Salt-based water softeners are one of the only ways to remove hardness from your water supply. They use cation exchange, anion exchange, or a mixture of both to remove a variety of contaminants. Softeners that use cation exchange will remove dissolved (ferrous) iron, manganese, hardness and lead. It does this by trading these minerals for a very small amount of salt or potassium in the water. Anion Exchange will remove nitrates/nitrites, and arsenic V. All of our softeners are metered to maximize efficiency and minimize salt usage.