This does not equate to antimicrobial certification, so Lifestraw cautions against selling anything other than municipal water. But if my main concern was the bacteria or mold known to potentially accumulate in other water filters and cylinders, I would definitely spring for this Lifestraw. The same IAPMO India lab data also shows good removal of PFAS and PFOA “permanent chemicals,” although not quite to the levels of my top choice of filters.
This does not mean that the filter is perfect. Home’s tall two-stage filter, which includes a membrane filter and a replaceable carbon filter, makes the 10-cup Lifestraw the tallest for a freezer jar: about 13 inches tall. It just fits in my refrigerator because I had already removed the shelves to allow for tall bottles and food boxes.
The Lifestraw filter is also among the slowest filters I’ve tested, requiring more than 20 minutes to filter a 10-cup jug. And while it removes free chlorine, it doesn’t remove chloramine—the strongest disinfectant found in about half of municipal water systems. And so if your city uses chloramine to treat its water and you are sensitive to smells, be careful.
For those who are very concerned about plastic even after filtering out microplastics, Lifestraw also makes a glass version of its 7-cup water jug. But note that the filter housing is plastic, and so this still won’t make a completely plastic-free water jug.
Other Water Filters Tried
Photo: Matthew Korfhage
Waterdrop 10-Cup Water Filter Jar for $21: Waterdrop is a decade-old, California company best known for countertop reverse osmosis water filters. This hands-free water filter pitcher from Waterdrop is a more economical option than most filters; in fact, it’s the cheapest filter I’ve tried. It also has an incredibly cool design, with a small hinged lid that will slide down without friction to allow even a small amount of water to enter its reservoir before retracting. The water filter is also the fastest I’ve tested, draining a full reservoir in less than two minutes, and it’s certified to NSF standards for lead-free manufacturing and chlorine removal. Its creators also claim to have tested the filtration to NSF standards on 372 other items. So far, so good. But lab results are not published publicly, nor are the identities of third-party labs. My own testing showed that the filter is not very efficient at filtering chloramine, a substance used to kill municipal water in half of America’s cities. The filter removed about 75 percent of the chloramines, a worse performance than my selective filters.
