When you spend sufficient time on Instagram, you would possibly start to get the concept the largest drawback dealing with America is water. And that one of the best bathe water filters are the one reply. Over the previous few years, a brand new era of fashionable filtered showerheads has arrived to hijack our collective social media feed—and presumably our unconscious—with a terrifying query.
Can you actually belief the water that comes out of your bathe?
The reply, according to WIRED’s reporting, isn’t all the time encouraging. The makers of filtered showerheads typically make daring pronouncements about what your deteriorating pipes and chemical-filled bathe water may be doing to your physique, throughout what might in any other case be the one peaceable 5 minutes of your day. When you can rid your self of the chlorine or contaminants in your water, the argument goes, it could be the treatment on your most embarrassing issues: every part from frizzy hair to limp hair to dandruff, hair loss, eczema, dry pores and skin, cut up ends, blackheads, and the heartbreak of psoriasis.
One of the best bathe water filters on this record are certainly fairly good at eradicating the abrasive chlorine compounds that cities add to your faucet water to kill micro organism. And so this was our focus. Possibly half the nation’s water techniques, together with New York and Seattle, use chlorine to disinfect the town’s water provide. However most main metropolitan areas use a extra steady substance known as chloramine that’s regarded as much less carcinogenic. Chloramine is harder to filter out—and never all bathe filters succeed.
In actual fact, the variations in efficiency had been shockingly huge in some circumstances. So, let’s say you don’t like chlorine in your water? And you reside in a metropolis? These are the showerheads we suggest.
For extra purity filters and checks, try our guides to the Best Backpacking Water Filters, Best Air Purifiers, and Best Indoor Air Quality Monitors. For extra methods to degree up your lavatory, try our guides to the Best Bidets, Best Electric Toothbrushes, and the Best Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products for Your Home.
Up to date April 2025: We have added the Weddell Duo, Hydroviv, and Curo filters and showerheads, and up to date our descriptions of earlier picks after sturdiness testing. We additionally up to date costs and hyperlinks all through.
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How We Examined and What We Examined
{Photograph}: Matthew Korfhage
The marketplace for filtered showerheads stays younger and largely unregulated, and efficiency claims are solely not often backed up publicly by unbiased information. We made a lot of requests, however few bathe filter corporations hand over their lab outcomes. (Thank you, Aquasana, Weddell, and Curo for being exceptions.)
Some makers advised us that unbiased labs and certifying our bodies have been backed up, and that information is forthcoming. Many provided buyer satisfaction surveys as an alternative. This all implies that some skepticism is warranted.
And so I bought out take a look at kits at residence, as an alternative. First I examined the full chlorine ranges within the water with none filtering, a measure that features both chloramine or free chlorine that is interacted with no matter’s in your pipes. Then I examined the water filtered by the showerhead. I carried out every take a look at a number of instances to account for imprecision or fluctuations in testing and in municipal chlorine ranges. Normally, I did this over a number of days.
For testing, I averted painfully unreliable residence take a look at strips, and as an alternative bought out considerably nasty chemical indicators and used digital and chemical checks designed for swimming pools and aquariums.
We additionally examined whole dissolved solids utilizing a TDS meter, and individually examined filters’ results on pH in an effort to gauge results but in addition to confirm the reliability of chemical take a look at outcomes.
The effectiveness of filters goes down over time, in fact, relying on how a lot contamination is filtered out of the water—which is why filters all the time have to be modified. As we replace this information, we’ll proceed to check the simplest showerhead filters to see how their efficacy adjustments over time—and add any new bathe filters we’re capable of suggest.
What Bathe Filters In all probability Don’t Do
The upshot is that you just in all probability shouldn’t anticipate these bathe filters to melt the mineral hardness of your water or take away most substances.
In any case, a filter should be comparatively small to suit right into a showerhead. And but it’s being requested to filter gallons of water every minute, pushed out at each excessive temperature and excessive strain. A showerhead filter poses a frightening engineering problem, as in comparison with countertop water filters that deal with solely a small quantity of water at a time—or a cumbersome reverse-osmosis system that may plug into your under-sink plumbing.
So what do these showerhead filters truly do, in a method we will measure? They filter chlorine and chlorine compounds, largely by way of chemical reactions. Just about each American metropolis provides low concentrations of chlorine or chlorine compounds to consuming water to kill probably dangerous micro organism. That is all nicely and good when the water’s nonetheless within the pipes. However chlorine’s not precisely nice on your hair or your pores and skin, and few folks wish to drink it. Some are additionally particularly delicate to the style or scent, or susceptible to pores and skin reactions.
Probably the most distinguished residence bathe filters rely partially on a zinc-copper combination known as KDF-55, identified to be fairly efficient at neutralizing “free” chlorine in chlorine-treated techniques. Different widespread substances used to deal with chlorine and chlorine compounds embody calcium sulfite and activated or catalytic carbon. The simplest filters use these in some mixture. The principle factor I used to be capable of confirm, and take a look at, was bathe filters’ capability to take away the full chlorine content material of water popping out of your bathe.
We’ve seen little proof that the most typical varieties of showerhead filters have a lot impact on the softness or hardness of water, or on calcium buildup. In actual fact, some early academic studies present evidence that they don’t. The bathe filters we examined additionally had little or no impact on the sum whole of dissolved solids in our water, in line with measurements with a TDS meter—i.e., the filters aren’t eradicating a considerable amount of supplies or minerals from the water.
I wasn’t capable of take a look at claims by some corporations that these filters take away heavy metals like lead and arsenic, which fortunately aren’t in my pipes. We solely discovered one firm, Weddell, whose filter was licensed to take away lead. Up to now, so good! Nonetheless, when you consider you will have harmful lead or arsenic in your water, you in all probability shouldn’t attempt to repair the issue with a mail-order showerhead. Speak to a water therapy skilled or your public well being authority.
When you dwell in a serious US metropolis, chlorine is probably going not what your metropolis makes use of to deal with the water in its pipes. New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Phoenix use chlorine, certain. However Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, and most huge cities in Texas don’t.
Greater than half of American huge cities use a substance known as chloramine, a extra steady and enduring chemical that’s more durable to filter and take a look at. That is additionally what was in my water provide. To check, I bought out my helpful digital water colorimeter and a considerably nasty chemical indicator, after which examined the power of every bathe filter to deal with any of various chlorine compounds within the water.
First I examined the full chlorine within the water with none filtering, then I examined the water filtered by the showerhead. I did every take a look at a number of instances to account for imprecision or fluctuations in testing and in municipal chlorine ranges. Normally, I did this over a number of days. As we replace this information, we’ll proceed to check the simplest showerhead filters to see how their efficacy adjustments over time—and add any new bathe filters we’re capable of suggest.
