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The Big Berkey Water Filter has a strong following. And in the years we’ve spent researching the best water filter pitchers and the best under-sink water filters, we’ve been asked about the Big Berkey several times. Its manufacturer claims the filter can remove far more contaminants than other filters. Yet the Big Berkey is not independently certified to NSF/ANSI standards, like our other filter picks are.
After 50 hours of research and independent lab testing of the claims made by Big Berkey’s manufacturer, our test results—as well as those of another lab we spoke with and a third whose results are public—were not entirely consistent. We believe this further illustrates the importance of certification to the firm NSF/ANSI standards: It lets people make buying decisions based on a dependable, apples-to-apples comparison of performance. In addition, because the Big Berkey system is much larger, more expensive, and harder to maintain than pitcher and under-sink filters, we wouldn’t recommend it even if it were certified.
Big Berkey with Black Berkey Filters
The Big Berkey’s manufacturer, New Millennium Concepts, claims the filter can remove more than a hundred contaminants, far more than other gravity-fed filters we’ve researched. We tested these claims on a limited scale, and our results were not always consistent with lab results that New Millennium commissioned. In particular, results from both our commissioned lab and the lab most recently contracted by New Millennium showed less effective filtration of chloroform than that third, earlier test (which is also listed in New Millennium’s product literature).
None of the tests we cite here—not ours, and not the New Millennium–contracted tests by Envirotek or a Los Angeles County lab—come near the rigor of NSF/ANSI tests. Specifically, NSF/ANSI requires that filters of the type Berkey employs pass twice their rated capacity of contaminated water through the filter before measurements are taken. Although to our knowledge all of the tests we and New Millennium contracted were thorough and professional, each used its own, less strenuous protocol. And because none of the testing was done to full NSF/ANSI standards, we have no clear way to compare the results precisely or to compare the overall performance of the Berkey filter with that of other gravity-fed filters we’ve looked at in the past.
One area where everyone’s findings did align was in removing lead from drinking water, suggesting that the Big Berkey would perform well at removing heavy metals. So if there’s a known issue with lead or other metals in your water, the Big Berkey is perhaps worth investigating as a stopgap measure.
With its large activated carbon filters, the Berkey would also be expected to remove PFAS efficiently, and it did so in a test by the Environmental Working Group, who used our recommended home water-quality test kit for PFAS.
The difficulty of comparing inconsistent lab results aside, New Millennium Concepts did not respond to repeated requests for an interview to discuss our findings. Taken together, our reporting left us with an opaque understanding of the Berkey system, which isn’t the case with many other filter manufacturers.
For everyday water filtration, most NSF/ANSI–certified water pitchers and undersink filters are smaller, more convenient, far less expensive to buy and maintain, and easier to use. And they also provide the accountability that comes with independent, transparent testing.
Keep in mind that most municipal water supplies are safe to begin with, so unless you know that you have a problem locally, you probably don’t need filtering for health reasons. If emergency preparedness is your main concern, consider the advice in our guide to emergency preparedness, which includes products and advice to keep clean water available.