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Q. Why does the price vary between suppliers?
A. The same as with any product, you can get cheap electric food blenders or sound systems, and you can get expensive ones. They may look similar, do the same thing, but one may have more sturdy, reliable or user-friendly parts.
Also, of course, the overheads and costs of a business determines the profit margin they need to make. In order to provide good service, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it cost money. Generally, if you buy cheap, you may not get the service you may like. If theres's not enough profit to include costs for on-going daily service, then there's not enough profit to stay in business. This is why so many 'fly-by-nighters' have come and go in our 16 years of trading. Make a quick sale, a 'quick buck,' and move on ie not profitable enough.
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Q. Why don't you have a retail shop?
A. By operating as a 'Mail/Phone Order' & Home Demonstration business, rather than incur the high costs associated with operating a retail shop, we at Crystalline can offer both reasonable prices AND on-going service. (We have previously had retail premises in Oakleigh and Mordialloc in Melbourne). Overhead costs are the things you are also paying for; not just a higher-priced 'better'purifier.
In fact, many businesses 'stretch the truth' with such claims as 'established in 1992' for example. Some may believe they have sold the product since 1992. Not necessarily, it can often mean that they started some kind of business, or business name, eg plumbing contractors or health supplements etc etc, but they may have only been dealing with water purifiers since perhaps 2004! Or original operator may have formed the business in 1992, but the current operator may have had say, one year experience. Tricky stuff! This is very common in all industries, where just the name is the same, but policies, service, competence, reliability, and product choices etc are provided by new person/s.
So, a shop can, and does, easily close down. High costs, and mostly just neighbours to come in to buy, can often result in 'shop vacant' for specialist retailers.
As we don't wish to rely on mainly neighbours to keep buying our products, our method of operation means that you don't spend time and money driving around shopping. Reasonable prices and convenience for customers is our aim. We supply Australia wide, which is why we offer the money-back satisfaction guarantee.
We here at Crystalline have sold nothing but water purifiers since 1989. In fact, we were the 1st company in Victoria to form for the purpose of selling water purifiers!
(There were virtually NO filter retailers here then. An old Yellow Pages will show this.)
So, just because we don't rent a shop, don't necessarily pass us by! We are here for the 'long haul'. We hope our history shows you that we are professional, successful, and at least as trust-worthy as the next guy! (Company documents and registrations prove our longevity and proper trading; more reliable perhaps than words from sales people, you may agree).
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Q. How do I choose the right filter for me?
A. We have a comprehensive answer to this question, which we hope you find helpful - please see link in menu called "What to Look For in a Filter."
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Q. Why do you oppose fluoride? I thought it was put in our water because it's good for teeth?
A. This answer is extracted from www.fluoridealert.org. You can also get information from the Anti-Fluoride Council in Melbourne - very informative. Most countries in Eastern Europe have banned fluoride, as well as about half the States of America.
Fluoride is a by-product of producing fertilizer. Phosphate rock is mined and processed, creating a by-product called phosphogypsum. It has little or no commercial value, so it is simply piled up, or 'stacked'. Phosphogypsum contains concentrated levels of radioactive material, which could potentially result in harmful exposure to radiation. (1) For each 500 gms of commercial fertilizer produced, 2.5 kgs of concentrated phosphogypsum slurry is created. This is piped off to the acidic waste-water ponds, known as gypsum stacks (see photo). According to the EPA in USA, 32 million tons of raw gypsum waste is created each year. Current stockpile in central Florida stacks is nearly 1 billion metric tons. The waste-water ponds include such contaminants as fluoride, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and various by-products of uranium. Leaks from such ponds can wreak havoc to waterways and fish populations. See a massive sink-hole (pictured) that occurred June 15, 1994. The cave-in dumped 4-6 million cubic feet of toxic and radioactive gypsum and waste into the Florida aquifer, which provided 90% of the State's drinking water.
In the past, fluoride gases were allowed to escape via the chimneys, causing scorched vegetation, crops destroyed, and cattle crippled or killed. Now strict controls demand that "scrubbers" capture most of the fluoride gases. The fluoride acid (hydrofluorosilic acid), classified as a hazardous waste, is barrelled up and sold, un-refined, for addition to tap water. Recent estimates are that the phosphate industry sells approximately 200,000 tons of silicofluorides per year to US communities which continue to fluoridate water. Dr. J. William Hirzy, the current Senior Vice-President of EPA Headquarters Union (USA), recently expressed this view: "If the stuff gets in the air, it's a pollutant; if it gets into the river, it's a pollutant; if it gets into the lake, it's a pollutant; but if it goes right into your drinking water system, it's not a pollutant. That's amazing... There's got to be a better way to manage this stuff. ...In summary, we hold that fluoridation is an unreasonable risk. That is, the toxicity of fluoride is so great and the purported benefits associated with it are so small - if there are any at all - that requiring every man, woman and child in America to ingest it borders on criminal behaviour on the part of governments."
Dr. Arvid Arlsson, Winner, Nobel Prize for medicine (2000) also said "I am quite convinced that water fluoridation in a not-too-distant future, will be consigned to medical history."
Let's look at the risks of health problems. But first another titbit - did you know that tea contains fluoride? 1 cup of black tea (made with non-fluoridated water) naturally contains about 7.6 mg fluoride. And of course beer, juice, soft drinks (if produced in an area with fluoridated water), baby formulas, and commercial cereals contain fluoride too. So the total 'dose' an individual can ingest varies. Only about 50% is excreted from the body, the rest accumulates, primarily in the bones.
The purported benefits of fluoride are attained through topical application (contact with teeth). The claimed benefits are not associated with systemic use ie ingesting it!
All fluoride products designed for ingestion (i.e. fluoride supplements) are available by prescription only. Amazingly, no fluoride products designed for ingestion have ever been approved as safe or effective by the US Food & Drug Administration The only fluoride products which the FDA has approved, are products designed for topical - not systemic - application (i.e. fluoridated toothpaste).
Sodium fluoride is an extremely toxic substance -- just 3 to 5 grams, or about one teaspoon, is enough to kill a human being. Both children (swallowing gels) and adults (accidents involving malfunctioning of fluoride delivery equipment and filters on dialysis machines) have died from excess exposure.
Some of the main health issues associated with fluoride are: dental fluorosis (very common in young children), skeletal fluorosis (rampant in India, China where fluoride in groundwater is very high), kidney damage, infertility, hyperthyroidism, increased aluminium uptake, increased lead uptake, reduced magnesium uptake, tumours, hypoactivity, bone cancer, brain cell damage.
98% of Western Europe has rejected water fluoridation. This includes: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, and the majority of the UK (90%). New evidence suggests that fluoridation is either unnecessary or doesn't work. Cavities have declined at similarly impressive rates throughout the entire western, industrialized world over the past half century. This decline has occurred irrespective of a country's fluoridation status. Western Europe has experienced the same decline in cavities as the heavily fluoridated US, and today enjoys the SAME low level of tooth decay.
The largest dental survey ever conducted in the US found virtually no difference in dental decay between children living in fluoridated vs. un-fluoridated areas. The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Dental Research (NIDR), found that the average difference in tooth decay (0.6 tooth surfaces) between children living in fluoridated vs. un-fluoridated areas amounted to LESS than 0.5% of the 128 total tooth surfaces in a child's mouth. (9)
Skeletal Fluorosis is not clinically obvious until in the advanced stages. Early stages usually produces symptoms of stiffness, backache, and joint pains, (and sometimes abdominal pain); and is often mis-diagnosed as arthritis, rheumatoid or osteoarthritis.
The industrial chemicals used to fluoridate 91% of fluoridated water in the US (fluorosilicic acid & sodium silicofluoride) have never been tested for either safety or effectiveness. According to a recent letter from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "to answer your question on whether we have in our possession empirical scientific data on the effects of fluorosilicic acid or sodium silicofluoride on health and behaviour, the answer is no."
Extra comment from Crystalline: There are many substances which have been introduced to the public, which later are banned, after learning of the health risks - just some examples are: lead solder in water pipes, lead paint, PVC plastic (carcinogen), aluminium (whether cooking pots or added to water), asbestos products, DDT, preservatives, medical drugs, etc. But it's hard for governments and experts to say they were wrong. Who wants to be blamed for osteoarthritis, or other diseases!? Yet, NSW water authorities did succumb in 1996, and at least ceased adding aluminium to tap water, due to the extensive studies showing it is heavily linked with alzheimer's disease.
If you would like to remove fluoride from your drinking water with a Water Purifier, there are three types of filtration which will remove it (and other chemicals). They are: reverse osmosis, distiller and ion-exchange (or 'deioniser').
A Filter's ability to remove fluoride is actually a good guide as to the performance of a water purifier, because if it removes fluoride, it removes virtually every type of chemical contaminant that may be in the water. Sometime a water filter carries an impressive long list of chemicals which it can remove, but if fluoride is not in that list, then a lot of types of chemicals will remain in the filtered water. Organic chemicals will fill most of the list, and possibly some heavy metals eg lead. But in-organic substances, including fluoride, are not removed by common filtration methods eg any type of Carbon filters.
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Q. What about the new 'alkalinisers' seen in some health mags? Why don't you sell them?
A. Our comments on 'alkalinisers or 'water conditioners'
There are some new devices on the market, often calling themselves 'ionisers' alkalinisers, or water conditioners, which make some claims about how the water will improve your health, and be beneficial in a nutritional sense.
As these devices do not remove a lot of chemicals, because they use only Carbon filter media for chemical removal, (and possibly some rocks to trap dirt) we are not interested in selling such expensive items, for such poor purification results. While we would offer you carbon filters for a fraction of the cost of these products, virtually no-one chooses carbon filtration, when buying from the full range of purification, because there are much better options for chemical removal. So we see no reason to add another (expensive) carbon filter to our range.
Water Purifiers are meant to be about removing chemicals, and these ioniser/alkaniser devices deviate quite a lot from that focus. So we choose not to buy/sell them. FOOD, it's known, should be alkaline, for good health balance, (eg fruit, vegies, brown rice) but it may be a big leap of faith to assume that extra alkaline water (or pretty images of water molecules) processes into alkaline body state in the nutritional sense, and improved health condition. There is no empirical evidence/proof of this, in our search for the facts. Only anecdotes, and nice pictures of water molecules. And when there are nasty diseases like acidosis and alkalinosis, due to excesses of blood alkalinity levels (which should be in the finely tuned range of 7.34 - 7.45), we prefer not to interfere with your water's molecular composition, or try to change nature's work.
We are focused on chemical and bacteria removal, in the best possible ways available. Simple. And trust us, if a filter cartridge claims to never need filter replacements (or 20 years, or even 5 years), then it's a questionable 'filter'. How good is a vacuum cleaner, if it's claimed to never need a dirt bag to be emptied? You cannot just wash collected chemicals out of a water filter either, as is sometimes claimed! Only dirt can be 'back-washed' from some filters. And backwashing has no value, if you have a separate sediment pre-filter.
Aside from words, from sales people (like us!) the proof is in the pudding. Water samples from 'ionisers' or 'alkalinisers' (or any water) can be tested with a TDS meter, which shows that there are substances remaining in the water. If it showed zero TDS level (Total Dissolved Solids) then we would recommend/sell them to you, as a good water purifier, free of fluoride, dissolved inorganic metals, salts, inorganic chemicals, etc, just like rain water used to be (before airborne contamination). We tested the TDS from one of these devices, and found it reduced TDS by only about 1/3. We reject offers of alkalinisers from suppliers/factories (which are in Asia) to add to our range. Despite the huge profit margins.
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Q. What is TDS?
A. TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) is the term given to the sum total level of substances dissolved in the water. Example, sea water has TDS level of about 35,000 ppm, (mostly salt). Most Melbourne suburbs have about 40-60 ppm (or milligrams per litre), Sydney about 130 ppm. Sth Aust. and WA have extremely high TDS. Only Deioniser, Reverse Osmosis and Distillation remove TDS; the result: fully purified water. The water coming out of other types of purifiers eg. a Carbon Filter, will have the same (or almost) the same TDS as the tap water! A simple test with a TDS meter will reveal this.
FREE WATER TESTING
Crystalline offers free water testing of TDS level, if you'd like to send a small sample (or 2) of your water/s to us - any water eg tap, bottled, dam, tank, filtered etc. About 50 mls minimum is enough (will cost you$3.30 stamp to post to us, if in small clean containers eg full camera film jar, or pill jar).
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Q. Aren't minerals in water needed for my health? Water for nutrition?
A. Some people wonder, when fully purifying water, if the lost 'trace minerals' mean a dietary deficiency. These minute amounts of minerals are not essential to health - and they are not in a digestible organic form. For example, the traces of calcium that may be present in some water, is not the same calcium you find in milk; it's the type of calcium used to make concrete. We obtain our 'essential minerals' and other nutrients from food, not water. We are yet to see empirical evidence that inorganic traces of minerals in water are essential minerals for human health. The inorganic minerals in water are for plants to take up. Water is for hydration and cleansing, and makes up about 70% of the human body.
Rainwater* doesn't contain trace minerals - they are bits of dissolved dirt and rock collected when water flows on the ground, being a natural solvent. In any case, you would have to drink thousands of litres of water to get the same level of 'minerals' you'd find in one apple. If you choose a Purifier that leaves trace minerals in, then you also leave most metals and in-organic chemicals in your daily water (and fluoride). *Rain tank water typically contains bacteria, from tiny particles of bird droppings and other rotting organics. A water filter is recommended for rain tanks (drinking) to remove bacteria at least.
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Q. What about the odd filter which adds minerals to the water?
A. This device simply has an inexpensive rock called 'calcite' in it, which slowly dissolves some of the rock -"mineral" into your water. Again, this is inorganic substance, not organic, not assimilated by our body. Gadgets to modify nature's water, to attempt to make water a 'food', is not our recommendation. One wonders why one in 3 people get kidney stones in old age! Inorganic mineral build up is a main contributor! Our body collects about 22 kgs of inorganic calcium in a life time. The calcium you find in mineral water etc, is not the same calcium you find in milk - it is the type of calcium you find in concrete! If you need minerals, eat an apple! (or take a good supplement).
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Q. Why don't you offer 10 year warranty, or lifetime warranty?
A. We can offer extended warranty period, for extra premium (like with buying cars). We have seen the odd promise of 10 year, or even lifetime warranty, and wondered how can they stay in business with potentially costs going on for life? Who can pay for that? We know customer who checked it out, and found that it was like extracting teeth to get FULL reply on what is covered by warranty, or not covered by warranty. After 'half answers' the customer kept pushing with questions, until he learned that nothing was covered except the inexpensive plastic filter HOUSING, because everything else was considered 'normal wear and tear, which is not covered! On that basis, we would also give lifetime warranty to get your business!! But we are 'up front', and our warranty covers anything except damage caused by customer or their agent, or improper use, for the warranty period.
A warranty is meant to be for manufacturing or design faults, workmanship, and product failure due to those things. Breakage by customer or neglect etc is never usually covered in warranties, for ANY products sold. If you are advised that all mis-use, damage, wear and tear is covered in an unconditional warranty, we recommend you get it in writing. But it's only any good to you if the retailer is still there 10 years, or a lifetime later!! Scams have been carried out, where the 10 year promises are made, then the supplier promptly, deliberately closes down, so as to avoid the commitment made (and then, incredibly, start again under another name, with more empty promises). Awful! We are of the view 'there's no such thing as a free lunch'. If you receive a fantastic offer, which other reputable, long-term companies don't offer, we believe the offer must be evaluated very carefully.
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Q. What is NSF testing?
A. Note that it is often claimed on a filter brochure: 'meets NSF standard 58' (or standard 53 etc). Reading it carefully, if it doesn't say 'TESTED and approved to meet standard 58' then it means that the manufacturer or retailer or their other unrecognized laboratory, is claiming it meets the same standard, but is not actually tested/approved by NSF. The NSF logo (seen in our Sierra and Watermaker product pages) is not allowed to be used unless the product has been tested and approved by them. NSF is the most respected independent body of testing, for public health and safety, in the world.
There are various standards of testing done by NSF (National Sanitary Foundation). Only standard 58 is the rigorous test performed on Reverse Osmosis systems, meeting strict guidelines. For example, a carbon filter system can be certified by NSF for the functions achieved by Carbon filters e.g. Standard 42 or 53. It cannot achieve same results in above test standard 58. Bear in mind too, that a unit may not have been tested for all the contaminant reduction claims covered under the standard; only those contaminants for which the manufacturer has requested/paid for testing. The substances above were tested by the Sierra system.
(more info re NSF approval): For a drinking water system to become NSF Certified, it must meet 5 basic requirements, as follows:
1. Contaminant reduction claims are true.
2. The system does not add anything harmful to the water.
3. The system is structurally sound.
4. The advertising, literature and labelling are not misleading.
5. The materials and manufacturing process used do not change (after receiving the approval).
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Q. Why don't I just boil my water?
A. Some people believe that boiling their water will purify it. Boiling it (for at least 10 minutes for nearly any bacteria, or 1 minute for common bugs) will safely kill bacteria, but it will not remove chemicals, although some chlorine may evaporate, being gaseous. Boiling water away also actually concentrates the TDS level/contaminants in the water. Water from kettles and hot water urns often have a higher reading than your tap water.
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