Neti pot / water filter question

marrah - August 18, 2021

I am in the UK and suffer from hay fever which gives post-nasal drip. It gets serious and it has caused me to lose my hearing for months on a few occasions.

I would like to buy a water filter so I can safely use my neti pot without the hassle of boiling water. The issue is that I am a broke student and I can only find the correct grade filters at a price out of my budget.

I was hoping someone might know a thing or two about this and point me in the direction of any brands/products easily available in the UK?

I know Brita filters are no good and that Berkey ones are good (but £££).

At the moment I am looking at this affordable filter (tragic, I know):

3  

Get a Berkfield filter candle and scrounge a couple of catering grade plastic tubs and make your own.

Filter candle

Two tubs with lids

one plastic tap from a DIY brewers shop.

 

This is actually a topic I can help you out with! I was researching this earlier this month for my wife. She wanted to use a neti pot because of allergies as well but we didn’t have any distilled water on hand. 

I understand the broke student situation and have been there myself. The cheapest and easiest solution for the short term is to just buy a jug of distilled water from your grocery store. This water has been sterilized and only contains pure water. No extra flouride or minerals. 

For a better long term solution, I would pick up a Sawyer mini or Hydroblu Versa for less than $25. I learned about these from the best water filters article on this site.

The FDA says that tap water is safe to drink, but not safe to flush your nose with. Low levels of bacteria can still be present in tap water and can lead to infection if put into your nose. Between 1962-2014 there has only been one very rare brain infection ameba that affected someone from nasal rinsing. The two filters listed above are able to filter down to 0.1 microns and the rare brain infection ameba can be filtered out with 1 micron filters. 

Hopefully that leaves you with some options. Another benefit of having one of those filters on hand is you now have an emergency source of drinking water that you can filter. 

 

Thank you Mike for the information. I’ve always just used tap water but will stop using that because of what you said about infections.