The answer is yes, but it depends on the product category, not all water purifiers can filter bacteria and viruses in water. So what kind of water purifier can filter bacteria and viruses?
First of all, to know whether the water purifier can filter bacteria and viruses, the main thing to look at is the filter element in the water purifier. In general, the filter elements that can filter bacteria and viruses in water are divided into the following two types, UF(ultrafiltration) membrane filter element and RO (reverse osmosis) membrane filter element.
The ultrafiltration membrane filter element has a filtration accuracy of about 100nm to 10nm, which can effectively reduce the turbidity of the raw water, the visible matter and the total number of bacteria, that is to say, the ultrafiltration membrane can filter out some bacteria in the water, but it cannot achieve more efficient to filter bacteria and viruses.
For RO reverse osmosis membrane filter, people's biggest impression of this filter may lie in the two points of long use time and high replacement cost. However, RO membrane filters are powerful in bacterial and virus filtration because it's 0.1nm filtration accuracy. It can effectively reduce the total dissolved solids of water, remove Escherichia coli, and reduce the content of arsenic, cadmium, chromium (hexavalent) and lead. That is to say, the RO membrane filter element can effectively filter out bacteria and viruses in the water, as well as heavy metals in the water.
Another common filter element is composed of activated carbon. This filter element mainly filters impurities in the water through adsorption, and its filtering effect on viruses and bacteria is far less than the above two filter elements. If you want to drink water filtered by activated carbon, it is best to boil it before drinking.
