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This falls short of antimicrobial certification, so Lifestraw has warned against marketing the device for anything other than municipal water. But if my primary concern was bacteria or mold that is known to build up in filters and other water pitchers, I would definitely choose this life straw. The same IAPMO lab data in India also shows good removal of PFAS and PFOA “forever chemicals,” but not quite to the levels of my best filters.
This does not mean that the filter is perfect. The House’s tall two-stage filter, which includes a membrane filter and a replaceable activated carbon filter, makes the 10-Cup Life Straw very tall for a refrigerator pitcher: it’s about 13 inches tall. It only fits in my refrigerator because I already removed the shelf to allow for tall bottles and Meal kit boxes.
The Life Straw filter is also among the slowest I’ve tested, requiring more than 20 minutes to filter into a 10-cup jug. Although it removes free chlorine, it does not remove chloramine, a more stable disinfectant found in about half of municipal water systems. And so on If your city uses chloramine to treat its water If you are sensitive to smell, be careful.
For those who are particularly concerned about plastic even after filtering out microplastics, Life Straw also makes a glass version of the 7-cup water pitcher. But note that the filter housing is made of plastic, so this will not be a completely plastic-free water jug.
Other water filters tested
Photo: Matthew Corvage
Waterdrop 10-Cup Water Filter Pitcher for $21: Waterdrop is a decade-old, California-based company known for its innovative reverse osmosis water filters. The Waterdrop Hands-Free Water Filter Pitcher is a much more economical option than most filters; In fact, it’s the cheapest filter I’ve tested. It also features a strangely endearing design, with a small hinged lid that slides down almost frictionlessly to accept even a drop of water into its reservoir before closing again. The water filter is also the fastest I’ve tested, dripping through a full tank in less than two minutes, and is certified to NSF standards for lead-free manufacturing and chlorine removal. Its makers also claim to have tested filtration according to NSF standards on 372 other substances. So far, so good. But the lab results are not made public, nor is the identity of the third-party lab. My own testing showed that the filter was less successful at filtering Chloramine, the substance used to disinfect municipal water in half of American cities. The filter removed about 75 percent of the chloramines, a much worse performance than my best filters.