Is it Necessity to Filter Your Water?

If you care about your health, filtering your household water is more a necessity than an option. Water pollution has become a very significant problem that simply cannot be ignored. No matter where you live, dangerous chemicals find their way into your drinking water.

The sources of pollution are many, ranging from agricultural runoff and industrial releases, old pipes, firefighting foam, pharmaceutical drugs and even the chemicals used during the water treatment process itself.

As noted by The New York Times:

"Radon, arsenic and nitrates are common pollutants in drinking water, and trace amounts of drugs including antibiotics and hormones have also been found ...

But water contaminants and water quality vary from one local water utility to another, so you want to purchase a filter that is effective at capturing the right contaminants.

You can request a copy of your water utility's annual water quality report, called a right-to-know or consumer confidence report, to find out which contaminants in your local water are of concern ..."

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!

But our problems with drinking water are pale in comparison to more than one billion people on the planet, 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.

Agriculture 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 amalgam fillings, which are made from mercury and silver, are 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. This toxic brew is actually added to water supplies, providing fluoride, but it is contaminated with many toxins, including 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 Council 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 add to the contamination problem.

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

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

9. Firefighting foam can find its way down the storm drains and pollute local water supplies.

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 the reduced freshwater supplies.

California has been 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. We are 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 should get annual local drinking water quality reports.

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.

Many Chemicals Found in Municipal Water Are Unregulated:

Clean, pure water is essential for health. Filtered water should be used for drinking, cooking and bathing.

Bathing or showering in contaminated water may be even more hazardous to your health than drinking it, since the chemicals absorbed through your skin go directly into your blood stream, bypassing your digestive and internal filtration systems.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates tap water in the U.S., but while there are legal limits on many of the contaminants permitted in municipal water supplies, more than half of the 300+ chemicals detected in U.S. drinking water are not regulated at all.

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