How to Know What's In Your Drinking Water

The Wirecutter Show

The New York Times

Life Hacks, Product Recommendations, Wirecutter, Podcast, New York Times, How To, The Wirecutter Show, Leisure, Recommendations, Products, Testing, Home & Garden, Society & Culture, Education

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Should you filter your drinking water? We discuss how to decide, when to test your water, and the pros and cons of various filters.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A filter is not going to do anything bad to your water.
0:07.9	So you're not adding to your risk by using one.
0:11.3	And if it's important to you to just know, basically,
0:13.9	that if there are any of the things that this filter is certified for in my water,
0:19.0	they will then be gone.
0:20.3	Then go ahead.
0:23.2	I'm Christine Cyr Clissette.
0:24.9	I'm Cairo Blackwell.
0:26.1	I'm Rosie Garan, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.
0:41.8	Pod friends.
0:42.7	Hello.
0:43.2	Hello.
0:44.8	Today we're going to talk about water.
0:46.9	Water, the essence of life.
0:48.1	Sounds exciting.
0:49.2	Beautiful.
0:52.7	I was in Philly last weekend visiting my father-in-law.
0:53.5	We went out to dinner.
1:15.5	The waiter came over and offered us tap water, he said something snarky. Like tap is fine. It's not as good as New York tap water, but Phillies will do. I mean, that's true. That is just like a Philly thing. They're feeling inferior to New York. What's new? No. It was funny because it came perfectly timed to us prepping an episode on water filtration.
1:18.1	This is a thing that's in the news.
1:28.8	I mean, we continue to see news reports about microplastics, Pfoss, you know, Flint, Michigan, where the lead in the water crisis dragged on for about a decade,
1:32.9	similar issues with water in Newark, New Jersey, near where I live.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.