Microbiology FAIL

So I have recently discovered the hilariousness that is FAIL Blog, they have some seriously funny stuff if you need a laugh go check them out. Not all of their pictures are 100% kid friendly but they were cool enough to put a link to their tamer ones that are possibly OK for the kiddies (I did not actually look so won't endorse that one). Sibling and I spent much time laughing our butts off and linking the fails that we found extremely hilarious to our friends, one of them laughed so hard he woke his roommates and we had to stop before he got thrown out the window or something!

So now that we are obsessed with this site and the concept behind it we keep looking for FAILs and I actually found one, though not sure if it is FAIL Blog worthy given the high degree of nerdiness it has ;). I wanted to know if brita water filters would take care of the calcium in my water, I have very hard water (thankfully it tastes good) and really want and need to run my humidifiers but they get caked up really fast with the calcium. I'd rather not buy 5000 gallons of distilled water and swiping it from work seems a bit shady so I am looking for a cheap and easy alternative. My friends have been going on about their brita pitchers so I decided to google them and see if they would work for my application, I landed on Amazon and was reading their review with contained this little tidbit:

Brita filters eradicate up to 98 percent of the lead found in tap water while significantly reducing other impurities and dangerous bacteria including cryptosporidium, giardia, and benzene.

You all can probably guess that I am going to talk about the alleged dangerous "bacteria" mentioned in this lovely review, you know me oh so well! Let us go through them shall we?

Cryptosporidium: Is a protozoan that can infect humans, is often transmitted through contaminated water and causes diarrhea, protozoans are not bacteria: FAIL

Giardia: Is also a protozoan that can infect humans and give them diarrhea and is also transmitted through contaminated water, again protozoans are not bacteria: FAIL

Benzene: Is a 6 carbon compound that forms a ring with three double bonds, it is a chemical and of the three is the least "related" to bacteria: Mega FAIL!

Sadly there is no mention of calcium in the review so I am not sure if it would be of any use to me or not. Not sure that I want to invest in it without knowing, though I have test stips for my fish and so testing the water before and after would tell me if it were taking out the calcium, if it doesn't I would have no use for it given that I like my tap water. Perhaps I should go visit the hardware store and see if they have a cheap and easy system that would work for me and the potential limitations I have for puting in such a system in my apartment. Either way that review cracked me up, while I do not expect normal people to know what any of those are a quick google search very quickly shows they are not bacteria, hehe. I know I google it when I come across something that I am not sure what is...