5 ms·
Want an interesting read? Go to your city water providers website and read up on all the pollutants they are over recommended levels on. Then look at the pollut
by wonderwonder 9y ago
Want an interesting read? Go to your city water providers website and read up on all the pollutants they are over recommended levels on. Then look at the pollutants they are over the legal limit on.
We assume that the water in our taps is safe to drink but there are often a myriad of tests that our utility companies are failing.
For example, I live in a relatively well to do suburb and my utility is over the recommended limit on 2 carcinogens, and chlorate which damages the thyroid. In addition they have been over the legal limit for Trihalomethanes, another carcinogen since 2014
- Raphmedia 9y agoEven worst is all the extra female hormones coming from birth control pills and livestock (mostly milk cows) that are not getting filtered out of by water providers.
- nate_meurer 9y agoIf I may pick a nit: there are no pills in sewage streams. We're talking drugs in solution or suspension (the term "dissolved solids" is used in the water treatment industry). Drugs can very difficult to remove, and water treatment facilities are only able to remove roughly half [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drugs-removed-by-sewage-treatment/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-half-of-drug...].
- jxramos 9y agoI thought a lot of pharmaceuticals wind up in water supplies because when we take pills only part of the mass is used in the body, the rest stays in the blood stream, passes the kidneys, and is removed fairly intact into the urine thereby entering our water supply at the next voiding of the bladder.
- 13of40 9y agoI think the parent was pointing out that you can't just run the resulting urine through a sieve to filter it.
- Raphmedia 9y agoUrine, not pills. Urine is filled with hormone and from what I've heard most water processing plants can't remove those completely. In fact, one of the pills is made of urine: "The estrogen-replacement drug Premarin, prescribed to menopausal women, is made from horse urine; in fact, the drug's name is short for PREgnant MARes' urINe". Since that the majority of female in the West are on birth control pills[1] that means that a lot of the urine in our water systems is in fact "pregnant urine". 1: "In the United States 98% of women have used birth control at some point in time and 62% of those of reproductive age are currently using birth control." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_birth_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_birth_control
- jxramos 9y agoPRE MAR IN, that is tooooo hilarious. Reality really is stranger than fiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarin
- justadeveloper2 9y agoI'm intrigued, but I suspect that the dilution of whatever millions of women can pee out is still in our favor luckily.
- christinamltn 9y agoYour conclusion isn't quite what your reference says. Hormones in the water supply are definitely a problem but the majority of women in the West are not on birth control pills. The 98% and 62% stats include all forms for birth control. The next line makes that explicit: "The two most common methods are the pill (11 million) and sterilization (10 million)." About 16% of childbearing aged women in the US use the pill [1]. Even if you add all methods that can be hormonal (some IUDs are, not aren't), it's only 27.8%. Almost 40% of childbearing aged women in the US use no birth control at all. For this discussion it doesn't matter that much. The quantities in the water supply that aren't being removed are a problem. In other contexts it might not be useful to think that nearly every woman who isn't a child or elderly is on the pill. [1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-unit...
- gorkonsine 9y agoI'm curious: if you run that substandard tap water through a reverse-osmosis system, how clean is the resulting water?
- justadeveloper2 9y agoWhat if the water evaporates and eventually rains back down? We should all drink rainwater or pure grain alcohol, just to be extra safe.
- ak39 9y agoThat's disturbing indeed. What's the best approach to replacing drinking water to avoid all of this?
- sjg007 9y agoInstall a reverse osmosis system in your house. However, not sure what to do about the pex piping though... Maybe run copper? Maybe there is an inert plastic?
- kyriakos 9y agoReverse osmosis can be also problematic cause it removes chemicals from water that are also useful. Maybe a less aggressive filtering method will do.
- gorkonsine 9y agoWhat chemicals could you possibly need in your water? There aren't any; the only thing you'd reasonably want in there are some minerals to make it taste good (totally pure water tastes pretty nasty actually). If you're talking about fluoride, the answer is simple: brush your teeth regularly and use dental rinse. You don't need it in your water. The only reason they ever did that was because too many people had terrible oral hygiene habits decades ago; people are a lot better about this these days, with quality toothpastes, motorized toothbrushes, flossing every day, fluoride rinses, etc.
- noetic_techy 9y agoThere are inline units you can buy that add minerals back into the water, if thats what you mean by helpful chemicals.
- wonderwonder 9y agoI think the best you can do in regards to tap water is some kind of filter. Effectiveness probably improves with cost. I have recently switched to getting 5 gallon water jugs delivered. Costs me about $60 per month. Not an optimal solution but I have no other real cure.