Saturday, May 28, 2016

Demystifying NSF/ANSI standards for water filters (part 2)

Hi folks,

This is an addendum to my earlier post, Demystifying NSF/ANSI standards for water filters (part 1)

NSF/ANSI certification
I mentioned about checking for NSF/ANSI certification on your product. One way is to look for the NSF mark on your product, packaging and/or documentation. It may look like this:

Figure from NSF
Figure from NSF
  1. Do note that that the words on the mark may differ. Besides the above 2 examples, you may see "certified for home use" and other phrases being used.
  2. The actual standard is not necessarily shown on the mark e.g. NSF/ANSI 42, NSF/ANSI 53. You will have to check the packaging or dig through the documentation for that.
  3. The letters "NSF", white circle and blue leaf background seem quite standard but expect to see variations e.g. the following personal product is compliant to NSF/ANSI Standard 305 
    Figure from NSF
 NSF Certified vs. “Tested to NSF Standards”
 One more thing - be careful of products that claim to be "tested to NSF standards". It is meaningless as it is not really certified under NSF, hence there is no guarantee at all regarding its performance. see NSF for more details.

NSF certification has to be renewed yearly by the way.

Apparently, no anyone can perform the testing for certification. The ONLY three certifying organisations are NSF International, WQA (Water Quality Association) and UL (Underwriters Laboratories). 

Stay safe.

No comments: