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Comment by block_dagger | Hacker News Reader

I've been using a reverse osmosis water filter at home to reduce microplastics and other contaminants from my drinking and cooking water for the past few years. I am using the #1 recommended product on Buyer's Guide[1] for others who are interested.

[1] https://buyersguide.org/countertop-reverse-osmosis-system/t/...

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> I am using the #1 recommended product on Buyer's Guide[1] for others who are interested.

I’m reading their “review” but I don’t see anything other than common ChatGPT affiliate link blog spam. The “review” is just generic filler content about water filtration, not even about this product. These websites just collect products with profitable affiliate links, run the description of the product through an LLM to get it into a standard format, and then drive traffic to their list to collect affiliate revenue.

This website hasn’t reviewed anything. They’re just tricking people into clicking links to buy expensive products that will give them affiliate ad revenue.

Please don’t encourage the proliferation of these website by linking to them or endorsing their rankings.

Reverse osmosis leaches microplastics (because of the membrane):

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/scientists-find-about-a...

I guess it’s possible to distill the water and add clean minerals back in. (Not sure if “clean minerals” are something that you can obtain though.)

After the RO layer should exist another activated charcoal layer. This should block most of the leaked polyamide from the RO layer. My filter is this way.

You point to the membrane as a leakage source, but most RO systems also use flexible hosing in the assembly and from past work in medical devices it seems that flexible hosing is also a huge source of phthalate leakage.

Is that something that is also taken into account in higher end RO systems?

Reverse osmosis completely removes heavy metals from water. I’ll take my chances with microplastic over lead.

I don't want to be a downer, but given the pervasive amount of plastics in food, it seems essentially impossible to have a meaningful impact on overall plastic consumption for anyone who depends on a supermarket/restaurants for sustenance.

I'm also vegan and buy mostly organic products and cook at home. I get your point, though. There's only so much we can do. The tofu I eat daily comes in plastic containers, unfortunately.

Organic food doesn't seem to fare any better in the report.

Of course, a reverse osmosis filter system made of...Plastic.

Honestly what else are you going to make it out of? Metal? What about rust? Horrible idea to make it out of metal.

Is this sarcasm?

Rust is fine to consume, but there are also metals that don’t corrode in water.

Semipermeable osmatic membranes cannot be made out of metal

I’m not familiar with this buyers guide site. Is it critical rankings by a human or some sort of automatic ranking / SEO spam?

I tried reading their review. It was completely vacuous.

This isn’t a real review site. It’s an SEO trap for affiliate revenue. I thought HN readers could spot these affiliate spam sites, but I guess not everyone is on to this scam.

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