Toxic Truth About Water: Live Pure with Tips on Water Purity, Filtration, Reverse Osmosis, and More!

Bonus 1: What RO, Softeners & “Pure” Water Systems Are Missing ft. Owen Boyd

• Dr. Ina Nozek, Dr. Glenn Nozek • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Are reverse osmosis, water softeners, and “super pure” water systems really the answer? In this bonus episode of The Toxic Truth About Water, Drs. Glenn and Ina host water-treatment expert Owen Boyd, whose decades-long career began in dental mercury removal and led him to create innovative systems for removing toxins without harming people—or the planet. Discover why high-purity water can still be unhealthy, what biofouling in RO tanks means for your safety, and why softeners are increasingly under scrutiny nationwide. If you’ve ever wondered whether your current filtration setup is actually good for your family, you won’t want to miss Owen’s eye-opening perspective.

What You’ll Learn

  1. Owen’s Journey:
    • How a birth defect in his son led him from AI & finance into the world of dental mercury and eventually water treatment.
  2. RO, Softeners & More:
    • Why reverse osmosis, “classic” filters, and salt-based softeners solve some problems but create new ones.
  3. Importance of Third-Party Testing:
    • Why misleading sales tactics (like TDS meters) can hide contamination—plus tips on verifying real toxin removal.
  4. Healthy vs. Pure Water:
    • Why “zero TDS” and “no minerals” isn’t always best, and how to avoid giving up essential nutrients when filtering your water.

Key Takeaways

  1. Reverse Osmosis Realities:
    • RO doesn’t just remove contaminants—it also strips the beneficial minerals your body needs and can harbor bacterial growth if not maintained.
  2. Softeners Under Fire:
    • Salt-based softeners can introduce sodium into your water and environment—leading to increased bans in various states.
  3. No Truly “Clean” Water Left:
    • Everything from rainfall to groundwater is now laced with toxins, meaning filtration is a must.
  4. The “Don’t Do Harm” Rule:
    • Effective water treatment should eliminate contaminants without contributing to other environmental or health issues.

Resources & Links

  • Explore the Series:
  • Connect with Drs. Glenn & Ina:

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Love the insights from Owen Boyd? Hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to The Toxic Truth About Water. Please share this bonus episode with friends or family who might be relying on outdated filtration methods—because knowledge is the key to truly safe, healthy water!


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Glenn:

Welcome to the Toxic Truth About Water. We're Drs. Glenn and Ina, and in this podcast, we're uncovering the hidden dangers lurking in your water and how those contaminants impact your health.

Ina:

After decades of exploring natural health, we've learned the importance of clean, safe water, and we're here to share that knowledge with you. From the effects of toxins and contaminants to the solutions you need, we've got the inside scoop, so let's dive in.

Glenn:

Yeah. Alright. We have a really good one today.

Ina:

Yeah. Excited. And so just to catch you guys up, we ended off our series The Toxic Truth About Water, and we're bringing a couple of bonus episodes to you guys, and we are so excited for today's episode. We have a very special man on our podcast today, Mr. Owen Boyd. And I just want, to have Owen share a little bit about his background but I always refer to Owen literally as one of the smartest people I know, and Owen probably doesn't realize that, but Glenn and I have been in enough conversations and just really getting where he's coming from and the knowledge and the experience that he has. So Owen, thank you so much for being here. Our listeners will so appreciate hearing from you. So let's start out. If you could just share a little bit about your background and how you got into water to the degree that you're in it now.

Owen:

It's that's a long story, but I'll try and be as brief about that as I can. Because I was trained in finance and computer science coming out of college. Nothing to do with molecular science at all. Just let's go make some money writing software programs in AI. So I started that and Was doing real well, having a lot of fun, and then I had my first son born, missing a left hand, and that was like an earth shattering event for me, not in the terms of he was missing a hand doctors. had no idea why that could have happened. Everything was like it might be, something in their DNA. It could be this, it could be that. I'm going that's not good enough for me. I need to know. So I started researching. And once I started researching that was the beginning of the end for me. Cause I still research. I probably read three to four research papers every single day today, trying to keep up with the science because it's going so fast. But discovering that the affliction with a High rate of confidence was caused by the removal of an amalgam filling. In a dental chair caused that affliction caused me to jump on this bandwagon and start removing mercury from dental offices. So I ended up developing a system just for that purpose. I ended up testifying in front of Congress. Several times to educate them on the dangers and hazards of mercury. And essentially sold a lot of systems into the dental market to remove mercury. And as a result actually was awarded an award by engineering news record as, one of the most innovative technologies for mercury removal because I was moving more mercury out of dental offices than Was being removed from coal fired power plants. That's how much mercury was being consumed by that industry. But that put me into water, and learned that I knew nothing about water and that wasn't acceptable to me. So I started jumping into this with reckless abandon I need to know at the molecular level, what is water. And we all think of water. Oh, it's h2o. There's no h2o, 100 percent solutions of water anywhere on this planet because water is a wonderful solvent. So things dissolve in it. It's also an excellent carrier of material. So there's all kinds of particles in it. It's also It's ability to change. it's electrical charge and format changes. Based on whether the water's in sunlight or not. So things like this, they're exciting to me because it opens up the potential for how to fix water. I've started several companies in water treatment with a guideline to provide water that's healthy. And essentially water that meets my mass balance requirement, which is do no evil. Don't fix one problem and create a bigger one downstream.

Ina:

Yeah. And that's amazing. So it all started with really, cause you were not in this at all until your son had that birth defect, right? Yep.

Owen:

That's correct.

Ina:

Wow. And he's good now. How old is your son now, Owen?

Owen:

He is 40 and he's an engineer in water treatment.

Ina:

Wow. Okay. So we're going back 40 years ago. I always thought it was a one or two years longer than that. So I'm glad we're getting the accuracy. Very cool. So then you got into dental and medical grade water, correct? Where you were working a lot with medical and dental practices. Yeah.

Owen:

Sure. Yep. Yeah. Hundreds and hundreds of dental practices. There's about 180, 000 dental offices in the United States alone. We deal now let's see I think we have about 150, 000 systems out there in dental offices. So we did quite well on the dental markets.

Ina:

Wow.

Owen:

But I went to the detail, when I say don't do any harm, it's like filtering mercury out of water was great, but now I had containers loaded with mercury. So what do we do with them? So instead of just throwing them into landfills or throwing them into the ocean we had a program, I got it approved in all 50 states, got it approved by the department of transportation where we could transport all this to a recycling center and recover the mercury.

Ina:

Wow. That's Amazing. So one of the things that Glenn and I really want you to share with our listeners, Owen, we've been down here in Florida for three years. We've always been very concerned about the toxicity in our world, whether we're talking water, air, food, 5G, all the things are having a big impact. And in our clinical practice and through the years, we've worked a lot with toxicity. And personally, we've always had water filtration. I shouldn't say always, but for a very long time, both in New Jersey and then certainly when we moved to Florida. It was top priority. And, we only know what we know, and you can only research as much as you can research unless, someone like you that just dives in and just really understands to another level. And that's who we love to learn from. But when we came down here, we realized that A lot of the people in this area do water softeners. We've always known reverse osmosis to be a very common way that people will filter out the contaminants in their water. And in New Jersey, we had a whole house carbon filtration system, and we had reverse osmosis on for our drinking water, which we re mineralized, knowing that It's removing the minerals. When we moved down here, we wanted to match as best as we could, because again, that's what we thought was the best way to, get the contaminants out and protect ourselves and our family. And so we did the similar thing, but we also added the softener because in Florida. Everyone gets a softener. So we're like, oh, I guess we need to get a softener. As we learned and, immersed ourselves in, especially since, being involved in the industry now and hearing you and other experts. Talk about the downside. We ended up replacing our system. And so we want our listeners to understand why you would never recommend these technologies to anybody that you love and care about, right? These are not necessarily the way to go. Can you share more on that, Owen?

Owen:

Listening to what you had before activated carbon remineralization reverse osmosis I look at all of these things and say, okay, so they don't meet my mass balance requirement, at all. For instance, the reverse osmosis system you need to have a very elegant pre filtration system to an RO because RO, I call that the art of little holes, okay, which is standard filtration. You go to Home Depot Lowe's, you buy a filter. It's the art of little holes. You can buy a 20 micron, a 5 micron, or if you get into RO, 0. 005 micron, and that's why it rejects salts because that pore is so small, but one of the things about RO is, because it's such little holes without great pre filtration you're probably going to destroy the RO membrane very rapidly. Okay, because it will clog with any particulate. The other thing that r. O. is not really a filter. We always categorize it as a filter, and it's not a filter. I refer to that, a diverter. So what it's going to do is reject particles that are smaller than 0. 005 or things in solution smaller than 0. 005 that reject goes into your wastewater and what permeates through the membrane is You know, this high purity water. Now you had the good sense to remineralize it. Most people don't, they just stick something under their sink and go with it. But RO water, at the at the cellular level, and I actually learned this through dentistry a good dentist will be able to pick off people that run RO because their teeth start to dissolve. It's a phenomenal solvent water looking for things to dissolve and calcium, of course, which your teeth is pretty much made out of is going to dissolve in our own water. If you also look at the cellular level, which is why I tried to, understand in my research what's the difference between good water and bad water? What does the word hydration mean? It doesn't mean just drinking water. You've got to get water across the cell membrane into the cells. And for the most part we've been taught that's through the, process of osmosis. It goes through these cells via osmosis. And it turns out that's not. Quite correct. It actually is driven by aquaporins that open and close in the outside of the cell wall. Millions of aquaporins are letting things in and out of the cells, including nutrients. They don't just permeate through. The body's got a design to it, and it's an intricate design, incredibly sophisticated. When people, when you think of cells, you think of liver cells, you've got brain cells, you've got bone cells, you've got blood cells. It goes on and on, and they all talk to each other, thousands of times per second. What makes that water go through the cell wall and reverse osmosis water? It doesn't help things go through the cell wall, I call it the water molecule. If you look at it, H two. Oh, they cluster together through standard filtration. And including an oral membrane that's rejecting water. I'm trying to set things up so they actually have a better chance of getting through that cell wall, giving you a healthy cellular response, a higher metabolism, all of these things critically important to health. But if you look at the number of gallons that RO rejects reverse osmosis system, especially like a little under the sink system. It's gonna reject somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of the water. So it's a concentrator. So what it's doing is taking contaminants that may come in at one part per million. It's rejecting that in half the water and sending it out. Two parts per million back into the environment, and it's kicking the can down the road. Somebody's going to have to clean that up because the concentration keeps going up. Now, if you think that's a bunch of malarkey, half of the wells in the Central Valley, where most of our food is grown, are shut down now through high salinity. And a lot of that comes from water softeners and reverse osmosis systems. That reject goes into the aquifers, and the salinity is going up. Right now, where I live here in Arizona golf courses are having a big problem using recycled water because the salinity now is too high. These are all the things that, you know, you read the signs, we have a problem. The other thing is, like in softeners when you think of the design of a softener. Softener is going to take calcium in which, when contacted with air at the end of your faucet creates calcium carbonate. Okay. So it's wow, that's not good. Cause I get all these spots and I got all this stuff and what a pain. But a softener removes all. Of the calcium and it exchanges it. It's called an ion exchange. So it's going to exchange it with sodium. So what you end up doing is exchanging your calcium for sodium. And I think most of us know, like high sodium is something we should really be concerned about. And there's a lot of research. I won't go into the details of, health effects of people on softeners versus not on softeners. They also, because nothing lasts forever as you're exchanging calcium for sodium, pretty soon your ion exchange resin is loaded with calcium. So you have to run down to a hardware store, buy a 40 pound bag of salt and refresh or recharge the ion exchange system and take the calcium off and reload it. With sodium ions and all that, then there's a rinse cycle. And what all of this is doing is taking that 40 of salt and putting it right back into your aquifer. Okay, so these are the things that, we haven't been taught, about filtering water.

Ina:

And Owen, is it true that there are certain states that are banning softeners now because of what they're doing to the environment?

Owen:

There are certain states I'll call them municipalities within states that are doing that actively. And most of it starts in California. But because the Central Valley has such a problem, that's where a lot of this activity is starting. We're seeing it out here. I believe there's areas in Minnesota and Wisconsin now, targeting water softeners.

Glenn:

So maybe doing that here as well in Florida where everybody lives on the coast it's not very deep and everybody wants a beautiful lawn. Everybody wants to put chemicals. Everybody's using softeners. It's like our aquifer is just destroying the sea life and a lot of things in the area. Yeah.

Ina:

Oh, and what about biofouling if we go back to reverse osmosis for a moment? Because we didn't know this in New Jersey when we had our reverse osmosis under our sink, but there's a lot of possibility for biofouling. So these tanks really need to be sanitized. It's not like it's just going to clean itself. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Owen:

So most RO systems it takes a lot of energy to push water through a 0. 005 micron membrane. So they're not referred to as on demand systems. In other words, you turn your faucet on and want two gallons a minute. The RO system you have under the sink can't produce that volume of water without an enormous amount of energy. So that's not what you have on your sink. You have one that produces maybe a liter a minute. So you have a five gallon tank typically under your cabinet, and that's filling with water to give you an equalized supply. So when you turn it on, I can give you two gallons a minute out of that tank. RO membranes will filter out bacteria, but the bacteria. Isn't, a part of the reject water. It sticks on the surface of the membrane starts to colonize on the membrane and then starts to grow through the membrane gets to the pure water side of the membrane and then gets into the tank. The tank have they have a, I refer to it as a little flapper valve in there because it's a high pressure tank and that flapper valve is, prone to bio fouling. So you'll end up with bacterial counts, in these R. O. Tanks, at very unsafe levels for consumption. a lot of people will put a U. V. Light on the tail end of that tank, but even then, that tank should be cleaned every 30 days. That's usually right in the manual, but nobody reads manuals, so you won't see that. And then the difficulty of disinfecting it. A pressurized tank means that most people will never disinfect that tank. So they expose themselves to a variety of different bacterial infections.

Ina:

Wow. Interesting. And then same for whole house reverse osmosis, right? Which I don't think most people aren't doing that because of the extreme expense, maintenance, electricity, the water bill, all of the things. But I would imagine we're still dealing with that biofouling in a whole house reverse osmosis system as well.

Owen:

Yeah you're going to get biofouling in the tank and what you'll get is, you'll get UV lights. I don't think I've ever seen an RO system whole house without a UV, because I guess when you're going to spend 20, 000 to put a whole house system in, they can afford an RO, an ultraviolet light.

Ina:

And a really frequent maintenance service contract, right? Because it's got to be so much to be done to make it up to par. Yeah.

Owen:

You look at a system like just quickly I'll hit on this. So this is another the growth of the whole water industry and how it's impact water treatment. So you look at a whole house RO, so you have people that, you know, inventors that invented RO membranes. Okay, then you have people that did housings, then you had people that do activated carbon, and then you have people that do UV lights, then you have people that make storage tanks, you have people that do pre filters. So you have engineers that have engineered this system, and then you've got to make all of that talk to each other. So you have very sophisticated controllers talking to each other, giving you error messages that most people that have a water system in their house. Don't quite understand because the error messages aren't in English. They're usually coded, that you have to look up. This would be like me giving you, error messages that you would never be able to understand. And then say here, I'm putting that on your home computer. You need to put things in English, make it simple, so through the growth of the whole water industry, all the components that we use in a water system or just manufactured by. Four or five different manufacturers, and then somebody's coupling them all together. It makes it really difficult to get things to perform well.

Ina:

You know what's so interesting? The EWG, the Environmental Working Group, which we do have a lot of respect for that organization because they are bringing awareness to consumers about toxins in our food and our water and so forth. Sure. But they do recommend, reverse osmosis.

Owen:

Sure. EWG is not a water company. That's all I have to say. It's almost like neither is EPA, neither is FDA. You might as well go to the FAA and get approval. It's like a chipmunk.

Ina:

Exactly. And that to my point, like you don't know until you know when you're in it, and you're really understanding and it's just coming from a completely different perspective.

Owen:

Not that I don't appreciate the, like the environmental working group, the fact that they have put up on their site. And somewhat interpreted. Everybody's water quality. So if you're on a municipal system, you can pull up your water quality by zip code, and it'll tell you how many toxins are in that water. They're harming you. The analysis on some of their systems. I could rip those systems to pieces. And they would never go in my home. Not that I'm the end all in water treatment, but I work hard at it.

Ina:

Yeah, and we appreciate your knowledge and all of your experience, your expertise. It's important information, it really is. So to wrap things up, Owen, do you have any advice for our listeners in terms of, a lot of people do have these Technologies in their homes. And I always will say to somebody, any filtration is better than no filtration, right? We're not saying rip out what you have and, put in new technology, which we're going to go into on our next episode. We have a bonus episode. We are going to be talking about the system that we represent, but we're not telling people to do that We just want to bring the awareness. So what would you say to that?

Owen:

So in terms of filtration throw this out pretty quickly. The fact that your water is cloudy is not an indicator of its safety. The fact that it's clear is not an indicator of its safety. I tend to think of stuff not at the molecular level, but at the atomic level, it's like in hydrogen. There are three different hydrogen atoms. Most people don't know that. Now, one of those hydrogen atoms combined with two oxygen is still water, but it's toxic and deadly and it is found in water. You, I think of these things in terms of when somebody says, for instance, PFAS. And PFOA, everybody's concerned about forever chemicals and, regulators have gone off and said, we're going to set the limit at somewhere between four and 20 parts per trillion. You're not going to see anything in water at the per trillion or part per billion to put that in perspective. Cause I think most people think of toxic water is having a lot of chemicals. Think of a part per trillion would be about a hundred. University of Michigan football stadiums filled from bottom to top with water, and you're looking for a grain of sugar. That would be equivalent to about a part per trillion. So but that one little grain and that volume of water damages your cellular system. Think about that. That's how sensitive, the cellular system is. And some of these toxins that we've been discharging, for the last 150 years in air and water everybody thinks, oh, we're polluting water. Every time it rains, water gets polluted. Because it takes everything out of the air, saturates the water, and then that hits, oceans, it hits all your soils. So there's no way of avoiding toxins in water. So every single person should be drinking filtered water. Because I can say Adamantly, there is no safe water left on this planet to drink, none.

Ina:

And it's the sad truth, and I do believe that is the real reason why we see so much cancer and all of these other, horrible diseases. It's epidemic it's just a serious health crisis. And this is a big contributor. Yeah.

Glenn:

We're excited that we were able to have you on and bring light to some of this information that I think people are unaware of, they're trying to do their best, and it's hard to, get through the smoke of what some of the information is when it's really geared on sales instead of, pure health,

Owen:

people, and I think the important thing is to delineate. High purity water from healthy water. Those are two separate and distinct things, and people think, Oh, it's so pure. I'll give you another example. Advertisements and people have got a little meter in the water and go, look, it's got a zero. It's yeah, don't drink that water. Okay. And here's the other thing that people don't that meter that they're using. Guess what? It doesn't measure bacteria, viruses, pharmaceuticals, pesticides and PFAS. Those would show up as a zero, even though all of those things I just said are all out of compliance.

Ina:

there's so much that we don't know. So many of us are just in the dark, right? And we really appreciate you bringing this to our awareness and learning even more from you. So any last thing that you want to share, Owen, with our listeners before we Wrap it up.

Owen:

I just appreciate you having me on so I can elucidate. Here's some of the issues and considerations and water and search out the people that have less sales and marketing and more credibility. Exactly. Absolutely. Do the right thing. Yeah, exactly. Hard as that is to do it.

Ina:

Yeah. Oh, thank you. Oh, and we so appreciate. You taking the time maybe at some point we'll have you on again and we can go into some other things as well. I could listen to you all day long

Owen:

to

Ina:

our listeners. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the toxic truth about water. We hope you're walking away with valuable insights on how to protect yourself and your loved ones from hidden water toxins.

Glenn:

If you found value in today's episode, be sure to subscribe. Don't miss the upcoming bonus episode that we got coming up next. You're going to really love that one where we tell you what our favorite solution really is. And as always feel free to share the podcast with your friends and family, anybody who could benefit from this information. And until the next time, remember, we are all in this together, everybody. So keep questioning, keep learning and stay healthy and stay informed. Much love to you guys.

Ina:

Much love to you guys. Bye. Bye now.

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