacts with metals like sodium.
So, how does fluoride end up in our drinking water? For the past 75 years, many communities have added fluoride to their water supply to reduce tooth decay. This process, known as water fluoridation, has effectively cut down dental problems by about 25%.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ensures that the fluoride levels in public water don’t exceed 4 mg/L, while the Public Health Service recommends a range of 0.7-1.2 mg/L for optimal dental health.
But when can fluoride become a problem? If you get your water from a private well, it might draw from underground sources rich in fluoride, especially if your area has a lot of fluoride-containing rocks and soil. Additionally, natural disasters or structural damage to the water system can lead to higher fluoride levels, even in a public water supply.
It’s important to monitor the fluoride levels in your water to avoid potential health risks. You can check with your local water supplier or test your water yourself to ensure it’s safe to drink.
Health Effects of Drinking Fluoride Contaminated Water
Drinking water with too much fluoride can lead to several health problems. These include an increased risk of bone fractures, a condition called skeletal fluorosis, arthritis, and muscle damage. Some studies even suggest that high fluoride levels can interfere with the body’s ability to produce the thyroid hormone.
Given these risks, it’s crucial to ensure that the fluoride levels in your drinking water are within safe limits. You can do that by checking with your local water supplier or by testing it yourself (we’ll share instructions below).
How to Remove Fluoride From Your Water
While fluoride is often added to water supplies to improve dental health, too much of it can be harmful. Fortunately, there are effective ways to remove it from your water.
Note that the available methods can be quite expensive, especially if you’re looking for large-scale fluoride water treatment.
Here are the best methods to remove fluoride from your water:
- Reverse osmosis water filters
- Distillation
- Adsorption
- Anionic exchange
1. Reverse Osmosis Water Filters
Water filters are the most effective way of removing fluoride from water, and reverse osmosis (RO) systems are among the best. RO systems can remove 90 – 99% of fluoride in water.
Reverse osmosis (RO) is a purification method that pushes water through a semipermeable membrane with 0.0001-micron pores. Thanks to the microscopic pore size, the fluoride gets trapped in the membrane and is flushed out with wastewater.
That being said, although RO is highly effective, it also removes healthy minerals from the water. If you opt for an RO filter, it’s important to either purchase a system that features a remineralizer to add back the lost minerals into the water or use a separate RO mineralizer.
Here’s a comparison table for fluoride water filters:
- Process: Affinity Technology
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.5%
- Warranty: 1-year Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.75%
- Warranty: 1 Year
- Process: Gravity Filter
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 96%
- Warranty: Lifetime Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 90.7%
- Warranty: Limited Lifetime Warranty
- Process: Reverse Osmosis
- Fluoride Removal Percentage: 99.9%
- Warranty: 1 Year
If you’re specifically looking for water pitchers, our guide lists water filter pitchers that remove fluoride. use a separate RO mineralizer.
2. Distillation
Distillation is another effective way to remove fluoride from water. This method involves boiling water until it becomes steam, then capturing the steam in another container. When the steam cools and condenses back into water, many contaminants, including fluoride, are left behind because they don’t vaporize with the steam.
Distillation is widely used in industrial water treatment, and also by many bottled water brands. While industrial-grade distillers aren’t accessible or cheap for household use, there are effective countertop distillers available.
These countertop units can produce a limited amount of water each day (usually a gallon in about four hours), making them suitable for smaller households. They’re also one of the most affordable ways to eliminate fluoride.
3. Adsorption
The adsorption method uses filter media that can adsorb molecular contaminants upon contact. These media can vary from activated alumina to bone charcoal (a non-vegan option). Regardless of the type, they’re very effective against anions like arsenic and fluoride.
Despite its effectiveness, adsorption is a very complicated process. The water’s pH and the presence of other anionic elements can affect how effective they are. This is why household filtration systems that use this method aren’t as common.
However, you can do your own research and contact trusted water filtration companies to see if they offer products with NSF certifications that fit this description.
4. Anionic Exchange
Standard water softeners use ion exchange, a process that replaces positively charged ions like calcium and magnesium with sodium. However, this isn’t effective for fluoride removal since fluoride is a negatively charged ion.
For fluoride removal, there are specialized devices that use a different technique called “anionic exchange.” They do so by using resins designed to attract and hold fluoride ions. As water passes through a tank containing this resin, the fluoride ions are swapped with benign ions like chloride.
Over time, the resin becomes saturated with fluoride and requires regeneration by flushing with a salt solution (usually sodium chloride), which restores its fluoride-removal capacity.
Anionic exchange products are effective in removing fluoride from water but are not the most convenient solution for household use because they are expensive and hard to find. That’s why they’re mostly used in industrial processing.
How to Measure Fluoride Levels in Your Water
Knowing how much fluoride is in your water is the first step to ensuring it’s safe. There are two ways to do it: you can test your water with a home test kit or sent a sample to a lab.
Home Water Test Kits
The easiest way to measure fluoride levels in your water is to buy a water test kit. These kits are available online or at hardware and home improvement stores. They typically use a simple drop-test method.
To use the kit, collect a sample of your tap water in a clean container. Follow the instructions provided with the kit to add the appropriate number of drops of test solution.
After adding the solution, compare the water’s color to the color chart included in the kit. This will give you an estimate of the fluoride levels in your water based on the color match.
Lab Testing
While home test kits are convenient, the most accurate way to measure fluoride levels is by sending a water sample to a qualified lab. Your local health departments might offer assistance, but the fastest way is to use an EPA-certified lab.
Though lab testing can be more expensive than purchasing a home kit, it provides the most precise results. Once you have the test results, you can determine if you need to take steps to filter out the fluoride.
Ensuring that your drinking water doesn’t contain excessive fluoride is vital for your health, and these methods will help you keep track of its levels accurately.
