What is a Micron?

A micron is a common measure used for identifying very small particle sizes. A micron is defined as one millionth of a meter. How small is that you might ask? To put it into perspective a human hair is 50 to 70 microns and a spider web is 2 to 3 microns. One inch would be 24,500 microns. More commonly a grain of salt is 100 microns and talcum powder is 10 microns. When we relate this to water filtration you have to understand viruses are very small .5 to .004 microns. This makes it extremely difficult to filter them from a drinking water supply.

Here at RC Worst we typically use Ultraviolet (UV) Disinfection to inactivate viruses and bacteria because they cannot easily be filtered from drinking water. A commonly used UV Treatment System has 3 Sump basins. We typically recommend 2 filters: first a 20 micron then a 5 micron filter to remove particles from the water. Once the particles are removed from the water there is no place for these harmful pathogens to hide. Then, in the third sump a lethal dose of radiation is delivered to inactivate these harmful bugs. The final result is these harmful pathogens are unable to reproduce and rendered inactive. Filtration followed by UV disinfection has proven effective for chemical free water disinfection without the use of Chlorine or other caustic chemical.