I have had a problem with my stomach for the last week or so. In addition, I have felt tired, wanted to sleep a lot, etc. Finally, Friday of last week, or Monday of this week, I realized that I had diarrhea, I mean explosive diarrhea. I figured that it was maybe the combination of medicines I am on, especially, my Metformin. It is known to cause diarrhea for some. The doctor confirmed that.
Now I admit that I have an issue with my stomach, often had had issues. I know that if I am stressed or nervous about something, my stomach may be one of the first places that shows up in my body. But then, in addition, I noticed that there was a strange taste to my water. You see, occasionally, I have been in the habit of picking up bottles of water at the store. That way, I can keep a bottle or two in the refrigerator and drink it during the day.
I still have a problem drinking enough water. There is something about water that I find hard to focus on drinking. I can drink coke, but with my stomach in turmoil, that seems to be something that might just be causing that excess gas, so maybe stick to water? Fruit juice is good, and sometimes there is nothing like a cup of apple juice to just make my day, but it has sugar in it, if only natural, so it might not be a good idea to drink nothing but apple juice all day long. So we are back to water again.
However, these bottles that I got from the store, have been reused, and lately, I noticed that I would take a sip of that water and there was bad taste in it. However, last night, i had to plastic cup, clean, just gotten from the store and tried a sip or two from that, and once again, a horrible taste. It did depend a bit on which faucet I used, if from the warm, the taste was worse, but still there, in the background even with the cold.
So what is wrong with our water supply. Well, recently a friend of mine related something being wrong with her water in another city close by. At the time, having not had any issues yet, or at least not noticed them,
So, I decided to check on what the situation actually is. I want to google and asked for “water conditions in New Orleans”. The first link below gives a generic response from the New Orleans Water and Sewage people. They have a huge website and lots of comments. But the bottom line for me, was when the director or someone states in the first paragraph or so, that the New Orleans purification plant has apparently not succeeded in getting all the pollutants out. Well, that is the implication I got from it, what he actually said was that it needed work and in future had to have some done, but even now it was in need of some.
The second article gets even more direct in expressing the danger. It seems that all sorts of things are dropped into the Mississippi River as it flows down from way up north. It gets a whole “length of the nation” type variety of pollutant, and it seems obvious that there is some actual concern about the qualify of water from it being used for swimming and fishing, much less drinking from it.
From independent researches, it has been found that arsenic, bromodichloromethane, chloroform, nitrates and several other nasties starting with a D are to be found in our water supply. Is it any wonder that perhaps, at least for someone with a sensitive stomach, it might be causing discomfort?! In addition, they have implications for skin cancer, high blood pressure and other diseases. These pollutants come from industrial drainage, and all sort of chemists likely used for pesticides and to grow crops, and serve a purpose, but helping us have health water to drink is NOT one of those purposes.
The sad thing is that I thought we were lucky here in New Orleans. I knew that the oil industry was polluting the gulf coast, maybe 50 miles away and some of the swamp land was being destroyed, but I still thought New Orleans was fairly safe.
So, it should not surprise you to hear that I bought two larger bottles of what they call purified water at the grocery store tonight. I am going to drink that. I put one bottle in the refrigerator to get cold and will use a plastic cup to drink it during the day. I am sharing this in case others live in this area and are unaware or live in other areas and might want to check.
Pollution is not a distance concern….it is possibly deathly, and it is not too soon to start making plans to try to alleviate it, or at least step around as much as possible.
www.swbno.org/…
www.epicwaterfilters.com/...