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How Does UV Light Make My Drinking Water Safe?
The Basics of UV Water Treatement

UV Lamp Depot - December 2008

The use of UV light to kill harmful and disease-causing pathogens in water has a long history of success around the world.

UV light is used today in a wide variety of water treatment applications including everything from municipal drinking water right down to the homeowner level where UV light is employed to disinfect all the water entering the home.

The great advantage of UV light of course is that it is completely chemical-free.

UV light seeks to mimic nature to disinfect drinking water. We are all familiar with the harmful effects of too much sunlight on our skin (burns, and skin cell damage). The UV light in a drinking water filter does exactly the same thing, but the dose of intense UV rays inside the chamber is much higher than the rays of the sun touching your skin.

Inside the UV reaction chamber this high-intensity UV light virtually destroys all pathogens and disease-causing organisms including e.coli. coliform, legionella, influenza, hepatitis, listeria and many more. The UV light attacks the DNA of these pathogens and kills them almost instantaneously. The disinfection process happens continiously as water flows through the UV chamber, there is no need for batch treatment of the water as is the case with most chemical type disinfectants.

When a UV system is properly installed in the home, one never needs to worry about boil-water situations, or bacterial or viral contamination of any sort. The system must be maintained on a regular (usually annual) basis in order to work at an optimal level of disinfection.

UV water treatment systems are very popular among those concerned about the proliferation of chemicals in the environment. No chemicals are used with a UV system and no harmful by-products are created with UV disinfection as may be the case with chemical treatments.

The bottom line is that UV light is a powerful and environmentally friendly disinfection technology which is priced well within the budget of almost any household. These systems are particularly important in rural settings to treat well water from private wells.

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