Well, first of all I am assuming the HubPages member who put the request on this topic is residing in the USA. And I think the point of I have and present here is valid for most of the civilized world. I am not trying to be discriminative here. The topic of clean drinking water is probably of much bigger importance for people who live in the rest of the world. But I am just focusing on what I assume is being brought up. The requester is asking about whether to purchase “PUR” or “Brita”, so I assume they live in the USA or country where tap water filters like that are available affordably on the retail market.

In the US and many other countries with developed water utilities tap water is safe to drink by healthy adults.

People with health problems and young children should refer to their doctor for specific info about requirements to additionally purifying the tap water in their area.

Providing tap water is usually a paid service from a water utility most often owned and operated by a local government – city, county, state etc. The easiest way to figure out who provides the tap water service in your are is to check your water bill. The company or organization who sends you your water bill (sometimes the government itself, like so-and-so county or so-and-so city) should have information on the safety of the water in your tap. They should also be the people you can get information from about, if your water has some breach of tolerance levels of certain content – bacteria, chemical elements, other contamination.

From the same source you should be able to find out also what would be characteristics to look for in a tap water filter. That will be, protection from elements and potential contamination that might be more common for your water utility company.

Additional source of information about potential contamination of tap water would be local, regional or national emergency agencies. Certainly regular listening to the news and media that is used to provide emergency information – radio, cable TV, off-the-air TV – would be of great help as with any other kind of emergency.

From my personal research on purchasing tap water filters, when I consulted with the retailers, it turned out that usually even the least expensive devices and filters for them will do a great job in the most cases of tap water that comes in a US home.

So the first consideration of preference to a specific device or type of filter would come from how convenient is it to use and how affordable it is to install and to change the filter by the recommended period.

Filters in tap water filtering devices usually have to be replaced at certain period of time (3 months, 6 months, 12 months) and or at reaching certain quantity of water they have been used for. Specific information about this is available on the packaging of all products.

If we go in the details of what exactly the different manufactures claim their products do you will see that many filters especially the more expensive ones target contamination elements that a retail store consultant will say are above of what is normally needed fro regular tap water. Again, your water utility, your doctor or an emergency agency might have advised that certain additional features like that are needed.

As per the particular brands mentioned – PUR and Brita – there are consumer review reports that would suggest that PUR is better. Particularly PUR’s water pitcher and faucet mounted device are rated very high and for under-the-sink device the Culligan’s products have been rated high.

Here is a link to one report: http://www.consumersearch.com/water-filters.

Popular brands in the product group, roughly in order of popularity, are: PUR, Brita, Culligan, Everpure, Omnifilter, Cuno, Aquasana, Moen, Hydrotech, Omnipure, Pura. Also most of the home appliance brands have their own tap water purifying products usually under the same brand name: Ge, Moen, Whirlpool, Maytag, Frigidaire, Kohler, Amana, Braun. Necessarily the refrigerator brands have their own filter products for use in the water and ice lines in the refrigerators.

Before I buy I would read the labels and packaging marking of the products to learn more about the manufacturer claimed abilities of the product. They will usually have some tests results as per the cleaning abilities for certain contamination elements. Similar information about the particular products should be available on the brand and manufacturer’s web site too.

Here are links to useful information:

Natural Resources Defense Concil  http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qtap.asp

Forbes Magazine Article on Cities With Cleanest Tap Water  http://tinyurl.com/62wbaj

National Tap Quality Database – extensive database on contaminations and “over health limits” contaminations per state http://www.ewg.org/tapwater/national/state_ranking.php