December 15th, 2017
By
Sayer Ji
Contributing writer for
Wake Up World
Despite being at the top of the global food chain and industrial developmental ladder, the United States has a poor track record for delivering uncontaminated drinking water to the public. Even the nicest restaurants are guilty of serving you directly from the tap. It’s time to get real about the ‘tap water problem,’ one of the most significant vectors of toxicity of our age…
Water is life, as the saying goes. And it’s more than just a poetic phrase. Water is so intrinsically connected to life, if you counted all the molecules in the human body, 99% of them would be
water!
On average, a human life can be sustained for up to three weeks without food, but a person won’t survive more than a few days without water. Under extreme conditions, an adult can lose around one liter of water per hour, all of which needs to be readily replaced to maintain a healthy fluid balance. So, what could be more important than consuming high quality, non-contaminated water?
In the United States, most of the water we utilize comes from our domestic
water tap. We cook with it, we bathe in it; we use it on our yards, and in our pools. And we rarely, if ever, consider how clean or safe it is to do so. But when it comes to drinking water, quality is not something that can be sacrificed in exchange for plentiful supply.
One of the most profound technological developments in the modern era was the implementation of mass public sanitation infrastructures and the subsequent availability of water free from feces and other biological contaminants. Indeed, this, along with improved nutrition and refrigeration technologies, was what was behind the widespread reduction in epidemic outbreaks in ‘infectious diseases’ in the mid-twentieth century and not the introduction of mass vaccination campaigns which came afterwards. Drinking unclean water can cause either acute or chronic effects, depending on the nature of the contaminant, and the concentration. Dysentery, a common water-borne bacterial infection, causes acute reactions such as
intestinal inflammation, and severe
diarrhea. A serious condition, dysentery causes rapid dehydration, and an infection which can be fatal, if left untreated. It is still a common third-world killer today.
Yet, with the introduction of modern water sanitation technologies, another problem emerged: chronic, culminative poisoning to nonlethal doses of contaminants, such as most industrial chemicals. Fertilizer runoff, and other industrial pollutants, contaminate streams and rivers worldwide.
The Illusion of Safety / Not MY Tap!
It’s easy to think that living in the United States gives us a free pass from such concerns. But
recent headlines speak to a darker reality.
You’ve heard about the
ongoing battle for clean water in Flint, Michigan. But unsafe tap water is not a localized phenomenon. A recently released report found that 62 million Americans are exposed to unsafe drinking water. And often, these flag-raising issues don’t trigger safety responses until people start getting sick.
Safeguarding the health of our bodies includes ensuring that the water we drink has been properly filtered, or comes from a known-clean source such as a spring or an uncontaminated well. Only trust bottled water that comes from a reputable company.
And don’t let being in a nice restaurant in a big city lull you into a sense of complacency. From New York City to Encinitas, Portland to Boulder, veritable meccas of food quality and health consciousness are serving unfiltered tap water. You don’t have to see it
to believe it.
Lead and Fluoride: Lethal Offenders