Filtered water at home and the choices we make every day
I realised recently just how often I’m at my Quooker tap before I’ve even left the house. A couple of herbal teas, water for my homemade almond milk, a bottle to take with me. It’s such a familiar part of my morning that I barely think about it, yet it's made me think more about the water we drink and how we build these everyday habits into our homes.
After more than 30 years in interiors, I still get excited about product design. I love a beautiful finish and a cleverly considered detail, and I’m increasingly interested in how those choices support us day after day. What’s happening beneath the sink can be just as interesting to me as the tap we see above it.
Water has become a personal subject for me. I’ve been following Dr Rhonda Patrick’s conversations through FoundMyFitness, particularly her discussions about plastics in our food, drinks and kitchens.
Her look at everyday plastic exposure in the kitchen really connects with the questions I find myself asking at home and when specifying for clients. What are we drinking? What has it been stored in? And what could we improve with the products we choose?
One thing I wanted to understand was the difference between microplastics and nanoplastics. Both are tiny plastic particles; the distinction is their size. Microplastics are generally described as smaller than 5 millimetres, while nanoplastics are smaller still, commonly below 1 micrometre—one-thousandth of a millimetre. The boundaries vary between studies, but NIST’s explanation helped put that scale into perspective for me. It also explains why a filter designed to capture microplastics may miss smaller nanoplastics.
A 2024 study of three bottled-water brands found an average of around 240,000 plastic particles per litre in the samples, with approximately 90% classed as nanoplastics. That really caught my attention. I think many of us have associated bottled water with purity, so research like this makes you pause and look again at something so familiar.
Then there was the glass-bottle research. In a French study published in 2025, several drinks sold in glass contained more microplastics than their equivalents in other packaging. Many of the particles matched the paint on the metal caps. I found that fascinating: even when we think we’ve chosen glass, the little closure at the top is part of the story too. Water and wine had much lower counts than some of the other drinks tested, but it made me think more carefully about the whole package.
Last year, I decided to have a PlasticTox blood screen myself. My sample was taken in October 2025, and the report identified 24 particles: 20 smaller than 10 micrometres and four between 10 and 30 micrometres. Seeing those figures attached to my own sample brought the subject much closer to home. It’s an exploratory test rather than a diagnosis, and it doesn’t tell me where the particles came from or what they mean for my health. For me, it added a personal reason to keep learning and to look at the everyday choices within my reach.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve also started taking beta-glucans after hearing Rhonda discuss fibre and environmental contaminants. It made me want to understand more about what fibre actually does as it moves through our digestive system, and whether it could help the body eliminate some of the substances we’re exposed to. The beta-glucans found in oats and barley are soluble fibres. They absorb water and form a gel in the gut, which can help carry bile acids out of the body in our stools. Those bile acids would otherwise be largely reabsorbed and reused. This helps explain oat beta-glucan’s well-established ability to lower LDL cholesterol. I find it fascinating that something present in such familiar foods can play this role.
The newer question is whether that gel could also help reduce the reabsorption of certain PFAS, often called “forever chemicals”, so that more leave through the bowel. These are chemicals, not microplastic particles. A 2025 pilot study using oat beta-glucan explored this idea and found encouraging changes in some PFAS measures, although total PFAS fell by a similar amount in both the supplement and comparison groups. It’s early research, but the possibility of helping interrupt that reabsorption cycle is what caught my interest.
I’m right at the beginning of trying this myself. We don’t yet have evidence that beta-glucans clear microplastics already in our bodies, so I see this as something to learn more about as the research develops. It sits alongside my interest in what we eat, the water we drink and the products we bring into our homes. I enjoy understanding how those everyday choices connect.
I now notice the packaging around our drinks much more. A paper takeaway cup often has a thin plastic lining to hold the liquid without becoming soggy. In laboratory tests, NIST researchers found that polyethylene-lined cups released nanoparticles when exposed to very hot water. Drink cans can also have an internal polymer coating to protect the drink and prevent corrosion. We tend to describe packaging by what we can see and feel, yet the surface touching our drink can be quite different.
For my hot drinks, I use a Fellow travel mug. I love being able to make my herbal tea at home and take it with me. It fits easily into my morning routine and means I reach for fewer disposable cups. These are the sorts of changes that appeal to me: something useful, well designed and easy to keep doing.
That’s also why I’m so interested in filtered water at home. When you enjoy the water you drink, having it available straight from the tap makes filling a glass or taking a bottle with you second nature. It’s a lovely example of how a product choice can support a daily habit.
There are several ways to achieve this, from a countertop filter to an under-sink system with a separate drinking-water tap, or an integrated tap offering filtered water alongside other functions. My starting point is understanding the local water and what someone wants from it, then matching the system to their kitchen and routine.
The filter itself deserves as much attention as the tap. An activated-carbon filter can improve taste and reduce chlorine; some cartridges also target particular contaminants. Reverse osmosis passes water through a very fine membrane and can reduce a wider range of dissolved substances and particles, including minerals such as calcium and magnesium. This explanation of the different treatment methods is a useful starting point. I’m interested in getting drinking water as clean as we reasonably can while thinking carefully about the minerals we keep, remove or add back in.
BLANCO CHOICE is one system I’ve been looking at. Its Microplastic S filter is specified to reduce particles above 1 micrometre, so that’s microplastic filtration rather than a claim to remove nanoplastics. There’s also a separate Soft Magnesium M cartridge, which reduces limescale and adds magnesium to the water. They do different jobs, and choosing the right cartridge for the water supply is part of getting the installation right.
I have a Quooker CUBE at home and love the convenience. During a recent meeting, I asked Oscar, my Quooker sales manager, about connecting a separate reverse-osmosis system. He said it needs a pumped supply that maintains at least 2 bar while water is flowing, plus a dedicated remineralisation filter before the Quooker tank or CUBE. He also confirmed that a third-party RO connection invalidates Quooker’s manufacturer warranty, even when those requirements are met. It was a useful conversation, and exactly why I like to ask these questions while we’re planning a kitchen.
Then there are the details that make a system a pleasure to use. Can you get your favourite water bottle under the tap? Is the filter easy to reach when it needs changing? Have we allowed room for the equipment and the sparkling-water cylinder? I enjoy thinking through these things because they’re what you live with every day. Making filter changes and cleaning straightforward is part of the design too.
My interest in water carries through into the bathroom too. We give so much thought to our shampoo, cleanser and moisturiser, and the water we bathe and shower in deserves a little attention alongside them. In hard-water areas, calcium and magnesium affect how products lather and can contribute to washing residue on our skin and hair. Softening the water reduces those hardness minerals, and controlled skin-washing research found that it reduced detergent residue and the irritation associated with it. Easier lathering and less residue are appealing everyday benefits to consider when planning a bathroom.
For that reason, I usually start by looking at a correctly sized water softener for the home. Reverse osmosis also reduces dissolved minerals, and whole-house RO systems can supply baths and showers, but they need specialist planning for storage, flow and wastewater. A small RO unit beneath the kitchen sink only treats the outlets connected to it. Matching the treatment to the water supply gives us a more useful starting point for comfortable bathing and hair washing. It’s another detail I like to bring up early in the conversation, alongside the bath, shower and finishes.
A reusable bottle such as the stainless-steel Owala FreeSip is a handy way to take water from your own filtered tap to work, on a walk or to the gym. It still has plastic components in its lid and straw, but it gives you a bottle you can refill and reuse. That model is for cold, still water; my hot herbal tea goes in my Fellow, and sparkling water needs a bottle designed for it.
Where safe drinking water is available, I’d much rather make refilling easy and buy fewer bottles. I like knowing what I’m filling up with, and I like how naturally it fits into the rest of the day. There’s still plenty to learn about microplastics and their effects on our health, and I’m sure my own choices will continue to evolve as I learn more.
This is what keeps me interested in designing homes after all these years. There is always another detail to explore, another question to ask and another way to make a space work better for the person using it. At Kuche & Bagno, I want conversations about water, materials and our daily routines to sit comfortably alongside the cabinetry and finishes. I love a beautiful kitchen. I love it even more when I know how much thought has gone into living in it.
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