Many consumers are concerned about whether home water treatment units perform as advertised.
From 1988 to 1990, nearly a third of phone calls to the EPA Safe Drinking Water Hot Line involved complaints aboutthe units and 4,000 written complaints were filed. Many complaints about deceptive marketing involve problems in Texas. The GAO study reported that a marketing firm claimed that its units were used in NASA's space shuttle and were endorsed by the agency when they were not. Another firm urged people to buy the units because it said Federal laws would soon be passed that would require every home to use a water purifier. According to the advisory, salesmen created and exploited fears of consumers by claiming that water from public supplies was not be safe to drink.