Water Water Pollution Water Purification
What is safe, clean water? It really depends on who you ask. Some people believe that as long as there are no bacteria, water is safe. Others believe that the benefits of adding chlorine and fluorine to water supply systems outweigh the costs. Personally, I've found that homeopathic medicines are very effective. Homeopaths dilute an original substance well past the point at which we have instrumentation to detect that it was ever present in the water; the more dilute the substance, the more potent the remedy. If "like cures like" (a substance that creates a set of symptoms, when diluted, prompts the body's own mechanisms to reverse those symptoms), what substances in our water are carrying messages to the body, unbeknownst?
Groundwater carries the original soluble minerals in the rocks it emerges from (in concentrations which may or may not be within human tolerance ranges), and it can also carry environmental contaminants that have seeped into the water table from surrounding industries. Farms can contaminate poorly maintained wells and surface water with nitrates. crop chemicals, and mechanical fluids. And landfills can seep paints, solvents, and all kinds of other dubious substances into the water tables "downstream" (underground flow directions and rates can be quite different from surface water characteristics). Surface water carries all these concerns, plus whatever medicines, drugs, and other substances have been flushed into the water from inadequate upstream sewage treatment, and whatever contaminants rain has carried out of the well-traveled upper air currents.
When humans access water, we mainly use pipes. In older communities, the pipes are lead, iron, or copper soldered together (lead, copper, iron and solder are all concerns). In newer communities, the pipes are PVC (poly-vinyl chloride) held together by glue, each of which has its own health impacts. After the water emerges from a tap, we may store it in a variety of containers, many of which are plastic. Migration of compounds from plastics into water and food is becoming more and more of a concern, as the disruptive effect of these compounds on the endocrine system (hormones) becomes better understood. I now use multiple filtered water stored in inert containers.
Water Pollution
You're soaking in it every time you take a bath or shower. You're breathing it every time steam curls into the air. If you swim, you're probably drinking some, as well as taking it in through the skin and lungs. If you drink tap water, you're trusting the government (pardon my cynicism). It's true that there are regulations to protect our water sources; it's also true that those regulations were created as a result of public outcries from serious contamination situations... which haven't gone away. The complexity of contamination issues rises with every new compound created. "Safe" levels of a single contaminant may be completely irrelevant when that contaminant interacts with a multitude of its neighbours, and affects your body in a cumulative or synergistic way.
There are other accessible and excellent sources for further information on specific contaminants, but here are a few suggestions to get you started. Look at chlorine, used to kill soldiers in the first world war, and subsequently used to sterilize and bleach. Look at fluorine, for which the homeopathic profile is almost a photocopy of the symptoms of ADHD. Look at plastics, leaching hormone disruptors out of water pipes and bottles, food wraps and containers. Look at your neighbour across the street, who rinses out the can of driveway sealant and dumps it directly into the storm sewer (which has no water treatment whatsoever), and wonder how many people upstream are doing that for your own water supply.
When you actually go to a conventional North American sewage treatment plant, no one will even pretend that they're dealing with anything but removing most of the solids (a toxic sludge of industrial and household byproducts for application on conventional farm fields and forests), checking for and attempting to kill off some of the most frightening bacteria (using other toxins), and diluting the out-flowing liquids sufficiently that the next community downstream won't complain too loudly about the taste and smell. Try not to live next to one, and if you visit one, try not to breathe deeply. We can do a lot better than this, and some communities already are.
Water Purification
At this point in time, it's the rare household which can turn on a tap and receive uncontaminated water. There are two main ways to ensure clean water. The first is to clean it as soon as it gets "dirty" (which assumes that you are part of a social network which you value), and the second is to clean it right before you use it (which assures that, whether or not your neighbours matter, you're getting the good stuff). Unfortunately, once you become ill, you have neither the time nor the energy to persuade the local municipal or regional authorities to install a comprehensive waste treatment system, from which pristine water and non-toxic fertilizers emerge.
If you or a family member are already ill, any time you turn on a tap, open the windows, keep your washing as brief as possible, and don't drink tainted water regularly. An activated carbon filter will remove radon and some pesticides. A reverse osmosis unit will remove radiation, over 90% of salts, heavy metals, and some pesticides, but it needs a carefully monitored pre-filter. A depth filter will strain out sediment, a screen filter can remove some bacteria (but the maintenance costs are high), and ultraviolet light will kill bacteria. Distillation will leave in toxins which have lower boiling points than water; using this with an activated carbon filter will help. Your best option is to either install a multiple-filtration system in your home and run the tap a minute before putting a cup under it (to flush any toxins acquired from your pipes), or to keep the windows open and buy multiple-filtered drinking and cooking water in non-reactive containers.
If you do have the time and energy to look out for your community (and the communities downstream), look up John H. Todd's work with "Living Machines". Using ecologically engineered wetlands contained, maintained, and monitored within greenhouses filled with hundreds of plants, bacteria, and other life forms, Living Machines degrade nutrients, separate out heavy metals, break down toxic compounds, and produce hothouse flowers, drinking-quality water, and great plant food. Best of all, they smell like a greenhouse without the fumes of pesticides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers, so they make great neighbours (in many ways).
