If you think that your public water filtration system is providing you with healthy water, think again. The fact is that the systems used in most American facilities are aging. The technology they use has been around since the sixties and has not been upgraded regularly.

That's a big problem, because as environmental pollutants have continued to rise and enter the ground water, the treatment facilities have done nothing to keep up.

You really have to take matters into your own hands and invest in an in-home water filtration system.

While municipalities may not be able to afford advanced technology, it is affordable for most families.

You need an advanced water filtration system to remove to remove microscopic organisms known as cysts. Public treatment facilities in the United States are still using chlorine to "disinfect" the water, but some of the most dangerous organisms are resistant to chlorine disinfection.

The CDC reports that 35% of all gastrointestinal illnesses in the US were caused by bad drinking water. They also say that most cases go unreported because people think they have the "stomach flu".

Most organizations have not gone so far as to recommend an in-home water filtration system. They are busy trying to get the government to do something about our problems.

You would think that anyone who knows anything about the thousands of potentially deadly contaminants in tap water would recommend an in-home water filtration system.

You would think that government officials would warn people about lead contamination, micron contamination, chemical contamination, links to cancer, etc. Mostly, though, it's environmentalists and consumer groups that are trying to warn the average person.

In Baltimore MD and Washington DC, no one should drink tap water that has not been run through a lead-blocking water filtration system. But, most people don't know it.

For a little while, they shut off all of the drinking water fountains in DC, because the lead content was so high. They are back on again now, but not because they installed a lead-blocking water filtration system. They did not replace the aging pipes, either. No one really knows why they suddenly decided that the water was "safe" again.

The real problem is that we let elected officials and government employees decide what is safe for our families.

It is hard to get honest facts about the effectiveness of your local water filtration system. They are required by federal law to publish regular reports concerning chemical and biological contamination, but the Washington Post reports that the reports are not entirely truthful.

No one likes to think that they are being lied to. We want to trust our city, county and state officials, but it seems they do not trust us. They are more concerned about protests. They believe that we will not understand the actual data.

Anyone can understand what an effective water filtration system should do. It should provide clean safe drinking water. If the treatment facilities cannot do the whole job, then we will have to do it ourselves.

It will likely be years before the government takes any kind of action to further protect our health. Right now, when it comes to healthy drinking water, the only solution is a high quality in-home water filtration system.