Sorry to yell, but HAVE YOU FILTERED YOUR WATER YET?!
If not, you really have to start.
It’s something we all take for granted because its just a basic part of our lives, but what you can’t see in your drinking water can hurt you. And the stories just keep coming out on a near-weekly basis about some new poison found in our water.
We’ve done multiple reports over the years on TDS about all of the nasty surprises lurking in the average American’s tap water, water they don’t just drink but cook with and bathe in.
Reports like this one about how salmon swimming around in estuaries in the northeast were found contaminated with 81 different pharmaceuticals and drugs. Like all of these articles about the poisonous water found in Flint, Michigan and other cities around the nation.
Your water is on drugs, lots and lots of drugs, and filled with all sorts of nasty chemicals that are harmful to human health even in tiny amounts.
Remember the movie Erin Brockovich?
Well apparently a new study just released has found that over 200 million Americans in cities across the nation in all 50 states are drinking, cooking, and bathing in water tainted with the chemical from that movie chromium-6.
Via Environmental Working Group:
A new EWG analysis of federal data from nationwide drinking water tests shows that the compound contaminates water supplies for more than 200 million Americans in all 50 states. Yet federal regulations are stalled by a chemical industry challenge that could mean no national regulation of a chemical state scientists in California and elsewhere say causes cancer when ingested at even extraordinarily low levels.
The key phrase is “even at extraordinarily low levels”.
One part per billion is the size of a single drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. To give you an idea of just how carcinogenic chromium-6 is, scientists in California called for a safety standard of 0.02 parts per billion to be put into place.
It really doesn’t take much. California was one of the worst states, but it wasn’t alone by far:
The tests found chromium-6 in almost 90 percent of the water systems sampled. Oklahoma, Arizona and California had the highest average statewide levels and the greatest shares of detections above California’s public health goal. Among major cities, Phoenix had, by far, the highest average level, at almost 400 times the California health goal, and St. Louis and Houston also had comparatively high levels.
Right now as it stands, with standards for this dangerous carcinogen entirely too lax, based on the EPA’s data, EWG estimates some 12,000 people stand to get cancer if they continue drinking their tap water.
You can find the full breakdown of this new findings at the EWG here.
In the meantime, please look in to reverse osmosis water filtration, at least for the water you are drinking and cooking with. You have no idea what’s really in there…
(H/T: C. J. Albert)
Further Resources
Premium 5-Stage Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water Filter System
AquaBliss High Output Universal Shower Filter with Replaceable 3-Stage Filter Cartridge
Contributed by Melissa Dykes of The Daily Sheeple.
I share concerns about what is in our water, but this story below is a beat-up.
Chemistry was my passion.
It is just as well that I became a Christian and did not go over to the “dark side of the Force” ! i.e. the Allah Akbar side.
I studied Chemical Engineering – mostly High Distinctions and Distinctions, then worked in what is now called the EPA, so I do have some expertise in chemistry.
The California scientists calling for a silly goal of 0.02 parts per billion for Chromium-6 are greenie extremists.
The story mentions that the water in the city of Phoenix contains 400 times as much as that silly recommended goal, i.e. Phoenix water contains 8 parts per billion, and that equates to 0.008 parts per million.
The recommended maximum level of arsenic in drinking water produced by Councils, Water Authorities, Sydney Water Board etc is 10 parts per billion.
But many natural waters (from spas and underground aquifers) contain much more Arsenic than that and have been drunk safely by humans and animals for centuries.
A tiny bit of Arsenic and Chromium is actually good for your health – refer to the book by Joel Wallach “Dead Doctors Dont Lie”.
Fluoride is stupidly added to most townwater supplies at 1ppm. That equates to 1,000 parts per billion.
Fluoride at 1,000 parts per billion is many times worse for human health than Chromium-6 at 8 parts per billion.
We need to distinguish between the ideal limits set as health standards, allowing for a large margin of safety, and what humans can tolerate.
For example the radioactivity in granite means that residents of many places, e.g. Aberdeen in Scotland, live their lives quite OK being exposed to radioactivity many times (I think 100 times by memory) higher than that limit level which is recommended for workers in for example nuclear power stations.
regards, Lex