Drinking Water Is Becoming Increasingly Toxic & Scarce

When you turn on your tap, you expect to have pure water come out of it, but in most American communities that is far from the truth. Pesticides, heavy metals, chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs should not be coming out of your tap!

Our problems with drinking water are pale in comparison to more than one billion people on Earth, who do not have access to safe, clean pathogen free drinking water. At least Americans, by in large, are not drinking pathogens on a daily basis. Even if their drinking water is pathogen free, the vast majority of the inhabitants of our planet have toxins in their municipal drinking water.

Two of the primary water polluters in the United States are large-scale monocrop farms and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) US states with high concentrations of CAFOs report 20 to 30 serious water quality problems each year.

These operations are also depleting aquifers of valuable drinking water.

Agriculture actually uses 70% of the world’s fresh water.

Toxins in water can come from many sources:

1. Factory farms can produce high levels of nitrates in the drinking water, which is both difficult and costly to remove. The health hazards of nitrates include blue baby syndrome, cancer, autoimmune diseases, reproductive problems and more.

2. Dentist’s offices installing mercury “silver” fillings without using amalgam separators. This is the largest source of mercury in wastewater entering publicly-owned water treatment plants.

3. Fluorosilicic acid is a toxic waste product from the phosphate fertilizer industry. It is added to water supplies, providing fluoride, but it is contaminated with arsenic. According to research published in 2013, diluted fluorosilicic acid add on average 0.08 ppb of arsenic to your drinking water, and the Natural Resources Defense Council8 estimates that 56 million Americans living in 25 states drink water with arsenic at unsafe levels.

4. The chemicals used in water treatment, such as chlorine and chloramine, create highly toxic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). Three principal types of DBPs are: trihalomethanes (THMs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and haloacetic acids (HAAs). THMs are particularly hazardous when inhaled, which could expose you to toxic vapors when showering in hot water.

5. Pharmaceutical drugs, both those excreted through urine and feces and those flushed down the drain or toilet also end up contaminating drinking water.

6. Chemicals from perfume, cologne, lotions, sunscreens and medicated creams also add to the contamination problem.

7. Microcystins, likely caused by algae blooms, can cause fever, headaches, vomiting and seizures. These can be cause by farm fertilizer runoff, which feeds harmful blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). Once this algae is established, it’s more difficult to get rid of it than previously thought. Farms also contribute pesticides to the drinking water.

8. Street work and plumbing repairs can cause spiked levels of lead in drinking water, because service pipes are made of lead in some areas.

Aquifers Are Being Drained Worldwide:

The US is certainly not the only country struggling with diminishing water quality and quantity. Water pollution is a global concern and so are dwindling freshwater supplies.

As you probably know, California is experiencing a severe prolonged drought and the agricultural sector is draining underground aquifers to the point that the ground is actually sinking by as much as a foot per year in some areas. Disturbingly, we’re using up groundwater at a much faster rate than it can be replenished.

At-Home Water Filtration Is a Must for Clean Pure Water:

Since most water sources are now severely polluted, the issue of water filtration and purification couldn’t be more important. If you have well water, it would be prudent to have your water tested for arsenic and other contaminants. If you have public water, you can get local drinking water quality reports from the EPA. Water bottled in plastic contains BPA, which is an estrogen mimicker, so the best option is to use a high-quality water filtration system, unless you can verify the purity of your water.

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