Water, Water Everywhere, but Nary a Drop to Drink... From Your Tap, That Is!

Don't be so quick to drink that glass of water from your tap- image by ex_magician

Hey y'all!

You would think that by now people would have a great understanding about how important pure water is, but evidently, there is still a lot of work to be done. Are we not 70% water? Wouldn't we want the best water for what will become 70% of us? Today I will begin a short series abut the importance of pure water in our diets and lifestyles.

I found the coolest search tool to discover how my city's municipal drinking water fares against the national average. Follow this link to the Environmental Working Group's website. On the right hand side, you'll find a search tool where you can enter in your zip code, the name of your water company (I wrote "city"), and click on the search button. This brings up a list of water providers in your area. I selected my city, since I'm on city water.  This brought me to a new page, which compared my city's water supply with the national average.

I found out that my city's water supply has 11 toxic chemicals in it which exceeds the health and safety guidelines set by federal and state agencies, while the national average is 4. Two chemicals exceeded the maximum compliance levels set by the EPA. Twenty-four toxic chemical pollutants were found in a random sampling of water, while the national average is 8. These statistics remain, despite over 4000 tests being taken over a three year period, when the average number of tests taken is 420.

One of the two chemicals which were over the EPA maximum levels was dichloroacetic acid (DCA). This is a chemical byproduct from the process of chlorinating water. A quick search showed that DCA induces apoptosis- cell death through DNA damage. This can be good news for cancer sufferers, but not so good news for a healthy population. Pure DCA is highly corrosive, destroying upper respiratory tissues and mucous membranes.

Monochloroacetic acid was also found to be above legal limits. Chloroacetic acid is a precursor to the herbicide glyphosate. If you have been following my blog recently, you most likely recognize the word "glyphosate." It's Roundup. Roundup is in my city's tap water.

What's in your drinking water?