LifeStraw Go Series Water Filter Bottle

Let's start with the reasons why you shouldn't: It's too heavy for serious hiking It's filter works great for filtering out all of the stuff you shouldn't have in clean drinking water And it doesn't filter out any of the things tap water drinkers are concerned about. So who is this filter bottle for? At first glance it just seems like another gimmicky product, but let's dive deeper. There's a saying in photography that the best camera is the one you have with you. The same is true of water bottles. Emergencies can strike at any time, and our ability to go without water is limited to 3ish days. Even getting mildly dehydrated can slow reaction time and decision making. This bottle is great for people who want to guarantee that they can safely drink any water they can find. While it doesn't remove chemicals from water, if this is your daily driver for a water bottle, then if you should find yourself needing to drink from a sketchy fountain, pond, stream, river or puddle this is the bottle that will get you through it. Some examples I can think of: Your local water treatment plant has a sewage leak or bacterial contamination, or flood waters have contaminated your water supply. Heck a year ago a bunch of people got stuck on the I-95 for 27 hours, so you just never know. It's also a great bottle for people who travel to places with sketchy water. Overall it costs about as much as a regular stainless bottle but it lets you drink puddle water. It looks nice, and whole the carbon filter is not exceptionally large or exceptionally good at removing chemicals it will reduce chlorine and other chemicals somewhat. This is the only bottle I've ever had that didn't have an off taste and I've had stainless steel, plastic and glass. Even the glass bottle tasted like the silicone lid. The straw also prevents the consumption of microplastics. This is really great since all tap and bottled waters contain microplastics. I have had a friend test reverse osmosis water he filled into a glass bottle and it too had plastic contamination. While I wouldn't exactly buy this bottle due to the microplastics it's an added benefit. Concerns: the first thing I noticed when I opened up the straw is that the fibers are glued in place with an adhesive. A recent video on youtube by modern castle claims their water test revealed that the filter added dichloromethane to the water. I believe this may be from the adhesive holding the fibers in place. Modern Castle was testing a gravity fed version of the pitcher, in which case the adhesive side was submerged underwater. My guess is that it may be leaching in that scenario. Regardless, the measurement was 1.4ppb, which is well below the epa limit of 5ppb and below california's more stringent 4ppb. Lifestraw's customer service was light on the details regarding the ingredients or type of adhesive used, but competitor filter straws such as those made by Sawyer are constructed in a similar manner. The lifestraw go version has the glue at the top and it sits above the water line. While looking at it, it appears water may contact it but it is brief as it passes through to the carbon filter so I don't think this model of the lifestraw has much to worry about but I'd skip the fridge filter version of the lifestraw and just buy RO water. Finally I'm unsure of what the straw membrane are made of. It's definitely some sort of plastic, and I found news articles stating that lifestraw uses halogenated resins that have germicidal properties and I personally don't like the sound of any of that. **update** per lifestraw their current membranes do not contain germicidal properties. The material in the membrane is Polysulfone which is a rigid polymer that is stable and retains the pore size needed to filter particles out of the water. It also is resistant to degradation from high or low ph levels, and should not degrade or leach at the temperatures the fibers will be exposed to in the bottle. That being said, lifestraw didn't invent hollow fiber membrane filters, they're used in medical applications, food manufacturing, and municipal water treatment. The fibers are said to be food safe and non leaching and should only be dangerous if you light them on fire and inhale the fumes.