Regular charcoal and activated charcoal aren't the same thing. If you tried to use regular charcoal as a filter, you would just wind up with awful tasting black water. Activated charcoal is porous like lava rock or a sponge. That gives it 100+ times more surface area, and that's where the contaminants get trapped. Activated charcoal wont decay and leach into the water either. If your looking for activated charcoal by itself, I saw some at Wal-mart yesterday. It was in the pet supply's with the aquarium pumps/filters. I haven't done any research on it to make sure it would be suitable as a replacement for drinking water filters. If you work in a coal mine, you may be able to find someone in the company that is familiar with activated charcoal. I'm not sure if it's a naturally forming product, or a process they use to create it, like kiln firing clay to make the porous expanded clay pellets we use as a growing media.
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