Lori, I haven't purchased either of these two "straw filter systems" yet, but the Life Straw is looking pretty strong. It seems to be gearing itself to handling poor water quality in the "third world" and has been improved to filter out giardia. Supposedly award winning.

As a former purchaser of lab services, you will definitely get a better price as you give them more business. Most of the base prices for the labs used to be very competative with each other so it probably still pays to shop around.

PerryMK, did you used to work for a lab in Pensacola? If so I might of installed a bunch of monitoring wells around your lab!