8 ms·

Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid

69 points by dankohn1 9y ago

gaius 9y ago
Zero Mass is prepping, it’s quite unlike so-called “raw water” secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure
foreigner 9y ago
Children's ice cream, Mandrake?
dankohn1 9y ago
Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”
- VectorLock 9y ago
  I was curious what kind of scam this guy was going to move onto next.
- j_s 9y ago
  On mobile I tend to stick to just HN; is this "for reals"? I couldn't make this stuff up! Edit: Yes, though even the photos remind me most of the YouTube comedian 'AwakenWithJP' https://m.youtube.com/#/channel/UCwUizOU8pPWXdXNniXypQEQ https://m.youtube.com/#/channel/UCwUizOU8pPWXdXNniXypQEQ
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  I thought this was satire until I read the article.
- thebiglebrewski 9y ago
  How this guy still has money for stuff is beyond me
JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
Misunderstanding of science and logic while thinking you are a genius may be the hallmark of this decade. Call the decade the Dunning-Krugers. Hey some places do have subpar water, I live in one with arsenic and chromium flirting above EPA guidelines. But a $150 reverse osmosis system from Amazon and a $30 deionizing filter after that if I want to get crazy and almost a 0 ppm TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) reading on a $10 eBay TDS meter solves that problem. It provides almost limitless fresh perfect water to drink.
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  Do you remineralize that water before drinking?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - bastawhiz 9y ago
    Besides flavor, does it matter? If it's not for the flavor you can eat like three almonds to make up for the loss of minerals.
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      It's very bad for your teeth.
      - VeejayRampay 9y ago
        Wouldn't it then suffice to brush your teeth? Am I missing something?
        regularfry 9y ago
        It leeches minerals out of your teeth. Nothing to do with leaving a coating behind.
        9y ago
paulus_magnus2 9y ago
Watero. $25 bags of clean water freshly filtered your personal $500 dispenser
- buckminster 9y ago
  Once you've tasted cold-pressed water you won't drink anything else.
  - api 9y ago
    People will buy it. Look at the audiophile market.
    - patcheudor 9y ago
      Please buy my tone rocks. For just $2000 you'll get a set of not one, but four tuned rocks which you place precisely 66.7mm away from your midrange speaker. They enhance the undertones and make midtones shine. You've never experienced an audio enhancement quite like this for just $2000. Order today.
guest 9y ago
No credibility to those going off grid or those slandering them. There will be idiots wanting things to be black or white with nothing in between - while it's the scale that creates the ability to differentiate right from wrong and what is what. Fluoride has been linked as detrimental to IQ by Harvard - search and you'll find the study (and afaik not only by Harvard, one example should be enough). Regarding tap water it will soon be the organisation of it through the state that stands between a massive "outbreak" of cancer in the population and keepign up the current rates of it. -Fracking has created holes inbetween water sources and oil/gas pockets - these are filled in by pumping down gravel and cement. That mixture to begin with isn't even as "qualitative" as you might think as pokects of other materials are created and as the layers of rock, dirth etc shifts the material is ground down. Within 30 years there is a really high risk of failure and over time the vast majority will fail - resulting in a poisioned watertable. Do you really think the people who have ownership of gas, oil and fracking companies will be held accountable by the legal system? Or by corrupt politicians - many who surely had a hand in the allowance to drill in the manner which has been done... Tap water is the way to assure massive amounts of clean water to a population - that however does not mean that it does not come without a cost (if it is fluoride and a lowering of IQ to create a docile people or not) and that tradeoff should be known - both the positive and the negative of it. Transparency drives technological evolution, if the tradeoff is known and can be argued to be problematic there is an incentive to come up with a better solution.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  NYC has been fluoridating water since the 1964. Doesn’t seem to have affected IQ or made anyone docile.
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    That is not a productive debate to be had. Conspiracies aside, there are clearly questions to be asked: many studies show negative effects of fluoridation such as an increased rate of fluorosis in children, over-exposure, including evidence of neurotoxicity. Even more worrying, the sources of fluoride used have been shown to be frequently contaminated by much, much worse substances due to their origin as a manufacturing by-product. Most importantly, countries that do not fluoridate water (~95% of the world) have experienced the same reduction in tooth decay as the ones who do.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
japhyr 9y ago
He said “real water” should expire after a few months. His does. “It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery,” he said. “If it sits around too long, it’ll turn green. People don’t even realize that because all their water’s dead, so they never see it turn green.” The marketing speak these companies utilize makes me cringe. As a science teacher, I aim to help students develop the ability to critically analyze claims like these. I think half of the people in charge of these companies believe their own hype, and half of them are just doing it to take money from uneducated people.
- cfontes 9y ago
  make that 10 and 90... most are just scammers trying to find gullible people over and over again
- throwawy123117 9y ago
  It's definitely cringe-worthy, but I don't doubt the turning green part: a fish tank will do that too from algal growth, which is almost certainly what is happening to their "real" water.
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    A fish tank provides ample nutrients for algae growth, pure spring water not so much (unless they pour fish food into the water) Pure tap water will not turn green within a month.
  - ivanhoe 9y ago
    It's really about the level of ammonia/nitrates in the water and a sufficiently strong source of light, that's all that algae need. It will happen to any water that sits a few weeks in open air so that spores can get into it. Even a regular tap water with added chloride will turn green if it has at least some level of nitrates in it (and usually they have).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
heifetz 9y ago
how is the raw spring water described in the article any different from bottled spring water like Perrier?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Probiotics and love (of separating a fool from his cash).
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  Perrier filters its water.
throwawy123117 9y ago
I grew up drinking raw water in New York State. It was connected to the tap, so it was available for all cooking and for filling a glass at any moment. We could even bathe in it. Of course, there was a reason: my parents lived beyond the reach of municipal water grids and so had to source their water from a well in the back yard. This is not uncommon outside urban bubbles. These "live water" individuals are morons. It's unbelievable what people will pay for. This is anti-science, and anti-progress. I've been to Sierra Leone, a place where all water is "live" and they have never added flouride or chloramine. Want raw water? Go live there and enjoy the cholera and dysentery. Municipal water grids are a triumph of urban development. Early New York City understood it, they built the first tunnel to import meteoric water in 1917, because people did not want to drink nearby water made filthy by their neighbors and by industrial development. Hell, even the Romans got it: you need a water system for a large population, and it has to be safe water. This is something we have only improved with treatment. Have there been missteps with lead pipes? Sure. But they aren't actually a problem unless the water their carrying has a pH that will solubilize the metal. If you want to drink healthful water: use a multi-stage filter. As an aside, let me tell you: having a well can be terrible. We're talking unbelievable minerality that you either remove via ion exchange with a water softener or that you watch clog your pipes, faucets, and water heater. Haven't experienced soft water? It tastes salty, and it feels like you can never fully wash soap off. When I was young I had to take flouride tablets because, of course, none was added to our water. The dose was a bit higher than in city water. I've never had dental carries, and I have my careful pediatrician to thank. We could afford the tablets, but in a different circumstance we may not have been so fortunate. The poor in cities get flouride for free thanks to municipal flouridation. Of course there is also the risk of the well running dry during droughts, and during blackouts there is no water because well pumps are electric. That means no toilets either. Where there is no city water, there is no city sewer either, so waste ends up in a septic tank that needs to be pumped out every couple years. That of course prohibits having a garbage disposal. It goes on and on. City services are valued for good reasons. The wealthy should be championing them, and fostering their improvement and expansion, not opting-out with bogus "live water" and vague misbeliefs about health.
- paganel 9y ago
  > This is something we have only improved with treatment. Have there been missteps with lead pipes? Sure. But they aren't actually a problem unless the water their carrying has a pH that will solubilize the metal. I 100% concur on your statement about the advancements we've made, but unfortunately things are not so black and white outside the urban US and some Western European countries. For example, I live in an Eastern European capital, in an apartment building built in the early 1980s (so it's not that old) but, nevertheless, I cannot drink tap water because the pipes are just too rusty. One can notice that every couple of weeks or so, when the water is temporarily stopped, and when it comes back on the first burst is red-ish, and it keeps being red-ish for at least 10 or 15 seconds after that, after which it turns back to being clear. There's no way I'm drinking water that flows through those rusty pipes.
ricardobeat 9y ago
[paywall]
j_s 9y ago
Anecdata: a dentist mentioned flouridated bottled water as an option since the parents didn't realize their kids were missing out with "regular" bottled water. To me it's interesting to consider the long-term impact of all products that are consumed/applied frequently (both manufactured and natural ones, though somehow natural usually seems less worrisome). I believe it is best to introduce fairly dramatic variety just to give the body a chance to dodge any long term accumulating effects/deficiencies... but this hasn't translated into a soap-switching schedule yet! (a very low personal priority thanks to mass-market manufacturing similarities). Water supply selection seems to be one of the most critical choices in this department; I appreciate this chance to learn from what other HN users have researched and implemented as best.
- pmorici 9y ago
  When I was in elementary school we lived out in an area dominated by rural farmland. I'm guessing close to 100% of the students at the school got their water at home from an untreated well. Once a month the school nurse would bring around little cups of fluoride mouth wash and we would swish with it for 3 minutes then spit it out. If you are seriously concerned about fluoridated vs non-fluoridated water there is no reason that the two things have to be linked. Heck, you can get many mouth washes with fluorine in thing. Listerine has a fluoridated version for example.
  - j_s 9y ago
    True! Another commenter mentioned tablets from the pediatrician. These days progress consists of companies marketing "healthy" improvements to products that have become a convenient part of the daily routine.
    - twothamendment 9y ago
      We are in a well in an area without a lot of flouride in it. Our kids take tablets from the pharmacy. I think they are about $2/month.
Pica_soO 9y ago
In a game i work on, there is a faction of fanatic "green" monks, traversing the desert. They plant glass trees, intricate structures, which use Silica-Gel to collect moisture during over the day and night, collected heat to turn the collected water into steam again, that is condensed near the root of the structure into a glass cavern. There it waits for a capillar effect system which pumps the liquids up at night. Those glass trees would slowly terraform lifeless desserts back into green pastures, while withstanding sandstorms and goats.
username223 9y ago
So cringe-worthy. I drink lots of "raw" water on camping trips, and the only difference I've noticed is a bout of giardia (easily treated, but highly unpleasant). Bottled water in general is an insult to the environment and human progress; bottled "raw" water is all that plus forehead-smackingly dumb. The fact that potable water is almost free is a triumph to be celebrated.
tomohawk 9y ago
Sometimes the crazy people are right. Someone close to me used to have all kinds of health problems. These included digestive tract problems, skin problems, and many others. After seeing many doctors and specialists over many years, they were worse off than when they started. They decided that maybe it was something in their diet. They eliminated pretty much everything except water from their diet, and that did not work. Shortly after, they went on a trip where they were off grid for a few weeks. During that time, the health problems started going away. When they got back to civilization, the problems started coming back. That's when the thought hit. What if those crazy people on the internet are right about municipal water? After some experimentation, it was determined that chlorinated water was the culprit. They've moved to a house with a well and are much better off than before. Since then, I've met other people with similar health issues who have benefited by eliminating chlorinated water as much as possible (drinking or bathing). Some have installed large carbon block filters on their municipal supply. Chlorine has had undeniable public health benefits, but it is also a poison, and affects some people in a very detrimental way.
- VectorLock 9y ago
  Take your anecdote and replace "water" with "electromagnetic waves."
- GuB-42 9y ago
  I don't know about the latest research but I suppose a few people can be intolerant to chlorine at a much lower dose than most people. It happens with pretty much every substance, natural or man made. As for your example, are you sure it is due to chlorine? From you description, there are simply too many variables. Sure, he stopped using chlorinated water, in fact, he changed water completely. He also moved. It means it can be caused by the mineral composition of water, plumbing, air quality, volatile organic compounds, etc... And all that is excluding psychological causes. Anyways, I won't criticize your friend, he obviously made the right decision because he feels better, no matter the underlying cause. The problem is that to extrapolate to other people, we need more than anecdotal evidence.
  - tomohawk 9y ago
chakalakasp 9y ago
“Water? You mean like in the toilet?” Every day feels one step closer to Idiocracy.
- twothamendment 9y ago
  I have a friend near Salt Lake who bought a house on an old property. When looking it over the owner pointed out that it wasn't on city water, but a pipe directly to a spring. A local company sells that same spring water, but he flushes his toilet with it.
  - rjmunro 9y ago
    This reminds me of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. They sell expensive bottles of their mineral water in their restaurants, but it is the same water that has supplied the buildings since long before there was a municipal water supply in the area, so you can just ask for tap water and get the exact same product for free, just without the glass bottle. https://www.blenheimpalace.com/estate/blenheim-palace-mineral-water/ https://www.blenheimpalace.com/estate/blenheim-palace-minera...
oneplane 9y ago
This just seems plain stupid to me. How can a government not provide one of the most basic, most essential services that we even see as the first thing to provide to third world drought-ridden places? There are a ton of NGO's in the USA that (so they say) make wells and clean water available in Africa, but when it comes to tap water at home it is so bad that people turn away from it and away from the scientific backing on how tap water should be. It always amazes me that in some countries (or areas within those) you still can't expect safe tap water, and still have a large 'bottled water' industry and consumption. It doesn't help anyone and it doesn't align with the idea of setting up a specialised entity and supply them with resources to do it (a.k.a. water supply company and governing instances). We expect normal, clean water that is just water and not added with anything for 'our benefit' out of the tap, and that's what we get. It's tested, and there are multiple different grids with individual sources and individual filters. It's not hard to do, it's what we have here; it costs almost nothing, and doesn't fail. Strangely enough, one neighbouring country (France) doesn't have this uniformly (don't drink water in Paris...) but in another (Germany) the water is just fine again. You'd think that a civilised country that sets up organisations and systems to deal with basic needs at scale would be able to accomplish their designated tasks.
teh_klev 9y ago
I had to double check I wasn't reading The Onion. Sure, public water supplies in developed nations aren't without their problems, but I'd sure as hell prefer to take my chances with municipal "processed water" than put myself at risk from cholera or other water borne maladies that we more or less eradicated over the past 120 years. I thoroughly recommend "The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink" by Dr. Robert Morris [0]. Kinda feels like these quacks need to be reminded of the life and death lottery our water supply used to be. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Death-Intriguing-Present-Danger/dp/0060730900 https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Death-Intriguing-Present-Danger/...
Nokinside 9y ago
>What adherents share is a wariness of tap water, particularly the fluoride added to it At the same time most 'natural ground water' in the west coast has naturally higher fluoride content than what is considered safe. Municipalities remove fluoride, they don't add it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#/media/File:Groundwater-fluoride-world.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#/media/File...
kaycebasques 9y ago
Leaving aside the pretentiousness of the "water consciousness movement", I'm really interested in "decentralized" access to water, and I have a few questions about this technology maybe one of you can answer: Is it portable? For example, the article mentions Burning Man. Could you theoretically bring this to a desert and extract water from the air? There's probably enough sunlight in a typical desert to power the solar panels, but is there enough water moisture in the air to extract? (Context: I generally agree with the perspective that water treatment keeps water safe to drink.) How could I test water from the ZMW system to ensure that it meets similar safety standards as tap water? Could I process the extracted water myself? What does that process look like? I get the general sense that this particular system is being marketed to wealthy people. Are there any similar systems that try to do this cheaply? Maybe as a mission to make water accessible to everyone. General question around climate change: is "more water moisture in the air" one of the expected long-term effects of climate change?
- mullen 9y ago
  > Is it portable? For example, the article mentions Burning Man. Could you theoretically bring this to a desert and extract water from the air? There's probably enough sunlight in a typical desert to power the solar panels, but is there enough water moisture in the air to extract? You could not do this at Burning Man. During the event, the humidity level is something like 3%. You literally don't sweat at Burning Man.

69 points by dankohn1 9y ago

gaius 9y ago

Zero Mass is prepping, it’s quite unlike so-called “raw water” secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure

foreigner 9y ago

Children's ice cream, Mandrake?

dankohn1 9y ago

Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”

VectorLock 9y ago
I was curious what kind of scam this guy was going to move onto next.
j_s 9y ago
On mobile I tend to stick to just HN; is this "for reals"? I couldn't make this stuff up! Edit: Yes, though even the photos remind me most of the YouTube comedian 'AwakenWithJP' https://m.youtube.com/#/channel/UCwUizOU8pPWXdXNniXypQEQ https://m.youtube.com/#/channel/UCwUizOU8pPWXdXNniXypQEQ
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
castle-bravo 9y ago
I thought this was satire until I read the article.
thebiglebrewski 9y ago
How this guy still has money for stuff is beyond me

JohnJamesRambo 9y ago

Misunderstanding of science and logic while thinking you are a genius may be the hallmark of this decade. Call the decade the Dunning-Krugers. Hey some places do have subpar water, I live in one with arsenic and chromium flirting above EPA guidelines. But a $150 reverse osmosis system from Amazon and a $30 deionizing filter after that if I want to get crazy and almost a 0 ppm TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) reading on a $10 eBay TDS meter solves that problem. It provides almost limitless fresh perfect water to drink.

ivanhoe 9y ago
Do you remineralize that water before drinking?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bastawhiz 9y ago
  Besides flavor, does it matter? If it's not for the flavor you can eat like three almonds to make up for the loss of minerals.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    It's very bad for your teeth.
    - VeejayRampay 9y ago
      Wouldn't it then suffice to brush your teeth? Am I missing something?
      - regularfry 9y ago
        It leeches minerals out of your teeth. Nothing to do with leaving a coating behind.
      - 9y ago

paulus_magnus2 9y ago

Watero. $25 bags of clean water freshly filtered your personal $500 dispenser

buckminster 9y ago
Once you've tasted cold-pressed water you won't drink anything else.
- api 9y ago
  People will buy it. Look at the audiophile market.
  - patcheudor 9y ago
    Please buy my tone rocks. For just $2000 you'll get a set of not one, but four tuned rocks which you place precisely 66.7mm away from your midrange speaker. They enhance the undertones and make midtones shine. You've never experienced an audio enhancement quite like this for just $2000. Order today.

guest 9y ago

No credibility to those going off grid or those slandering them. There will be idiots wanting things to be black or white with nothing in between - while it's the scale that creates the ability to differentiate right from wrong and what is what. Fluoride has been linked as detrimental to IQ by Harvard - search and you'll find the study (and afaik not only by Harvard, one example should be enough). Regarding tap water it will soon be the organisation of it through the state that stands between a massive "outbreak" of cancer in the population and keepign up the current rates of it. -Fracking has created holes inbetween water sources and oil/gas pockets - these are filled in by pumping down gravel and cement. That mixture to begin with isn't even as "qualitative" as you might think as pokects of other materials are created and as the layers of rock, dirth etc shifts the material is ground down. Within 30 years there is a really high risk of failure and over time the vast majority will fail - resulting in a poisioned watertable. Do you really think the people who have ownership of gas, oil and fracking companies will be held accountable by the legal system? Or by corrupt politicians - many who surely had a hand in the allowance to drill in the manner which has been done... Tap water is the way to assure massive amounts of clean water to a population - that however does not mean that it does not come without a cost (if it is fluoride and a lowering of IQ to create a docile people or not) and that tradeoff should be known - both the positive and the negative of it. Transparency drives technological evolution, if the tradeoff is known and can be argued to be problematic there is an incentive to come up with a better solution.

Spooky23 9y ago
NYC has been fluoridating water since the 1964. Doesn’t seem to have affected IQ or made anyone docile.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  That is not a productive debate to be had. Conspiracies aside, there are clearly questions to be asked: many studies show negative effects of fluoridation such as an increased rate of fluorosis in children, over-exposure, including evidence of neurotoxicity. Even more worrying, the sources of fluoride used have been shown to be frequently contaminated by much, much worse substances due to their origin as a manufacturing by-product. Most importantly, countries that do not fluoridate water (~95% of the world) have experienced the same reduction in tooth decay as the ones who do.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

japhyr 9y ago

He said “real water” should expire after a few months. His does. “It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery,” he said. “If it sits around too long, it’ll turn green. People don’t even realize that because all their water’s dead, so they never see it turn green.” The marketing speak these companies utilize makes me cringe. As a science teacher, I aim to help students develop the ability to critically analyze claims like these. I think half of the people in charge of these companies believe their own hype, and half of them are just doing it to take money from uneducated people.

cfontes 9y ago
make that 10 and 90... most are just scammers trying to find gullible people over and over again
throwawy123117 9y ago
It's definitely cringe-worthy, but I don't doubt the turning green part: a fish tank will do that too from algal growth, which is almost certainly what is happening to their "real" water.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  A fish tank provides ample nutrients for algae growth, pure spring water not so much (unless they pour fish food into the water) Pure tap water will not turn green within a month.
- ivanhoe 9y ago
  It's really about the level of ammonia/nitrates in the water and a sufficiently strong source of light, that's all that algae need. It will happen to any water that sits a few weeks in open air so that spores can get into it. Even a regular tap water with added chloride will turn green if it has at least some level of nitrates in it (and usually they have).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

heifetz 9y ago

how is the raw spring water described in the article any different from bottled spring water like Perrier?

Spooky23 9y ago
Probiotics and love (of separating a fool from his cash).
bastawhiz 9y ago
Perrier filters its water.

throwawy123117 9y ago

I grew up drinking raw water in New York State. It was connected to the tap, so it was available for all cooking and for filling a glass at any moment. We could even bathe in it. Of course, there was a reason: my parents lived beyond the reach of municipal water grids and so had to source their water from a well in the back yard. This is not uncommon outside urban bubbles. These "live water" individuals are morons. It's unbelievable what people will pay for. This is anti-science, and anti-progress. I've been to Sierra Leone, a place where all water is "live" and they have never added flouride or chloramine. Want raw water? Go live there and enjoy the cholera and dysentery. Municipal water grids are a triumph of urban development. Early New York City understood it, they built the first tunnel to import meteoric water in 1917, because people did not want to drink nearby water made filthy by their neighbors and by industrial development. Hell, even the Romans got it: you need a water system for a large population, and it has to be safe water. This is something we have only improved with treatment. Have there been missteps with lead pipes? Sure. But they aren't actually a problem unless the water their carrying has a pH that will solubilize the metal. If you want to drink healthful water: use a multi-stage filter. As an aside, let me tell you: having a well can be terrible. We're talking unbelievable minerality that you either remove via ion exchange with a water softener or that you watch clog your pipes, faucets, and water heater. Haven't experienced soft water? It tastes salty, and it feels like you can never fully wash soap off. When I was young I had to take flouride tablets because, of course, none was added to our water. The dose was a bit higher than in city water. I've never had dental carries, and I have my careful pediatrician to thank. We could afford the tablets, but in a different circumstance we may not have been so fortunate. The poor in cities get flouride for free thanks to municipal flouridation. Of course there is also the risk of the well running dry during droughts, and during blackouts there is no water because well pumps are electric. That means no toilets either. Where there is no city water, there is no city sewer either, so waste ends up in a septic tank that needs to be pumped out every couple years. That of course prohibits having a garbage disposal. It goes on and on. City services are valued for good reasons. The wealthy should be championing them, and fostering their improvement and expansion, not opting-out with bogus "live water" and vague misbeliefs about health.

paganel 9y ago
> This is something we have only improved with treatment. Have there been missteps with lead pipes? Sure. But they aren't actually a problem unless the water their carrying has a pH that will solubilize the metal. I 100% concur on your statement about the advancements we've made, but unfortunately things are not so black and white outside the urban US and some Western European countries. For example, I live in an Eastern European capital, in an apartment building built in the early 1980s (so it's not that old) but, nevertheless, I cannot drink tap water because the pipes are just too rusty. One can notice that every couple of weeks or so, when the water is temporarily stopped, and when it comes back on the first burst is red-ish, and it keeps being red-ish for at least 10 or 15 seconds after that, after which it turns back to being clear. There's no way I'm drinking water that flows through those rusty pipes.

ricardobeat 9y ago

[paywall]

j_s 9y ago

Anecdata: a dentist mentioned flouridated bottled water as an option since the parents didn't realize their kids were missing out with "regular" bottled water. To me it's interesting to consider the long-term impact of all products that are consumed/applied frequently (both manufactured and natural ones, though somehow natural usually seems less worrisome). I believe it is best to introduce fairly dramatic variety just to give the body a chance to dodge any long term accumulating effects/deficiencies... but this hasn't translated into a soap-switching schedule yet! (a very low personal priority thanks to mass-market manufacturing similarities). Water supply selection seems to be one of the most critical choices in this department; I appreciate this chance to learn from what other HN users have researched and implemented as best.

pmorici 9y ago
When I was in elementary school we lived out in an area dominated by rural farmland. I'm guessing close to 100% of the students at the school got their water at home from an untreated well. Once a month the school nurse would bring around little cups of fluoride mouth wash and we would swish with it for 3 minutes then spit it out. If you are seriously concerned about fluoridated vs non-fluoridated water there is no reason that the two things have to be linked. Heck, you can get many mouth washes with fluorine in thing. Listerine has a fluoridated version for example.
- j_s 9y ago
  True! Another commenter mentioned tablets from the pediatrician. These days progress consists of companies marketing "healthy" improvements to products that have become a convenient part of the daily routine.
  - twothamendment 9y ago
    We are in a well in an area without a lot of flouride in it. Our kids take tablets from the pharmacy. I think they are about $2/month.

Pica_soO 9y ago

In a game i work on, there is a faction of fanatic "green" monks, traversing the desert. They plant glass trees, intricate structures, which use Silica-Gel to collect moisture during over the day and night, collected heat to turn the collected water into steam again, that is condensed near the root of the structure into a glass cavern. There it waits for a capillar effect system which pumps the liquids up at night. Those glass trees would slowly terraform lifeless desserts back into green pastures, while withstanding sandstorms and goats.

username223 9y ago

So cringe-worthy. I drink lots of "raw" water on camping trips, and the only difference I've noticed is a bout of giardia (easily treated, but highly unpleasant). Bottled water in general is an insult to the environment and human progress; bottled "raw" water is all that plus forehead-smackingly dumb. The fact that potable water is almost free is a triumph to be celebrated.

tomohawk 9y ago

Sometimes the crazy people are right. Someone close to me used to have all kinds of health problems. These included digestive tract problems, skin problems, and many others. After seeing many doctors and specialists over many years, they were worse off than when they started. They decided that maybe it was something in their diet. They eliminated pretty much everything except water from their diet, and that did not work. Shortly after, they went on a trip where they were off grid for a few weeks. During that time, the health problems started going away. When they got back to civilization, the problems started coming back. That's when the thought hit. What if those crazy people on the internet are right about municipal water? After some experimentation, it was determined that chlorinated water was the culprit. They've moved to a house with a well and are much better off than before. Since then, I've met other people with similar health issues who have benefited by eliminating chlorinated water as much as possible (drinking or bathing). Some have installed large carbon block filters on their municipal supply. Chlorine has had undeniable public health benefits, but it is also a poison, and affects some people in a very detrimental way.

VectorLock 9y ago
Take your anecdote and replace "water" with "electromagnetic waves."
GuB-42 9y ago
I don't know about the latest research but I suppose a few people can be intolerant to chlorine at a much lower dose than most people. It happens with pretty much every substance, natural or man made. As for your example, are you sure it is due to chlorine? From you description, there are simply too many variables. Sure, he stopped using chlorinated water, in fact, he changed water completely. He also moved. It means it can be caused by the mineral composition of water, plumbing, air quality, volatile organic compounds, etc... And all that is excluding psychological causes. Anyways, I won't criticize your friend, he obviously made the right decision because he feels better, no matter the underlying cause. The problem is that to extrapolate to other people, we need more than anecdotal evidence.
- tomohawk 9y ago

chakalakasp 9y ago

“Water? You mean like in the toilet?” Every day feels one step closer to Idiocracy.

twothamendment 9y ago
I have a friend near Salt Lake who bought a house on an old property. When looking it over the owner pointed out that it wasn't on city water, but a pipe directly to a spring. A local company sells that same spring water, but he flushes his toilet with it.
- rjmunro 9y ago
  This reminds me of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. They sell expensive bottles of their mineral water in their restaurants, but it is the same water that has supplied the buildings since long before there was a municipal water supply in the area, so you can just ask for tap water and get the exact same product for free, just without the glass bottle. https://www.blenheimpalace.com/estate/blenheim-palace-mineral-water/ https://www.blenheimpalace.com/estate/blenheim-palace-minera...

oneplane 9y ago

This just seems plain stupid to me. How can a government not provide one of the most basic, most essential services that we even see as the first thing to provide to third world drought-ridden places? There are a ton of NGO's in the USA that (so they say) make wells and clean water available in Africa, but when it comes to tap water at home it is so bad that people turn away from it and away from the scientific backing on how tap water should be. It always amazes me that in some countries (or areas within those) you still can't expect safe tap water, and still have a large 'bottled water' industry and consumption. It doesn't help anyone and it doesn't align with the idea of setting up a specialised entity and supply them with resources to do it (a.k.a. water supply company and governing instances). We expect normal, clean water that is just water and not added with anything for 'our benefit' out of the tap, and that's what we get. It's tested, and there are multiple different grids with individual sources and individual filters. It's not hard to do, it's what we have here; it costs almost nothing, and doesn't fail. Strangely enough, one neighbouring country (France) doesn't have this uniformly (don't drink water in Paris...) but in another (Germany) the water is just fine again. You'd think that a civilised country that sets up organisations and systems to deal with basic needs at scale would be able to accomplish their designated tasks.

teh_klev 9y ago

I had to double check I wasn't reading The Onion. Sure, public water supplies in developed nations aren't without their problems, but I'd sure as hell prefer to take my chances with municipal "processed water" than put myself at risk from cholera or other water borne maladies that we more or less eradicated over the past 120 years. I thoroughly recommend "The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink" by Dr. Robert Morris [0]. Kinda feels like these quacks need to be reminded of the life and death lottery our water supply used to be. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Death-Intriguing-Present-Danger/dp/0060730900 https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Death-Intriguing-Present-Danger/...

Nokinside 9y ago

>What adherents share is a wariness of tap water, particularly the fluoride added to it At the same time most 'natural ground water' in the west coast has naturally higher fluoride content than what is considered safe. Municipalities remove fluoride, they don't add it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#/media/File:Groundwater-fluoride-world.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#/media/File...

kaycebasques 9y ago

Leaving aside the pretentiousness of the "water consciousness movement", I'm really interested in "decentralized" access to water, and I have a few questions about this technology maybe one of you can answer: Is it portable? For example, the article mentions Burning Man. Could you theoretically bring this to a desert and extract water from the air? There's probably enough sunlight in a typical desert to power the solar panels, but is there enough water moisture in the air to extract? (Context: I generally agree with the perspective that water treatment keeps water safe to drink.) How could I test water from the ZMW system to ensure that it meets similar safety standards as tap water? Could I process the extracted water myself? What does that process look like? I get the general sense that this particular system is being marketed to wealthy people. Are there any similar systems that try to do this cheaply? Maybe as a mission to make water accessible to everyone. General question around climate change: is "more water moisture in the air" one of the expected long-term effects of climate change?

mullen 9y ago
> Is it portable? For example, the article mentions Burning Man. Could you theoretically bring this to a desert and extract water from the air? There's probably enough sunlight in a typical desert to power the solar panels, but is there enough water moisture in the air to extract? You could not do this at Burning Man. During the event, the humidity level is something like 3%. You literally don't sweat at Burning Man.