8 ms·

The Gelman plume near Ann Arbor had wells way over that limit and this is probably going to affect the city water supply since the plume is getting close to the

The Gelman plume near Ann Arbor had wells way over that limit and this is probably going to affect the city water supply since the plume is getting close to the Huron River where Ann Arbor draws water from. That's part of why I moved towards Detroit when I bought instead of west of town. Now I should get my water tested in Oakland County, since I'm still on a well and who knows what's going on this close to I-696. Do you know if there's testing resources?

infecto 3y ago
Beyond testing, I would recommend installing a reverse osmosis filter for your drinking water. I install RO filters for all my drinking water regardless if I am in the Bay Area (The Bay Area can have some pretty freaky hot zones of contamination), well, city water, other parts of the country.
- navi0 3y ago
  Any concerns about the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]? [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
  - infecto 3y ago
    Concerns yes but the better of two evils. I have not tested this consistently but I have leaned towards rather having the plastic contaminants from the RO system than whatever was upstream of the RO. It might be the wrong choice but after living the Bay Area I became too aware of how easy it is for contaminated water to show up from local hot spots. Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.
  - tguvot 2y ago
    iirc, it's not clear what filters were used commercially, based on this article and how exactly it translated to residential system where filters working under much lower pressures
  - Flozzin 2y ago
    I'm not too worried. They were looking at bottled water. My home system isn't the same one they were testing. It's similar, it might have similar problems. But I also don't know how often those filters are changed. My filters last 6 months, I would imagine it sheds most of the plastic right away, and you are suppose to drain the first couple gallons. The other components are rarely switched out, only when they break. Overall, I would think a home system sheds less. Also strung out through that entire article is the fact that all water has plastics. So at this point we are sorta screwed. Pick your poison, chemicals and plastic in your water, or mostly plastic...
- xenadu02 3y ago
  Where in the Bay Area have you seen contamination? Lots of cities in Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties get their water from San Francisco Public Utilities, which owns large water rights both in the Bay Area and large watersheds in the Sierra Nevadas such as Hetch Hetchy. SFPUC water is so clean it is not legally required to be filtered though it does go through ozone treatment to eliminate microbes. Much of the Hetch Hechy watershed, especially the upper Tuolumne, is bare granite so the water doesn't even pick up sediment or surface contaminates. SFPUC enforced removal of all lead water lines in the 1980s so there shouldn't be that risk (which was a real one given some buildings date from the 1800s in SF). In short if you live in SF or one of the cities that buys their water from SF you shouldn't need reverse osmosis or any other filtering.
  - infecto 2y ago
    Right, the source of the water is clean but the destinations are not. The Bay Area is dotted with a large number of super fund sites due to the historical chemical, semiconductor/circuit board industry. Even a larger number of sites that are not deemed superfund but are similar. All these electronic companies were more or less dumping their various solvents and de-greasers into the ground. Impacting both ground water and soil. Most of those chemicals penetrate both water pipes and in vapor form come up through the slab of the homes/offices built on top. Often as these business shutdown they built offices and homes on top of the property, for the ones that happened in the 70s there was no remediation until much later. For the ones that happened in the 90s-00s there was a level of remediation but I am still not trustworthy of it 1) lasting and 2) the developers doing the best work. So its not a "in short" story unless you are completely ignoring the large amounts of trichloroethylene contamination that is in still so much of the ground soil in the bay area. Sure if you live inside of SF proper you are probably fine in most of the residential areas as there was no manufacturing but areas like Bayview can be just as bad and you have the radioactive contamination on top of chemical. If you live anywhere in the south bay or east bay, you probably should at the very least get an idea of what was built near your office/home. Maybe test your water or just throw an RO on it. So many of these companies were dumping trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene in the south/east bay and we just built homes on top of them. They are indeed generally localized hot spots but when I realized how many were near me it opened my eyes. I remember years ago this was an issue at one of the google campus offices because it too had significant ground contamination. https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-reuse-california#cts https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-... - Even the homes built in later years have had problems with vapors contamination even though it was built with prevention in mind. You can see the other super fund sites there. I cannot find the map now but there are even a larger number of DTSC cleanup projects from the bay area. Kind of surprising someone would ask where is the contamination when it literally is dotting the whole bay area.
JackMorgan 3y ago
Maybe get a home still. It's basically just a big coffee pot that boils the water into a carafe. It takes about 3 hours to do gallon. Since it's all metal and glass there's no plastics in the output, unlike filters that often have a small plastic filter for the smallest particles that can end up introducing plastic in the output water.
- harimau777 3y ago
  Do you have any suggestions? The ones that I'm seeing when I search appear to be pretty involved.
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    I'm using one of these https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-water-distiller-with-glass-carafe.aspx https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-wa... I just fill it like a coffee maker at night and run it while I'm asleep. Fresh water in the morning, then I'll fill it again after breakfast and run it during the day.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Do you somehow remineralize the water? I thought drinking distilled water long term is bad for you? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_distilled_water https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_dis...
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    I feel comfortable getting all my calcium, magnesium, and iron through my daily amount of vegetables. I don't think I'm lacking in any of those that the trace amounts added to drinking water will help me.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    From your article: "Distillation removes all minerals from water. This results in demineralised water, which has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization investigated the health effects of demineralised water in 1982, and its experiments in humans found that demineralised water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with decreased serum potassium concentration.[citation needed] Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at a minimum of 10 mg/L with 20–30 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40–80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 2–4 mmol/L. At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones, arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed.[citation needed] For fluoride the concentration recommended for dental health is 0.5–1.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental fluorosis.[17]" I have gotten used to the taste of my Zerowater filter and so I got worried when I saw your comment. Maybe its better to drink the clean water and supplement with electrolytes and vitamins/minerals. That way you control all the parameters vs leaving it up to chance.
Robelius 2y ago
If you don’t want ti deal with doing the testing yourself, the EPA has a list of certified labs that can test your water for you. If you follow the link, you’ll find Michigan’s cert program and a list of contact info for those labs. I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t have a sense of how expensive it would be. https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certification-programs-and-certified-laboratories-drinking-water https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certificat...
- jeff_carr 2y ago
  That EPA site more than obtuse. It's impossible to find a company that has a service that will mail you a container, have you add the water to it, then send it back to them to have them test it. The closest I found was: https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order but there are not even prices and it appears that you have to be more or less an industry expert to even fill out the order form. Someone should make a startup like 23andMe but for water. Lots of us would pay $500 to have water accurately tested. Especially if the data could be aggregated and made pubic.
  - cariaso 2y ago
    https://mytapscore.com/ https://mytapscore.com/ I've used them and been happy with the report. Happy to share if requested.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
      Does it report on microplastics too? What about still "unofficial" PFAS
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - cariaso 2y ago
        https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O is my report. I found their UI/UX quite good, and very comparable to a 23andMe experience. Pleasantly surprised to say there were zero attempts at ongoing subscription upsells, reengagement, virality etc. Since my collection was based on a plastic bottle, I doubt microplastics would be part of the report. However the same lab offers other tests with different collection containers and different assays. https://mytapscore.com/pages/specialized https://mytapscore.com/pages/specialized https://mytapscore.com/products/pfas-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/pfas-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/microplastics-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/microplastics-water-test since the back end testing and reporting is done through gosimplelab you might wish to look at their offerings more directly https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas

infecto 3y ago

Beyond testing, I would recommend installing a reverse osmosis filter for your drinking water. I install RO filters for all my drinking water regardless if I am in the Bay Area (The Bay Area can have some pretty freaky hot zones of contamination), well, city water, other parts of the country.

navi0 3y ago
Any concerns about the nanoplastics that commercial RO filters appear to create [0]? [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
- infecto 3y ago
  Concerns yes but the better of two evils. I have not tested this consistently but I have leaned towards rather having the plastic contaminants from the RO system than whatever was upstream of the RO. It might be the wrong choice but after living the Bay Area I became too aware of how easy it is for contaminated water to show up from local hot spots. Edit: What I would add is I often ponder how much additional nanoplastics are getting added compared to what is being removed. I know some of the test suggest RO is adding more but I am not sure if it accounts for the complete life cycle in a bottling plant. For the near term I have just settled that nanoplastics are the lesser evil to me than PFAS and other chemicals within the water. It is scare mongering but I look at how that town in Oregon I believe had has wide spread PFAS contamination in ground water from the airport fire foam.
- tguvot 2y ago
  iirc, it's not clear what filters were used commercially, based on this article and how exactly it translated to residential system where filters working under much lower pressures
- Flozzin 2y ago
  I'm not too worried. They were looking at bottled water. My home system isn't the same one they were testing. It's similar, it might have similar problems. But I also don't know how often those filters are changed. My filters last 6 months, I would imagine it sheds most of the plastic right away, and you are suppose to drain the first couple gallons. The other components are rarely switched out, only when they break. Overall, I would think a home system sheds less. Also strung out through that entire article is the fact that all water has plastics. So at this point we are sorta screwed. Pick your poison, chemicals and plastic in your water, or mostly plastic...
xenadu02 3y ago
Where in the Bay Area have you seen contamination? Lots of cities in Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties get their water from San Francisco Public Utilities, which owns large water rights both in the Bay Area and large watersheds in the Sierra Nevadas such as Hetch Hetchy. SFPUC water is so clean it is not legally required to be filtered though it does go through ozone treatment to eliminate microbes. Much of the Hetch Hechy watershed, especially the upper Tuolumne, is bare granite so the water doesn't even pick up sediment or surface contaminates. SFPUC enforced removal of all lead water lines in the 1980s so there shouldn't be that risk (which was a real one given some buildings date from the 1800s in SF). In short if you live in SF or one of the cities that buys their water from SF you shouldn't need reverse osmosis or any other filtering.
- infecto 2y ago
  Right, the source of the water is clean but the destinations are not. The Bay Area is dotted with a large number of super fund sites due to the historical chemical, semiconductor/circuit board industry. Even a larger number of sites that are not deemed superfund but are similar. All these electronic companies were more or less dumping their various solvents and de-greasers into the ground. Impacting both ground water and soil. Most of those chemicals penetrate both water pipes and in vapor form come up through the slab of the homes/offices built on top. Often as these business shutdown they built offices and homes on top of the property, for the ones that happened in the 70s there was no remediation until much later. For the ones that happened in the 90s-00s there was a level of remediation but I am still not trustworthy of it 1) lasting and 2) the developers doing the best work. So its not a "in short" story unless you are completely ignoring the large amounts of trichloroethylene contamination that is in still so much of the ground soil in the bay area. Sure if you live inside of SF proper you are probably fine in most of the residential areas as there was no manufacturing but areas like Bayview can be just as bad and you have the radioactive contamination on top of chemical. If you live anywhere in the south bay or east bay, you probably should at the very least get an idea of what was built near your office/home. Maybe test your water or just throw an RO on it. So many of these companies were dumping trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene in the south/east bay and we just built homes on top of them. They are indeed generally localized hot spots but when I realized how many were near me it opened my eyes. I remember years ago this was an issue at one of the google campus offices because it too had significant ground contamination. https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-reuse-california#cts https://www.epa.gov/superfund-redevelopment/superfund-sites-... - Even the homes built in later years have had problems with vapors contamination even though it was built with prevention in mind. You can see the other super fund sites there. I cannot find the map now but there are even a larger number of DTSC cleanup projects from the bay area. Kind of surprising someone would ask where is the contamination when it literally is dotting the whole bay area.

JackMorgan 3y ago

Maybe get a home still. It's basically just a big coffee pot that boils the water into a carafe. It takes about 3 hours to do gallon. Since it's all metal and glass there's no plastics in the output, unlike filters that often have a small plastic filter for the smallest particles that can end up introducing plastic in the output water.

harimau777 3y ago
Do you have any suggestions? The ones that I'm seeing when I search appear to be pretty involved.
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  I'm using one of these https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-water-distiller-with-glass-carafe.aspx https://www.h2olabs.com/p-54-white-baked-enamel-model-300-wa... I just fill it like a coffee maker at night and run it while I'm asleep. Fresh water in the morning, then I'll fill it again after breakfast and run it during the day.
rkagerer 3y ago
Do you somehow remineralize the water? I thought drinking distilled water long term is bad for you? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_distilled_water https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_dis...
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  I feel comfortable getting all my calcium, magnesium, and iron through my daily amount of vegetables. I don't think I'm lacking in any of those that the trace amounts added to drinking water will help me.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  From your article: "Distillation removes all minerals from water. This results in demineralised water, which has not been proven to be healthier than drinking water. The World Health Organization investigated the health effects of demineralised water in 1982, and its experiments in humans found that demineralised water increased diuresis and the elimination of electrolytes, with decreased serum potassium concentration.[citation needed] Magnesium, calcium, and other nutrients in water can help to protect against nutritional deficiency. Recommendations for magnesium have been put at a minimum of 10 mg/L with 20–30 mg/L optimum; for calcium a 20 mg/L minimum and a 40–80 mg/L optimum, and a total water hardness (adding magnesium and calcium) of 2–4 mmol/L. At water hardness above 5 mmol/L, higher incidence of gallstones, kidney stones, urinary stones, arthrosis, and arthropathies have been observed.[citation needed] For fluoride the concentration recommended for dental health is 0.5–1.0 mg/L, with a maximum guideline value of 1.5 mg/L to avoid dental fluorosis.[17]" I have gotten used to the taste of my Zerowater filter and so I got worried when I saw your comment. Maybe its better to drink the clean water and supplement with electrolytes and vitamins/minerals. That way you control all the parameters vs leaving it up to chance.

Robelius 2y ago

If you don’t want ti deal with doing the testing yourself, the EPA has a list of certified labs that can test your water for you. If you follow the link, you’ll find Michigan’s cert program and a list of contact info for those labs. I’ve never done it myself, so I don’t have a sense of how expensive it would be. https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certification-programs-and-certified-laboratories-drinking-water https://www.epa.gov/dwlabcert/contact-information-certificat...

jeff_carr 2y ago
That EPA site more than obtuse. It's impossible to find a company that has a service that will mail you a container, have you add the water to it, then send it back to them to have them test it. The closest I found was: https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order https://www.meritlabs.com/sample-bottle-order but there are not even prices and it appears that you have to be more or less an industry expert to even fill out the order form. Someone should make a startup like 23andMe but for water. Lots of us would pay $500 to have water accurately tested. Especially if the data could be aggregated and made pubic.
- cariaso 2y ago
  https://mytapscore.com/ https://mytapscore.com/ I've used them and been happy with the report. Happy to share if requested.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
    Does it report on microplastics too? What about still "unofficial" PFAS
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - cariaso 2y ago
      https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O https://gosimplelab.com/ZM7S1O is my report. I found their UI/UX quite good, and very comparable to a 23andMe experience. Pleasantly surprised to say there were zero attempts at ongoing subscription upsells, reengagement, virality etc. Since my collection was based on a plastic bottle, I doubt microplastics would be part of the report. However the same lab offers other tests with different collection containers and different assays. https://mytapscore.com/pages/specialized https://mytapscore.com/pages/specialized https://mytapscore.com/products/pfas-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/pfas-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/microplastics-water-test https://mytapscore.com/products/microplastics-water-test since the back end testing and reporting is done through gosimplelab you might wish to look at their offerings more directly https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas https://gosimplelab.com/solutions/pfas