Your water is polluted!
My wife and I moved to the Bay area in California several yeas ago and one of the first things we noticed was how bad the drinking water tasted and looked. It had a chlorine taste and a cloudy look. I searched for a way to test the water and when I found a way - which I will cover later - I found the water had several pollutants in it. Dangerous contaminants such as lead, chloroform, arsenic, nitrate, nitrite, radon, and E. coli bacteria are common in our drinking water no matter where you live. Many of these pollutants are not being removed by our local sewage treatments plants because they do not have the technology. To make things worse there are more pollutants being added to our water supply almost every day.
For example, a recent pollutant is plastic ”microbeads”. The San Francisco Bay is currently being polluted by millions of pounds of this plastic from eight local sewage treatment plants. The beads are used to make makeup and other personal care products. I can only imagine how ingesting this plastic is affecting our long term health!
Another new pollutant is potentially dangerous – antibacterial soap. It does not clean your hands any better than standard soap but contains triclosan – a chemical pesticide that acts like estrogen and has been linked to cancer and heart disease. The state of Minnesota has banned the use of this chemical and other states are sure to follow. DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!
Bottled water, while generally safe, is actually less regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency than municipal water supplies. Indeed, a lot of bottled water is simply filtered tap water. Some states do not check the quality of bottled water if it is bottled in the state where it is sold. Consequently, many bottled water companies only sell in the state where the bottling plant is located.
The second issue with bottled water is its cost - it is expensive. Assume you drink the suggested 64 ounces of water a day and a 24 pack of 16.9 ounce bottled water costs around $5.00. That means about four bottles a day. To accomplish this, you would have to buy 61 24-packs a year at a cost of slightly over $300 for one person, not including sales tax. You can see how this adds up for a family! This is an approximation but it shows how expensive convenience can be.
In addition, discarded plastic bottles are an environmental issue - approximately 60 million plastic bottles end up in our landfills each day!