Arkansas Department of Health & Human Services
Division of Health
Center for Local Public Health - Environmental Health Branch - Engineering Section

Home treatment units may serve to improve the aesthetic quality of your home drinking water. If you do not like the taste or smell of water from your public water system, a home filter unit incorporating the proper type of treatment may be able to make your water more palatable. However, each unit has a specific life, and must be changed when that time period, or number of gallons treated, is reached. It is highly unlikely that a home unit will be necessary to provde safe water to you if you get your water from a community public water system. Our monitoring program helps to minimize the exceedances of the National Primary Drinking Water Regulations standards. Most home units are not designed to improve the microbiological quality of the water, and some may even contribute to microbial contamination by providing a place where bacteria can grow.