Water Filters

I might add that "0.02%" translates to 5 microns - which is pretty coarse for activated carbon - and this shows that low quality activated carbon has been used in these filters.

Good quality activated carbon should filter to 1 micron or less, and remove most coliforms such as e. coli, cryptosporodium, and giardia.
These are the bugs that will make you crook very quickly if you ingest them.

There are often other undesirable constituents in water - pesticides and herbicides, petroleum compounds (from fuel spills), asbestos (many water mains are asbestos-cement, these were a very popular style of water-pipe construction in the 1950's), chlorine, fluoride, salts, and heavy metals.

Out of the last-mentioned, only chlorine, some fluoride, asbestos, pesticide, herbicide and petroleum compounds will be largely removed by low-micron activated carbon filters.
They won't remove dissolved salts or all heavy metals. It takes constant exposure to heavy metals and numerous chemicals to develop health problems.

From another website;

"activated carbon filters will effectively remove sediment, pesticides, petrochemicals, chlorine and its carcinogenic by-products (trihalomethanes). However they will only partially remove fluoride and heavy metals such as copper and lead. Their efficiency at removing contaminants will vary depending upon their micron size (0.5, 1, 5 and 10 microns), how effectively they are activated, and what they are derived from"

Ideally, it pays to use two filters, an initial sediment filter to remove the bigger, coarse particles - and then the activated carbon filter to filter out the bugs, the colour, the chlorine, and improve the taste.

IMO, 5 micron filter isn't a real lot of use. It will get some undesirable constituents out of the water, but not all.
I utilise a 0.5 micron activated carbon filter, along with a 5 micron sediment filter on the house, and the difference in the filtered water quality is very noticeable.

The biggest problem when travelling is the water source in very small towns and out-of-the-way establishments.
Many of these places do not have mains-level water filtration and treatment in place - particularly chlorination. These are the places where water contamination levels can be high.
Faecal contamination of water (from animals and humans) is often high in many outback areas, and it needs chlorination to ensure the coliform content is killed off to acceptable levels.

Cheers, Ron.

Good posts Ron.
In the OKA, we chlorinate all water as we pick it up from anywhere (including the washing water which is separate from our drinking water).
For drinking water we then filter after the pump and just before the taps with a 5um sediment filter (about $10 each) followed by a 1 or 0.5um active carbon/silver filter (about $35 each).
The silver reduces the chances of bugs actually growing in the filter if it is unused for more than a few days. While in use, the chlorine does that job, but it is important to keep the chlorine up because it disappears on its own accord after a while.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 Motorhome