Removing Fluoride ? 2 ppm ~ 0.7 ppm

(ppm = parts per million)

Hello from Maine

Apparently out municipality is changing from 2 ppm of fluoride to 0.7 ppm of fluoride.

I searched on eBay for water filters specifically mentioning "fluoride" - the filters I found mention that they remove 95% if the fluoride is 100 ppm - well that's just fine but I am in a municipality that is probably 2 ppm.

So how to I remove fluoride from a regular municipality ?

I also wonder how can we test what is in our water ? Can we use a microscope or something to check the water ? I've heard of sending a sample off to a laboratory but I'd like to do it myself if I could LOL

The filter I've seen that I like so far is a Berkey, but I'd buy 2 and combine them - using "black Berkey" filters on the first stage and "Berkey PF-2 fluoride filters" on the 2nd stage.  But it's kinda costly ...

I'd like to know what you guys are doing

Cheers,
Craig

As far as I know, all the filters that remove flouride are using bone char.  This can be purchased on the net. 
You can probably make your own filters by compressing the char in a muslin baggie or some such, then dripping the water through... 

It works better than ordinary charcoal, which the other water filters usually use. 

As an added benefit to permies, both bone and other charcoals can also be used in gardens to deal with toxins in the soil.  I live in an area with mercury and lead from idiotic prior generations, so I put natural charcoal in all my garden beds, sort of a homemade terra preta attempt.  Also crushed bisqueware, EM, mycelium, urine and compost.  Things grow very well in this, but they probably would have anyhow, and I can't afford scientific testing to see what it's doing as far as metal absorption by my plants...  but would certainly like to know what other people are doing with this!

spystyle, what did you decide? any update? was looking into similar and laughing after one city near me went from the 1 ppm to 4 or 5 ppm (would have to go look it up) and then congress changed it to 0.7 ppm last december ( i believe)

I believe I read some fluoride removal systems used aluminum (would have to check).

keralee - there are also fungi that can bind toxins into molecules that make the a non-issue, from what some have said. can not tell you what fungi, but hoping i have some.

Findaspring.com

I found there is a lovely spring 40 minutes from my residence.

My daughter and I bought five 5 gallon water containers, BPA free, from Walmart. They are stiff and look like Poland Spring bottles, but have screw caps. $7 each. Then my brother gave us two 5 gallon Poland Spring bottles. I washed them all by swishing a little dish soap and water inside (new containers must be washed or it stinks).

We fill them up at the spring

It's as good as a $2000 water filter I'm sure ! Screw city water with it's fluoride, chlorine, and other yucks.

We don't mind a ride in the country. That exact spring is 20 minutes from where we intend to live soon, if all goes well. So I think we can keep using it forever

Right now we have 35 gallons of that mineral rich lovely water

(click to enlarge)

It's a cool spring that constantly flows from the PVC pipe

Sorry about the sign in the pic, it's covered in acrylic and there was glare on it. It reads "Cooper Spring, Oxford Co Water and Soil conservation District, History Fred + Estella Pearson Cooper, Settled About 100 ft North of this Spring in 1881"

More details here :

http://www.findaspring.com/cooper-spring-buckfield-me/

I did a lot of reading about water filters. They start by removing large bits, like dirt, then get progressively smaller. The final stages are a charcoal filter then a UV light. The UV light zaps viruses and bacteria but it must be the last stage - because a bug could conceivably hide from the UV light behind a piece of dirt.

I also learned about "bio sand filters", they are very interesting :

http://www.biosandfilter.org/biosandfilter/index.php/

Read through that website, they have DIY plans and all is free.

In 3rd world places they get dirty water and it gives them sickness. They run it through these bio sand filters and microbes eventually form in the top layer that are calibrated to the water source. Those microbes eat the bad stuff from the water, then the water goes through finer and finer sand and comes out clean I may be explaining it wrong LOL

I've seen this theory before. It's widespread.

I hear good things about Berky filters but would like to add UV to it.

I've also heard good things about Sawyer water filters, they have a million gallon guarantee. That's cool ! Yet still needs particulate filer "pre" and UV light "post", I think.

So for now, I'm using find a spring dot com and lugging 5 gallon jugs

Keep me posted !
Craig

not sure that the added toxic exposure from a couple hours of car time to get water will not cancel out the reduction from the spring water,

just saying inside a car is not often a very healthy environment.

I can dig it

I am a home employed computer repair guy though, if I don't get out sometimes I'd go mad LOL

(more mad that currently anyway)

I've been working all day today and wish I was outside right now.

So I am glad to go for a ride

But it is a good point, transporting spring water is not efficient. But I honestly believe it's equivalent to a $2000 water filter using our municipal water supply as a source. I've come to believe that Fluoride is nasty stuff ! I think the spring water has a lot of beneficial minerals too.

I've also come to learn that Poland Spring water, a popular water locally, is actually owned by evil Nestle ! I actually thought that Poland Spring water was from Poland Maine. So I am happy to collect my own water from Cooper spring rather than drink Nestle's stolen stuff. I've come to believe that Nestle is a terrible company.

But I don't claim to know everything LOL, we'll see how it all goes.

Cheers!
Craig

Dr Temp, it would not surprise me if aluminum is used in some fluoride removal systems, as they do bond well (thus teflon and aluminum pans)... I speculate that the main reason aluminum is often found in high amounts in brains of Alzheimer patients is that the aluminum is acting as transport agent for flouride compounds and these are the real culprits, strong neurotoxins.  I know trifluoroacetic acid can cause permanent nerve pain, at least.  This makes me think other Fl compounds would act similarly, if more slowly. 

yes, I too have heard that some fungi remove Fl, but don't necessarily want them cultivated in my kitchen.  I try to keep the mycelial action outdoors, where its a case of the more the merrier....
I don't know which ones either, so I just keep importing as many as I can and figure nature will work the rest out.

Did you all check http://www.findaspring.com ?

Once fluorine gets into the body, it can be detoxified using lugol's iodine solution.  Iodine tends to displace, and detoxify other halides, which include fluoride, chloride, & bromide.  Fluorides and chlorides are obviously common in municipal water supply.  Bromide is used in flour, and is highly destructive to the thyroid - I believe one of the reasons many people do better on a wheat free diet, is they stop consuming bromide.  Anyway, you want the halides out, and iodine is the key. 

Apparently that solution was used by Max Gerson too :

http://www.doctoryourself.com/gersonspeech.html

I'll check it out

While taking some horticulture classes, we learned that the spider plants - commonly sold in hanging baskets - will die if given too much tap water. This is because they are more sensitive to flouride than most common houseplants. If you let tap water set, uncovered, for 24 hours, or more, both the chlorine and flouride dissipates.

Debbie Marsh wrote:While taking some horticulture classes, we learned that the spider plants - commonly sold in hanging baskets - will die if given too much tap water. This is because they are more sensitive to flouride than most common houseplants. If you let tap water set, uncovered, for 24 hours, or more, both the chlorine and flouride dissipates.

You're right about chlorine, but fluoride does not dissipate from open containers. Only special filters will remove fluoride from water.

most places now add chloramine to water and not chlorine and chloramine will not dissipate. I don't know what filtered are needed to remove it but when they switched to chloramine here a lot of people who had aquariums and had been letting the chlorine evaporate off where very upset because their fish died. i worked at a pet store at the time. i have heard that filters that remove flouride also remove important minerals that need to be replaced but that was just something someone told me once i have never looked into it myself.

Still doesn't seem like we've come up with a very good solution to the fluoride problem. This is the best filter I've found so far: http://www.pelicanwater.com/whole_house_fluoride_filters.php

Seems like a lot of people want to dismiss the fluoride issue and not really pay attention to it. In my opinion, this is a terrible mistake. Fluoride is certainly a very toxic chemical; especially the type of fluoride they dump in our water. It's nothing more than a waste product from the phosphate mining industry. :S

So if anyone has a better filter or solution, I'd love to hear it!

I do that too Weston. I've known about it for years and I think about it all time, probably even daily, but I just keep using it.

I'm finally going to check out a local artisan well I found on www.findaspring.com and fill up a couple jugs of pure stuff. I just wish there were more than a couple in my area(Seattle).

yukkuri kame wrote:Once fluorine gets into the body, it can be detoxified using lugol's iodine solution.  Iodine tends to displace, and detoxify other halides, which include fluoride, chloride, & bromide.  Fluorides and chlorides are obviously common in municipal water supply.  Bromide is used in flour, and is highly destructive to the thyroid - I believe one of the reasons many people do better on a wheat free diet, is they stop consuming bromide.  Anyway, you want the halides out, and iodine is the key. 

Seaweed is the best natural source of iodine and it's packed with a lot of other minerals and vitamins too. I plan to forage some for the first time this year.

Toxin vs toxin ?

Looks like alumina actually will remove it.

http://www.rexresearch.com/scinews42013/regurgle.htm#fluoride

The study, published in the Journal of Chemistry, concluded that the removal of fluoride from drinking water using modified immobilized activated alumina (MIAA) resulted in a removal efficiency that was 1.35 times higher than normal immobilized activated alumina.

Modified immobilized activated alumina (MIAA) was added to water that was tainted with fluoride and then analysis was conducted to evaluate the quantity of fluoride that was removed from the water.

Effect of an adsorbent dose on the removal of fluoride at 20 ± 1°C.

It was discovered that MIAA, at 20 +/- degrees Celsius has the capacity to remove more than 95% of fluoride from water. In fact, the adsorption capacity of MIAA was much higher (0.76?mg/g) when compared to the adsorption capacity of activated charcoal (0.47?mg/g) for the same concentration fluoride samples.

The adsorption method that is used by modified immobilized activated alumina (MIAA) is much more cost-effective (Ali, I., & Gupta, V. K. [2007] Advances in water treatment by adsorption technology. Nature Protocols) than the popular Reverse Osmosis Filtration method.

Considering that both MIAA and Reverse Osmosis Filtration remove more than 90% of fluoride, MIAA could be a viable alternative to removing fluoride from drinking water supplies in developing countries.

Unfortunately, there are some limitations to the use of MIAA in removing fluoride from drinking water. The greatest challenge in the use of MIAA for removing fluoride from drinking water is filtering MIAA once all fluoride has been absorbed.

Not to mention that the reverse osmosis only works as long as the membrane is functional and they can wear out quickly (6 months I've read some places) and the fluoride filtering ability is one of the first to go. Also how effective either activated alumina or reverse osmosis are depends on the pH of the water - too alkaline means it doesn't filter as effectively, and since the hydrofluorosicilic acid is very very caustic, some water departments (like my old one) have taken to adding calcium bicarbonate to buffer the water (mine went from pH of close to 5 to pH of almost 9! No wonder DH started getting kidney stones!)

just ran across this from another post, here ya go. Tulsi. appears it is a variety of basil ? I was making basil mojitos all last summer.....

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/04/researchers-discover-that-tulasi-plant.html

Hi all Flouride being a + charged particle can be removed with zeolite ? best if its a good quality one, as most already have full cages. zeolite will remove all heavy metals and many other toxins as well as radiation.

have a look at www.pureliquidzeolite.com

Fluorine being a +ve particle
Is it ?

Not so sure about that ,I think you find all the halides are -ve its the metals that are the +ve on the whole

David

I use a Berkey filter with black and PF2 fluoride/arsenic filters. (the fluoride filters must be used in conjunction with black or other filters, they can't be used alone)

My family drinks water from the municipal tap filtered through the berkey with 2 black filters and 2 PF2 fluoride filters (they attach to the bottom of the black filters)

I'm very happy with the taste and smell of the water. Drinking water was a nightmare before this.

I don't know of any other options. There needs to be much more sincere work on fluoride management and a reevaluation of it's toxicity.


tl;dr: I use berkey with black and PF2 fluoride filters. It works great for me, I'm very happy with it, +1. I don't know of any other methods.

I also use what Hal uses, black berkey filter and PF2 fluoride/arsenic filters and my wife and I are happy with them. We've used them for 3 years at least. I'm just realizing I should be filtering my water used on my garden too. That chlorine/chloramine is probably hurting my soil life and I never thought about it before. Does anyone have recommendations on de-chlorination filters for hoses?

I am checking out a few recommended by the "GrowingYourGreens" guy, a youtube channel and website about growing your own food with occasional permaculture tie-ins and urban/suburban focus.

If you want to see his channel, it's here: http://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens?feature=watch

Anyway, the two recommendations are "Clean Water Fun" filter here:
http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Hose-Filter-Pesticides-Herbicides/dp/B007I6MN72/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372448171&sr=8-1&keywords=inline+hose+chlorine+filter

and this Boogie Brew product (they sell compost tea mixes mainly), available to viewers for a slight discount:
http://www.boogiebrew.net/gyg/
Product details:
http://www.boogiebrew.net/water-filter/

Anyone have any experience with these products or better ones? I'm leaning toward the Boogie Brew one with its longer lifespan and am considering trying some of their compost tea mix to boost my soil life.

Hi David sorry to confuse I wrote that comment really poorly.
Its the metals I was referring to.

My comment on Zeolite Removing Fluoride was in reference to hydrofluoric acid which is the main form used to fluoridate water, and as it is a waste product of smelters, and weapons manufacturing, it contains all sorts of heavy metals and toxins like lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, benzene and radioactive waste material.

All of this can be removed by the zeolite. But not the fluoride its self.

Bump.

Also, any wisdom on how to make a greywater system cleanse fluoride out of municipal water for my growies? is bone char effective enough? is there a way of making bone char without smelling up the neighborhood? can you do it in your oven or on a grill? any help here with getting from A to Z letter by letter would be appreciated. (Have bones, been accumulating them in the freezer for a year and a half now, originally was going to use them to remediate lead but maybe they can do double-duty). I love that you can siphon water from a tub downstairs with a hose and no plumbing changes necessary!

Still wanting some input on this--how to defluoridate and dechlorinate (de-chloromine-ify) my graywater. How much bone char do I need? can I make bone char myself or does it have to be heated to 1500 fahrenheit?? thanks!

There are mixed reports on the ability of Holy Basil (Tulsi) to remove fluoride:

http://althealthworks.com/1123/can-this-medicinal-herb-remove-fluoride-from-the-water-supply/
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Tulasi-cannot-reduce-fluoride-content-in-water/articleshow/20501528.cms

If you want to go crawling through the peer reviewed literature (sadly not too much), here is a google scholar search for you: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=tulsi+fluoride