In April, Amazon informed retailers that all refrigerator water filters being sold on the e-commerce site must be NSF/ANSI 42 certified by May 10, 2017. The goal is to reduce the number of counterfeit filters being sold on the site.
According to the “Filter It Out” campaign by the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers: “Counterfeit water filters are sold online every day. People buy these filters thinking that they are buying genuine certified filters – until there is a problem.”
Potential negative results of using a counterfeit filter include:
- Ineffective filtering of water
- Damage to your refrigerator
- Violation of your refrigerator warranty
According to this article from Contractor Magazine, companies have until May 10 to submit updated product information with the certification to Amazon. If they do not, listed products will be suppressed from Amazon—meaning the items will not be visible to buyers on the site.
Certification must be conducted by independent organizations accredited by the American National Standards Institute—such as IAPMO, NSF International, and WQA.
Water Quality Association (WQA) Executive Director Pauli Undesser states:
“What Amazon.com found by looking out into the industry is that there a lot of fraudulent claims, misleading claims and patent infringement that are occurring around refrigerator filters, and they decided to act. It’s something that WQA supports.”
