I still remember the eye rolls. All I did was take a quick drink from an airport water fountain, and my traveling companions looked at me like I was nuts. “You drank out of that?” they said. “Talk about bacteria!”
It’s true that not all public water fountains are cleaned as regularly or thoroughly as needed. And indeed, some are bacteria-laden. But to quote Beth Terry, author of “Plastic Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too”: “How can we support our public water infrastructure if we are not willing to drink from public sources?” (For the record, that airport fountain looked harmless, and I didn’t feel like spending five bucks on a bottle of Fiji water.)
But what about the taste of tap water, which is sometimes off-putting? The answer, in this case, is a clarifying system — not just for your home or office, but one that travels with you. My latest discovery is the EveryDrop portable water filter by Whirlpool. The contoured, funnel-like gadget comes with a micro contaminant replacement filter — good for two months or 60 gallons of filtering — that reduces chlorine and chloramine, i.e., the disinfectants that can give water an unpleasant taste and odor.
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The easy-to-use EveryDrop is designed to fill any size container — glass, coffee pitcher, baby bottle, your pet’s water dish, you name it — and comes with a convenient travel case so you can keep it clean on-the-go. The one drawback we noticed: Depending on the size of your container, the portable filter won’t fit under every faucet or into every sink. On the plus side, it’s eco-friendly and filters water much more quickly than many filtration pitchers.
$19.99; info at http://www.everydropwater.com
Pearson is a freelance reporter for Tribune Newspapers.