What is 1,4-dioxane and can it be filtered out of water? - WESH 2 Orlando
What is 1,4-dioxane and can it be filtered out of water?
Dioxane is used to make plastic, rubber and insecticides.
It dissolves things and is considered to have the potential to cause cancer.
So when the controversy came out that a form of dioxane is in the drinking water in parts of Seminole County, we wondered if a water filtration system for your home could take it out.
Bill Roche with Toppen Health sells water filtration systems for a living. His answer? It depends.
“If you have a reverse osmosis system, it can remove a significant amount,” Roche said. “If you have a carbon block system, it can remove some of it but not all of it."
Roche says the success rate is somewhere between 20% and 50% with a carbon block system.
Is he selling more water filtration systems now? Roche says yes, but sees no ties to the dioxane issue.
“I think people are becoming more aware of what they are consuming, the water they drink, the food they eat, and the environment they live in,” he said.
Why is dioxane so hard to get out of drinking water? Roche says it's not a particle, like a speck of sand. It has dissolved into the water, much like sugar dissolves into our coffee.
Related Knowledge Center: Air emissions
More than 30 years after the last major update of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has upended the ability of Congress to give the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies broad scope to combat air pollution, including the emission of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, further Biden administration efforts to limit emissions face opposition in the courts.