I was wondering if anybody knows what happens after you use your carbon water filter long enough so that it’s no longer filtering stuff out of the water. Does it just give you unfiltered water, basically? Or is there a downside risk to using a filter past its useful lifetime?
I read somewhere recently that a carbon filter could actually start dumping the stuff it’s already filtered out once it gets overloaded, making the water even more contaminated than just tap water. But… I don’t know whether that is really possible or likely and, if so, under what conditions. Maybe somebody in the water filter industry was just trying to scare me into buying filters more often. Does anyone have any good info on this?
Charcoal filters act by binding certain chemicals to the activated carbon element based on polarity. Once they are saturated, they simply stop binding.
However, if a stronger (i.e.: more active) chemical comes along, it will replace less active chemicals already in the filter – it is not dumping per-se, but replacing what is already there.
As such elements become more and more saturated, the binding qualities will also start to respond to water temperature – so a high water temperature could also cause a release of loosely bound chemicals.
In other words, it is a moving target. The point is to replace such filters sufficiently frequently to avoid the problem in the first place. And this timing will be a function of the amount of water used and the sorts of chemicals and contaminants to be removed, and the quantities in which they are present.