You buy organic produce. You read labels. You've thought carefully about the toxins in your skincare and your cookware. But have you ever thought about the one thing you consume every single day, in greater volume than anything else — and that makes up roughly 60% of your body?
I had water quality specialist Sam Tornatore on me&my health up to talk about exactly this. Sam spent twenty years running goal-setting workshops before noticing that health came up more consistently than any other ambition his clients had — and that almost nobody was thinking about their water. He now runs Clean My Water and has a book on the way covering the water concerns he thinks Australian families should know about.
I want to be upfront about the framing, because Sam was insistent on it: this is not a criticism of Australian water. It's safe, the guidelines are real, and as he put it, we're blessed compared to much of the world. But safe and optimal are different standards. This conversation is about the gap between them.
Safe Water Isn't the Same as Optimal Water
Sam's central point is that we've quietly raised our standards everywhere except here. We no longer accept "not sick" as a definition of healthy when it comes to food, movement or sleep. Water is the exception — we assume it's handled, and we stop thinking.
Treatment plants have a genuinely difficult job: deliver water to millions of homes that won't make anyone ill, at a cost the public can bear. They do that job well. What they can't do is deliver something pharmaceutically pure to every tap. As Sam said, the only part of the system you actually control is what happens once the water enters your home. That's a more useful place to put your attention than frustration at things outside your influence.
Chlorine: More Than You'd Expect
Chlorine is the obvious starting point, and it's no secret — it's the primary disinfectant in our water supply, and without it we'd be dealing with the waterborne illness common in countries with less infrastructure. It has earned its place.
The figure that surprised me is the permitted ceiling. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines allow up to five parts per million, and a typical swimming pool sits between one and three. Sam has tested homes where the tap genuinely read higher than the pool in the backyard — including one memorable occasion where the homeowner challenged him to measure both.
From my side of the table, the gut is the interesting part. Chlorine is a disinfectant; it doesn't discriminate between the bacteria we want gone and the microbiome we're trying to nurture. For sensitive people, that can show up as discomfort after drinking tap water. Sam also raised a route most people miss entirely: a meaningful share of your chlorine exposure comes through the skin and the lungs in the shower, where it's warm and vaporising. He notes that chlorine strips the skin's natural oils and barrier, which won't help anyone managing eczema, irritation or hair issues. Worth remembering that if you filter drinking water only, you've addressed part of the picture.
PFAS and Pesticides: The Chemicals That Don't Leave
PFAS — the "forever chemicals" — have had significant media attention in Australia recently, and for good reason. They originate largely in non-stick and industrial applications, and they are extraordinarily persistent. Sam mentioned studies detecting them in seal blood in Antarctica, which tells you how little containment there has ever been.
The recent controversy came from the United States tightening its permitted limits to a level below what Australian water currently sits at. I'd echo Sam's caution here: research links PFAS to a broad range of health conditions, and "linked" is doing real work in that sentence. This is an area to look into properly rather than panic about. But it's reasonable to want less of it.
Pesticides and herbicides follow a similar path. They're sprayed for legitimate agricultural reasons, rain moves them into creeks, creeks into reservoirs, reservoirs into treatment plants that cannot remove everything. Sam also flagged rainwater tanks, which many people assume are the clean option: whatever lands on your roof — airborne chemicals, bird droppings, road grime — goes into the tank without adequate filtration. The Queensland Government publishes a fact sheet on exactly this.
The reasonable objection is that each exposure is tiny. That's true. But the body's detoxification pathways are already handling air pollution, food additives and everything else modern life supplies. My concern with drinking water quality isn't any single contaminant — it's cumulative load on a system that's already working overtime.
How to Choose a Filter Without Getting Sold To
Sam's advice here was the most practical part of our conversation, and notably free of pressure. Work out what's actually in your water and what you want removed first — then match a product to that list. Not the other way around.
Then insist on evidence. Ask for independent testing data, ideally from an Australian institution, with removal percentages for the specific contaminants you care about. A marketing claim is not data. This matters because systems differ enormously — fluoride, for instance, is removed by some and not others, so if it's on your list you need to check specifically.
For scale: most standard filters work down to around one micron, while a human hair is roughly one hundred. Reverse osmosis reaches about 0.0001 micron, which is what's needed to consistently remove PFAS and the great majority of contaminants. The trade-off is that RO strips the beneficial minerals too, so look for a system with a remineralisation stage adding back magnesium, potassium and calcium. Sam's honest summary: everything works to some degree, from a supermarket jug upwards. The question is how much removal you want, and who has verified it.
Key Takeaways
- Safe water and optimal water are different standards — treated supply clears the first bar, not necessarily the second.
- Australian guidelines permit up to 5ppm chlorine; a swimming pool typically runs 1–3ppm.
- A large share of chlorine exposure comes through skin and lungs in the shower, not just from drinking.
- PFAS are highly persistent and generally require reverse osmosis for consistent removal.
- Rainwater tanks need filtration too — your roof collects everything the wind delivers.
- Decide what you want removed first, then demand independent test data with removal percentages.
- If you choose reverse osmosis, add a remineralisation stage.
Water is the easiest foundation to overlook precisely because it's always there. But if you're already investing in good food, decent sleep and regular movement, then drinking water quality is a genuinely low-effort next layer — a one-time decision that keeps paying off every day rather than a habit you have to maintain. That's how I like to work at me&my wellness: get the foundations right, make the change once, and let it compound. As Sam put it, your health is your wealth.
Want to go deeper on this? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Anthony at meandmywellness.com.au