How safe is our water supply?

When I moved to Florida from Massachusetts 15 years ago and started drinking its water,Ive been on bottled water(Aquafina) ever since.
 
Never had a problem with it and it's delicious. I could (and sometimes do) drink it straight from the faucet
or even the garden hose. But I prefer the ice cold filtered water from my refrigerator.
 
It's about as safe as Sydney's was back in the 90s after 5 weeks solid rain washed every decomposing carcass and backed up loo overflow and extraneous garden fertilizers into the catchment, and half the city was laid low with 'Crypto Spiridium' ? and Giardia infections. It had a very good filtration set up it but was simply overwhelmed.
We were '3rd World' for weeks. Boiling up a big saucepan of water each night for tomorrow's use. And making sure we didn't swallow any in the shower. Fun, fun fun.

Doesn't take chemicals or terrorists to wreck it. But they sure don't help. The local cit's club bus outings usually went to a dam for a picnic and it used to make me wonder how easy it would be to drop a bucket of cyanide into it or something. That was long before the current terrorist panic, it's even more worrying now.

But then what ya gonna do?? No really, how do you prevent some nutter with a home chem set poisoning the water?

There's more than politically motivated terrorists to worry about. But worrying won't do any more to prevent it than spying on the populace will. Unless the lone nutter is a gabby guts on Twitter or something. How would surveillance pick up a plot between a group of terrorists who live in the same house and don't need to use phones etc to communicate?

Some dangers we just have to learn to live with. We should be grateful that everyone doesn't live forever or we'd have already run out of room.
Asteroid impacts, volcanoes, earthquakes, pandemics and terrorists/nutters are Nature's way of tidying us up.
sSW_darthvader.gif
 
I agree; you can't protect yourself against everything, and I tend to the fatalistic approach; wrong place, wrong time, or not.
i missed the Christchurch earthquake by 24 hours, but was back a week later for a lot of the aftershocks...luck, not judgement.
 
I wonder if the Water Board still has the fish tank that was supposed to give an early warning of poison in the water?
It was supposed to work something like the canaries down the mines.

We could all filter our drinking water through some goldfish kidneys, I suppose.

Personally, I don't think about it all that much and am happy to drink from the tap or the hose.
 
There's a lot of concerns with the safety of our water supply in the US. It's an easy way for "terrorists" to get their poisons/biochemicals into the systems of the people. There's a lot of chemicals, fertilizers, waste products, prescription drugs, etc. in the water that processing does not always remove. Of course you have to think of the toxins that the government willingly adds to our drinking water, like fluoride. I know it's not enough, but it's inexpensive...I use a PUR water filter on my faucets at home. Now when I taste the water without the filter, it tastes noticeably worse. I don't have faith in most bottled waters either.

Toxic Water

Do you know what is in the water that you drink?
If not, perhaps you should do some investigating. According to one recent survey, our drinking water is absolutely littered with dangerous contaminants…

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that an astounding one-third of U.S. water systems contain traces of at least 18 unregulated and potentially hazardous contaminants, many of which are linked to causing endocrine disruption and cancer.

Based on a nationwide survey of 25 unnamed water utilities, scientists found traces of the herbicide metolachlor, for instance, a pesticide commonly applied to conventional corn, soy, cotton, safflower, potato and other crops, as well as the heavy metal strontium, which is linked to causing bone problems.

Other chemicals identified include so-called perfluorinated compounds like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which numerous scientific studies have found can cause thyroid disease and various types of cancer.

After reading all this, you may never look at water the same way again.

Do you remember Erin Brockovich? Well, according to the Washington Post the carcinogen that she was so concerned about has been found in the drinking water of most U.S. cities…

An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”
Lovely, eh?

Not only is there hexavalent chromium in our drinking water, the reality of the matter is that there are thousands of other chemicals and prescription drugs in our water supply as a Time Magazine article from a while back detailed…

All told, there are about 3,000 prescription pharmaceuticals in use in the U.S. and thousands more over-the-counter drugs, not to mention creams and ointments we smear on and then shower off. “Between cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other sources,” says John Spatz, commissioner of Chicago’s department of water management, “there are 80,000 potential combinations of chemicals.” It’s impossible to keep our drinking supply safe from a gusher like that.

And I haven’t even gotten to fluoride yet, which is purposely being put into the water supplies of most U.S. cities.
So precisely how dangerous is fluoride? Well, the Fluoride Dangers blog puts it this way….

Even small amounts of fluoride consumed from tap water can damage your bones, teeth, brain, disrupt your thyroid function, lower IQ and/or cause cancer, according to evidence revealed in a groundbreaking 2006 National Research Council (NRC) fluoride report produced by a panel of experts who reviewed hundreds of published fluoride studies.
That certainly does not sound good.
So is fluoride in the water that you are drinking?
Perhaps you should find out.

The Natural Health and Longevity Resource Center has published a list of ten of the most significant health problems that scientific studies have shown that fluoride causes…

1. Fluoride exposure disrupts the synthesis of collagen and leads to the breakdown of collagen in bone, tendon, muscle, skin, cartilage, lungs, kidney and trachea.

2. Fluoride stimulates granule formation and oxygen consumption in white blood cells, but inhibits these processes when the white blood cell is challenged by a foreign agent in the blood.

3. Fluoride depletes the energy reserves and the ability of white blood cells to properly destroy foreign agents by the process of phagocytosis. As little as 0.2 ppm fluoride stimulates superoxide production in resting white blood cells, virtually abolishing phagocytosis. Even micro-molar amounts of fluoride, below 1 ppm, may seriously depress the ability of white blood cells to destroy pathogenic agents.

4. Fluoride confuses the immune system and causes it to attack the body’s own tissues, and increases the tumor growth rate in cancer prone individuals.

5. Fluoride inhibits antibody formation in the blood.

6. Fluoride depresses thyroid activity.

7. Fluorides have a disruptive effect on various tissues in the body.

8. Fluoride promotes development of bone cancer.

9. Fluorides cause premature aging of the human body.

10. Fluoride ingestion from mouth rinses and dentifrices in children is extremely hazardous to biological development, life span and general health.
For much, much more on this, please watch a documentary entitled “An Inconvenient Tooth” that you can find on YouTube right here.

Source (with informative links): http://www.prisonplanet.com/soft-ki...oxic-food-toxic-water-and-toxic-vaccines.html
Click to expand...
 
Sydney water was always pretty good but I got over the habit ofdrinking it from taps in Singleton. That stuff was enough to kill cattle.
Comes from the hills around Timor (region not country) which is hard mineral geology and their water tastes like liquid tin, then the sewerage and floating deaduns from the Upper Hunter is added into the mix and you had to be pretty damned thirsty to swallow it.

It's good here though, no idea where it 'springs' from but it's the sweetest, best drinking tap water evva. Beeeoodiful.
 
Thanks TG, I feel much better now and can relax...they watch out for us and do what is best for us, we're all blessed to be under their care....NOT!!! :xbone: :rofl:
 
After reading the opening post article about the person found trapped in the water system pipe, it certainly appears that we DO have terrorist attacks on our water systems; but they are simply not being reported in the news. ( Just like we now see far more explosions at fuel/biofuel/fertilizer plants, and a train wreck with flammable cargo happening almost every month, and sometimes per week the past year.)

I have a Waterwise water distiller, so I produce my own distilled water and that is what I drink. Even the best purified water does not get all of the pollutants and chemicals out of the water, and most of the bottled water is said to be not much different from drinking plain old tap water.
Even well water, which is certainly preferable to tap water, is not always safe to be drinking.
It also has inorganic minerals which can cause calcium buildup and aggravate arthritis and joint aches, but usually has wonderful fresh flavor to drink.
I remember growing up in Idaho, where I would always drink from the fresh mountain creeks when we were out riding our horses on the backwoods trails. No water has ever tasted any better than that tasted ! !
 
re:You need to employ reverse osmosis or an activated alumina defluoridation filter.

Cant I just use bottled water then try to figure out what you just said?:)
 
Davey Jones said:
re:You need to employ reverse osmosis or an activated alumina defluoridation filter.

Cant I just use bottled water then try to figure out what you just said?:)
Click to expand...

LOL - sorry - my chemistry background sneaks out once in a while to play. :rolleyes:

Bottled water is better but it still isn't perfect - ever hear those stories about the companies just filling them with tap water? Sometimes you have to wonder ...

I understand Florida water is pretty bad ...
 
We need pure drinking water to protect and heal our bodies. While it is true that drinking filtered water is a whole lot better than drinking plain old tap water, or even well water; not even the best filters can remove all of the pollutants that are now in our water supply.
The closest that we could come to actually having pure water would be from ice that has been trapped for thousands of years, either underground from a glacier, or from the polar caps.
However, nature herself has the best way to purify water for drinking, and that is evaporation, then falling back to earth as pure rainwater. Unfortunately, this pure rainwater falls to earth through air that is literally full of chemicals and other pollutants, so even drinking pure rainwater is not safe in our time and age.

The next best way to have truly pure water, is to get a water distiller, and make your own pure water. Mine makes about a gallon of water, and it takes several hours to distill that much. I usually put it on at nite and let it run, then have fresh drinking water for the next morning.
Distillers are expensive to buy, but are worth it for the health benefits you receive from drinking pure water.

http://www.dynamicsofmotion.com/Amazing_Benefits_of_Distilled_Water_s/151.htm
 
My 5 filter RO was about $200, once I upgraded the fittings and added a permeate pump.

Pretty cheap for water that tastes like mountain spring water, and yes, it does remove everything but the water.
 
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