• Enviro-Test Laboratories, a division of ETL Chemspec Anylitical Ltd., provides an evaluation of the Polar Bear Water Distiller for removing toxic industrial and agricultural contaminants.
• Independent Laboratory tests verify that Polar Bear is effective at removing greater than 99% of all contaminants.
• Polar Bear Water Distillers Mfg. Co. Ltd., Pickardville, Alberta, Canada has been approved by NSF for Standard 62 (distillation systems). According to NSF, Polar Bear is the first distillation company to be tested and approved for the standard.
• Water Technology, March 1996  "To make sure the system you have purchased delivers on its promise, shop for a unit certified by the non-profit NSF International, which charges manufacturers big bucks to run their devices through rigorous tests. Those it certifies carry an NSF label listing the contaminants the devices actually removes. Not having the label doesn't mean a device won't work, but having it is an assurance that it will."
• Listed in Consumers Digest Best Buys, 1995

• They are proudly Certified by NSF International
• The Public Health and Safety Company
• Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
• CSA International.

In conclusion, we can see from the data that the Polar Bear Water Distiller is extremely efficient at removing inorganic and organic contaminants from contaminated water. Analyses of raw water fortified with inorganic chemicals, US-EPA priority pollutants, insecticides and herbicides, as well as the radionucleotide radium 226, revealed levels 10 to 20 fold above regulated U.S. effluent discharge limits. When this fortified raw water was distilled using the Polar Bear Water Distiller, and the resulting distillate was analyzed for these same parameters, no detectable levels were observed.

Concentrations of chemicals and/or pollutants reported for the raw water were determined experimentally and as such, have experimental error associated with them. For example, the concentration reported for phenol was 42 ug/L, when in reality over 100 ug/L was added to the tank. The low value reported for phenol (and other chemicals/pollutants) is a function of the poor extractability of some of the chemicals and other aspects of the complex methodology employed to analyze for these chemicals and/or pollutants. For phenol, extraction efficiences of 30 to 40% are commonly reported. These errors associated with the analyses were taken into consideration when calculating extraction efficiences. Extraction efficiences are a function of the concentration of a chemical in raw water and the method detection limit for that chemical.

Some organic compounds may be missing from this evaluation; compounds which we outlined in our original proposal. Careful study of the original study revealed some redundancy because all isomers of some compounds were included. It is not necessary to analyze all isomers because the vapor pressures of the isomers are similiar. For example, we only analyzed for 1,3-dichlorobenzene and excluded 1,2-dichlorobenzene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene. Furthermore, some compounds that we outlined in our original proposal were not available to us and so we substituted similiar chemicals. We feel that the list of chemicals included in this study is representative of the type of chemicals likely to be associated with industrial and agricultural pollution. Addition of more chemicals may well result in a case of overkill.

One comment regarding the ability of the Polar Bear Water Distiller to remove asbestos from contaminated water - although this chemical was not evaluated in our tests, it is our opinion that this chemical would be removed by distillation since it has a relatively low vapor pressure.

-REFERENCES-

1. United States Environmental Protection Agency(1984). Guidelines Establishing Test Procedures for the Analysis of Pollutants Under the Clean Water Act; Final Rule and Interim, Final Rule and Proposed Rule, Method 625-Base/Neutrals and Acids, Federal Register, 49:153-174

CERTIFIED BY: D.A. Birkholz

Environmental Toxicologist
Enviro-Test Laboratories
Edmonton, Alberta