You'd be surprised. We are told that drinking copious amounts of water may improve our health, but if we continually drink water containing contaminants we could become susceptible to many illnesses, from asthma to Parkinson's disease. We have become, more or less, human filters for toxic water. Tap water today is unfit for human consumption and filled with many toxins. If you aren't treating the water you drink to remove them, you are the filter for all of these toxins. But...but, you say, governments are supposed to ensure that tap water is safe to drink. Well, this common belief is bolstered by reassuring, yearly reports from local water departments showing low levels of contaminants in their water. Think again: metals that contaminate many water systems across the country include lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. The list goes on. Lookee here.
It is a simple fact that drinking tap water is simply not an option if you want to stay healthy. I don't have to remind you of how the Roman empire fell.
While some water contaminants come from natural sources, such as pathogens from wildlife and toxic minerals leached from ground minerals, more severe contaminants are largely a result of human activity. These are the usual suspects: sewage, industrial waste, pesticide runoff, improper dumping and defective treatment. According to DC's Water & Sewer Authority who have published their annual quality report:
These contaminants fall into five categories: pathogens, metals and inorganic chemicals, synthetic organic chemicals, radioactive materials and additives.
You do remember reading a couple of months ago about the amount of drugs & chemicals flushed into the sewage system.
Although some of these contaminants may be in urban runoff, the main source appears to be the 1 billion gallons of partially treated sewage that flows into the ocean every day from the region’s four major sewage outfalls. Women taking birth control pills excrete estrogen in their urine, which is flushed down the toilet and ends up in the ocean. The same is true of antidepressants, tranquilizers, anti-inflammatory medicine and other drugs, as well as musk fragrances, sunscreens, soaps and additives to plastics – compounds known to mimic or disrupt hormones.
Sewage-treatment plants only remove 50% to 70% of these chemicals.
Bottled water is not necessarily any safer than tap water. Often, it is nothing more than tap water that may or may not have been filtered (does anyone remember the story of Coca-Cola bottling water in the UK? Nuthin' but tap water!) Here's another reason why you shouldn't drink bottled water: the sheer amount of resources it takes to pour water out of a tap and into a bottle. America alone drinks well over 35 billion bottled water per year now. To create enough plastic to bottle these 35 billion or so liters requires over 1.85 million barrels of oil. This is enough to fuel about 120,000 cars for a year. Who needs offshore drilling when we can save this much!
Contact your local water utility as it is now required by law to provide a report on all contaminants and toxins found in your local drinking water. If you're not sure who provides your water, try looking in the phone book or call your state drinking water program. No matter how you look at it, the safest current option is checking out your local tap water and consider a filter. This need not necessarily cost huge amounts of money. A whole house filtration system can cost a tad over a thousand dollars, but if you consider that you only drink the water from your kitchen tap, then a small attachment at the sink is less than one hundred dollars. There are several different types of water filters, each designed to remove specific contaminants. Most water filters specify which germs they remove, all of them remove lead and chlorine, and a few on the market remove E-coli. There are known companies that sell reverse osmosis filters. It shouldn't cost a fortune but think about the cost of falling sick due to water poisoning.
This research here finds trace amounts of drugs and chemicals—including anti-seizure medication and a Teflon ingredient— in Lake Michigan drinking water. For those interested in the composition of raw water, here's a small and concise pdf.
Arsenic in water link here. You should visit this site if you're drinking from your tap.