this is my berky water filter it filters all of our drinking water and cooking water for our family I've had it for 3 and 1/2 years and I absolutely love it I purchased this because of the reviews that it had and I did look at the testing from some independent Labs on how these filters perform but the berky has been in the news lately and there are a few lawsuits out there against it so I'm going to talk about how it's performed for my family and whether or not I trust it anymore let's talk about it [Music] so just some numbers on how much we use this we've used this for 3 and 1/2 years that is 182 weeks we fill it up with 3 gallons of water about twice a week or I calculated that's about 364 times I've filled this up over the last 3 and 1/2 years and that's 1,092 gallons that I've run through here each one of the filters inside of here are rated to last 3,000 Gall so 6,000 Gall total coming through this so I'm about only a sixth of the way there berky says that this will remove between 99.1 and 99.999% of viruses bacteria Pharmaceuticals heavy metals and even radiological elements no other gravity filter on the market claims that at all not even close the only other filter system that claims to do anything like that at those levels is a reverse osmosis system but here's the thing about reverse osmosis you shouldn't drink reverse osmosis water now I know that's not what you want to hear and that's not what has been sold but my wife used to work in pediatric renal dialysis and she knows a lot of dialysis nurses they use RO water for dialysis systems because it is so pure it has everything taken out of it and one of the doctors a nephologist she works with saw somebody drinking AR water she told her not to do that why it's because AR water doesn't contain any electrolytes you're drinking pure water with nothing else in it you're not getting electrolytes into your body if you didn't know that you're going to have to get electrolytes into your body from some other source so be very careful if you're drinking exclusively only reverse osmosis water people were saying that the test results for the berky black filters were very small samples and those tests weren't over the lifetime of the actual filters themselves or what they claim the actual filter and I think that's where one of the lawsuits points to now that's a little concerning but the testing the initial testing was done by a n NSF certified or EPA testing laboratory that did all the NSF certified tests test 42 53 I think it is and 104 sorry I meant 401 you can find those test results from the Independent Labs all over the berki or New Millennium Concepts website they are there they were done and they don't regularly do them but I don't believe any of the other companies out there do constant and regular testing of what comes out of their filters through an EPA certified lab a lot of what I've seen for other companies like aquaa is their own in-house testing results listed on their website those testing results are for NSF 42 NSF 53 and 401 they don't say again how many gallons were filtered through those filters now aquasana has no claims versus these guys it's some independent people and the US government but not about the filtration claims on these and I will talk about that in a minute because that is incredibly important for you and for me right now here's another thing many of the other companies that have specific filters filtering their water they do not tell you to use water from any other source but a pable source which means your tap water that is already treated and coming into your house and potentially rainwater as well berky's claims say that you can put Lake water pond water stream water any type of water in here and it will filter out all the contaminants that it claims to filter out and it does that for a cost of about 3 cents a gallon which is unbelievably affordable but hey I want to go back to the reverse osmosis system for just a minute you need electricity to run that system system this is gravity Fed so in a grid down situation situation where you're going a long period of time without power say after a hurricane and you need clean drinking water a gravity fed system is what you are going to have to use so again getting clean water from Ro in that situation it's not going to work in my research I've found nothing better than these filters simpure Alexa pure uh brda any of those none of them compar to this I think the aquasana is probably the closest but again this is going to come down to a trust issue with people and people are dogging on this company because they think they have some perceived trust issue with them well let me talk about that for a minute the independent lab tests for this are independent right they can't came from certified Labs I haven't seen that anywhere else but if you want to talk about trust or contaminants in your water let's talk about that so are those same people who don't trust this one trusting another company with their own testing are those same people who are not trusting this company because they say their tests are old or whatever they didn't filter the whole amount of water that the filters are rated for are those people buying bottled water which sits in plastic bottles and potentially leeches microplastics into that water are they buying that type of water are they trusting their car breaks to work every time are they trusting pharmaceutical companies with their claims on their medicines what about a company like LifeStraw everybody knows LifeStraw they're made to be stuck into contaminated water if you're lost in the woods an emergency situation those filters are made in Vietnam Vietnam tests them per their standards over there they have those testing reports from their Labs on their website do you trust them can you trust them that's up to you this is all about an issue of trust you know the old saying is trust but verify well I verified by looking on their website at the independent reports and I've looked on the other websites at their in-house reports and so so I chose them for that reason let's talk about making clean water yourself so if you don't want to buy anything and you want to make clean water yourself there are two or three methods to be able to do that really effectively one is boiling the water one is distilling the water and one is running water through some sort of charcoal filter now all three of those will help you out in a sticky situation but let's talk about if boiling is actually better than this boiling water will kill pathogens viruses and bacteria that's not an issue and those are what make you sick initially right but if you have to do it for an extended period of time boiling water doesn't remove heavy metals and it doesn't remove chlorine what it does which is dangerous is concentrate them in the water so if you're boiling your water the steam is leaving the pathogens are dead but now you've got a higher concent ation of things you don't want to drink either distilling water is much much better so if you're distilling your water you're going to remove heavy metals they're not going to come up through that steam you're going to kill most viruses and bacteria but not all be careful though because a limited number of bacteria can survive that process now it also eliminates nitrates and sulfates and all that type of stuff however it does not remove voc's are volatile organic compounds or semi volatile organic compounds so again be careful if you're doing it yourself now you can take your distilled water which is better than the boiling and run that through some charcoal filters some charcoal that you make on your homestead and you're probably going to get a lot if not everything out but again are there any lab tests on that I don't think so so I doubt those lawsuits are going to go anywhere they've been going on for years and there's some guy on YouTube who claimed that uh he was filing a lawsuit against them and I don't think it's gone really anywhere it's in the courts here in Texas because that's where New Millennium Concepts is based but the most disturbing thing I want to talk about right now is the government's war against this company but in thinking about the government's lawsuit against New Millennium Concepts and thinking about it hard and extrapolating some information but something really hit me and it's going to surprise you too the EPA is trying to regulate or potentially ban these filters because they contain silver silver they say is classified now as a pesticide and since it is contained within the filters and I'll tell you what it does in a minute that they want to classify these as a pesticide and regulate or ban them you can buy colloidal silver which is just a suspension of silver at your local health food store so I don't know how that's possible but they want to regulate these the silver in the filters kills bacteria it is only second silver is only second to Copper I believe in its antimicrobial properties but the silver also attracts lead chlorine and trial methanes now listen to that last word cuz that's going to be important try halomethanes first lead and chlorine you really don't want to be drinking a lot of that especially lead right but check this out when chlorine is added as a disinfectant to your tap water or to water that you buy in the bottle at the store what it does is react with organic compounds in the ground mostly of a petroleum basis they're old decaying organic matter basically when the chlorine reacts with that it produces trihalomethanes now there is a certain level and I know because I sit on my local waterboard for a rural well system there's a certain level of trihalomethanes that is allowed for people to drink but we have to put the chlorine in it because the state mandates it to clear up some other things and kill bacteria in the water but a certain level of trihalomethanes get through trihalomethane cause cancer the silver in the berky system removes the chlorine and the trihalomethanes why is the EPA trying to ban these or at least at a minimum regulate them so armed with that information I want you to go out and find yourself a berky filter water system in my opinion they are the best on the market and maybe Alexa Pi's the second best I TR this thing with my family and trust is all I can do and I've tried to verify but at the end of the day in my opinion it's the best thing to have and the government's trying to regulate it so that might tell you something if this video was helpful for you please hit that like button and share it with your friends also to help support the channel and create more content like this please check out our t-shirts below the video and all of our links to all of our partners and equipment that we love to use here on our Homestead have a beautiful blessed day we'll see you next time bye