I see a blog / website saying PF2 Fluoride filters are fake and not filtering out as they claim? Can you please respond to these claims and are they true?
Please be assured that there is nothing here to be worried about.
Over the years we have multiple people trying to disregard the Berkey® Brand and writing up articles / blogs or social media posts with no legal claims or official test result like this post you are referring to.
Berkey brand is usually rated No.1 in water purification in most countries and this brand has been around here in UK & Europe for almost 20 years now and there have been multiple official and verified laboratory tests over the years that we stand by and are official and verified.
Let me explain everything to you in details below.
If you take a look on your provided website, firstly you can see that the person who wrote the article is promoting another brand in the end of the article.
Secondly, he did not post any official test result, so we can not take any credibility for this test results on his website.
There has been many different post on the internet and on social media post / groups over the years from people trying to disregard the Berkey brand and many more water filters brands to promote their own brands of their affiliate brands / links.
You can also see that he only posted a screenshot of ‘’Marketplace’’ website purchase and there are various sellers that sell Berkey product there and some of them are not verified or authorised Berkey sellers, meaning - Berkey item that are sold on online marketplaces are not always genuine Berkey filters.
Unfortunately there are many lookalike and non authentic filters being sold on the internet these days and we highly recommend you check the original seller status of the seller on that marketplace website and make sure this was bought from a verified Berkey® seller - so this person who wrote the article needs to show who exactly who the seller is that he bought this from. - Seems like this purchase is from Canadian seller on online marketplace website and this is not sold through us or our network of verified sites.
Online marketplace sites does not always check the authenticity of products sold on their websites through third party sellers usually.
Anyone can start to sell anything on these online marketplace websites and authenticity is not always guaranteed.
To see all the verified and official sellers of Berkey you need to go to manufactory website and click on International Authorised dealers and see if that seller is authorised seller or not. If not then he might have bought none authentic Berkey product or some after sale or rebranded products that is not original Berkey - Please see our article here about verifying Authenic Berkey Filters https://berkey-waterfilters.co.uk/pages/buyer-beware-verifying-authentic-berkey-warning-for-counterfeit-filers
If you take a better look at the website in question you can clearly see that he has been recommend Berkey for removing Fluoride from water before but now he put a waring sign and put 2 online marketplace affiliate links that basically give him money for some other water purification brand that he trying to sell on his website by discredit Berkey brand.
TDS Meter reading questions in same post / blog article
For your concerns regarding the TDS meter
When our customers use a TDS meter, what they find is that the reading both before and after the water has gone through the Black Berkey elements about the same.
And they are correct. The Black Berkey elements do not take out all of the beneficial minerals.
Thus, of the things that a TDS meter will actually detect, the Black Berkey elements will only remove the unwanted heavy metals such as lead and mercury as well as sedimentary minerals such as iron oxide and aluminum.
Therefore, your TDS reading will not change much unless you have a significant amount of heavy metals or sedimentary minerals in your water.
A TDS meter does not measure the amount of biological and chemical contaminants. The important thing is to not simply rely on a TDS meter for your measure of whether your water is good. You can have low TDS count water that has harmful bacteria in it. You can have high TDS count water that is perfectly safe (e.g. – pure, unpolluted ocean saltwater…albeit, you wouldn’t drink it, but that’s only because the mineral is salt). Thus, make sure you know what your TDS meter is actually telling you.
We will need to see official lab test results to have a better understanding of what we're dealing with, but you are correct in that a test strip is not the optimal way to test the purified water. In the United States, we recommend that our customers perform a Red Food Colouring test on the Black Berkey® Purifiers. - These drops and details can be found on our website
PF-2 fluoride filter leaking chemicals? - Is this true?
Regarding the PF-2 fluoride filter are leeching something dangerous in water, this would have been noticed years ago if this were true
This brand as stated above has been rated as No.1 brand on most Health websites all over the world And there are multiple official laboratory test over the years and some can be found on our website.
Those tests are real and verified from official laboratories
So if someone does a laboratory test in their home or in their own lab on Berkey they need to show the brand on the water filter test, laboratory name , name of the specialist or technician who took the test , everything need to be official and legal and legitimate person to perform and back up the test results
This website / blog link you posted is basically a post disregarding the Berkey Brand and there are no verified laboratory tests on this blog site to back this claims up
It is extremely important that the water sample was collected using Berkey® Water Collection Protocols. (See link here from USA site) If these protocols are not followed to the letter, it can contaminate the sample and cause a false positive.
PF-2 filters contain high-grade activated alumina (Al2O3), which currently is the most efficient media available for extracting fluoride from water.
They are completely harmless the active material in the PF-2 filters is alumina which is AlO3, aluminum trioxide, this is a recognised method to remove fluoride and alumina is an inert compound and therefore has no toxic effects.
An inert compound does not react chemically with living tissue.
Alumina is not aluminium. - Please understand this 2 is not the same
There are multiple articles about this online and we suggest you do the research yourself as well about Berkey Waterfilters and Alumina and PF2 fluoride filters performance against other fluoride filters on the market - We can not post these here as these articles are from other and independent companies and health websites - Please do online search on the internet and see for yourself the articles about this topic and tests
This is explained in details from BigBerkey Waterfilters in USA on their site with references from Wikipedia + Stanford University in USA at the bottom of the article (we can not post the link here as it’s from another site not related to our company) - Please search online for this as we can not post links from other sites here
Please see full and verified laboratory test results here
https://berkey-waterfilters.co.uk/pages/faqs#black-berkey-purification-elements-test-results
For further information, around 2 months ago we have the same question from multiple customers from a social media post from a lady in Dublin who took her own water test in Dublin, Ireland and claiming that Berkey was failing test result but when our management team take a closer look it was showing that the test result don’t even show this was from Berkey brand and no proof of purchase or proof of purchase from a authorised Berkey seller was shown. - She did not want to post her sellers name as well for some reason
We have the same situation here on your provided website / blog site, - we need to see the official test result from him if he is claiming all this otherwise it is no point to take this seriously.
Please see again that most of these posts are people trying to discredit the brand by pushing their own affiliate links or their own products as these links are showing. - At the bottom of the article you can see this person is posting affiliate links for his own filters (that he probably gets money from or sell himself)
And as stated before we have had many posts over the years but most of the time these post are from people who try to discredit Berkey brand or other water filter brands and wanted to sell their own brand.
Please be careful as not everything on the internet is true.
Please also find more articles for more information regarding our Berkey system here below
Please see our full FAQ page for all details and full verified laboratory test results