It's Necessary for Life but How Safe Is Your Drinking Water

The Drinking Water Dilemma
It’s Necessary for Life — But is it Safe?

By Zalman P. Saperstein

In Northeastern Wisconsin, Lake Michigan, the Bay of Green Bay, Lake Winnebago, the Fox River and the abundant forests provide exceptional outdoor experiences and natural resources without which we would all be impoverished. Water is the common denominator and is the most vital resource in the area. We depend upon lake and ground water for the water we drink and use for daily purposes, and for industrial and agricultural activities.

Water is so abundant that we may take its presence for granted and believe that we need not concern ourselves with either its quantity or quality.

The illusion of “safe” water is just that, an illusion. The water supplies from municipal water treatment utilities or your private wells contain toxic chemicals. This reality creates a major dilemma. Water is vital and life is not sustainable without it. How then can we drink water and still avoid toxic chemicals that can endanger health and well being? The reality is that it is virtually impossible. The challenge is how to minimize health dangers by minimizing toxic contamination of your body.

The Environmental Protection Agency National Primary Drinking Water Standards, used to regulate contaminants in municipal drinking water supplies, includes 119 substances that are acknowledged by the EPA to be toxic (some carcinogenic) and hence subject to EPA regulation.

EPA describes toxins in water
These “regulated” contaminants including some natural substances, but are mostly manmade synthetic chemicals including herbicides, pesticides, petrochemicals, disinfectants, many industrial chemicals, agricultural fertilizers, waste incineration toxins, and bacterial and viral contaminants usually from sewerage waste. Health dangers including cancers, anemia, multiple organ malfunctions, reproductive impairments, blood disorders, brain disorders, nervous system disorders are among those listed by the EPA as potential health effects for the 119 regulated chemicals. Many independent academic studies prove the toxic and carcinogenic nature of many of these substances.
Other EPA regulations identify between 600-700 carcinogenic and bio-accumulative (our bodies accumulate and store these) toxic/carcinogenic manmade chemicals that are from industrial sources for which annual discharge reports are mandatory.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes more than 75,000 manmade toxic chemicals in its list of possible environmental hazards, and the Department of Energy is developing emergency Homeland Security plans for the prevention of harm from the possible release of more than 70,000 chemical substances in use today in the United States.

The fact that only 119 substances are included in municipal drinking water regulations, when many thousands more are potentially present, should itself arouse major concern. Another issue of major concern relates to the fact that the maximum allowable concentration level for any contaminant is determined as if only one toxin were present at a time. The reality is that a toxic chemical cocktail is generally present. The huge number of toxic chemical combinations, likely to be present at various concentrations, is not included in EPA drinking water regulations, nor are they even mentioned as a precaution.

Clearly, the regulations that pertain to drinking water safety are inadequate and provide little or no guidance to the consumer about the real water quality and its safety. As a result, we face a major dilemma: Water is essential to all life, yet the toxins and carcinogens that are present in water pose a hazard to health and well being. What should we do?

Try to determine the quality of the water that you use and drink. If you are supplied water by a municipal or private water utility company, request a copy of the most recent water quality report. One hundred and nineteen regulated substances should be included in the report if you live in a municipality with a population greater than 10,000. Smaller cities are exempt from many regulations. Request a complete report if you are only presented a condensed summary. Learn how frequently the listed substances are tested. Ask for specific information about the sources of the substances regardless of the maximum concentration level indicated in the report. Ask your municipality what they are doing to improve water quality.

How you can improve water quality
Discuss your findings with you neighbors, and form a neighborhood Water Action Group (WAG) and persist in getting answers to your questions. Contact local politicians and government agencies and demand clear answers.

We can all do our part by eliminating personal use of toxic household products including many cleaning agents, pesticides, chemical solvents, fabric preservatives, bleaches, cosmetics, many plastics that contain toxins, and innumerable other products that require your scrutiny. Read labels and ask the manufacture for Material Safety Data Sheets that are required by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration for workers who are involved in production. Avoid the use of toxic substances and use organic and natural, non toxic, products instead.

We must also insist on changes in government and industrial policies and practices that have caused earth’s water to become contaminated. The manmade toxic/carcinogenic substances that were all essentially developed, commercialized, and utilized during the last two and one half generations now endangers all life.

The short-term approach requires that you take individual action to inform and protect yourself and your loved ones from potential harm caused by toxins in water. Consider the use of home-based water purification of your drinking and cooking water. Although a good purification system can improve your drinking water quality, it does not eliminate the overall problem.

Toxins, removed by a purification system are subsequently discharged along with waste water, back into your sewer or septic system, and are not destroyed. They are recycled or adsorbed and may find their way back into the original water source. The total contaminant load will increase over time and your purification system will be less effective in protecting your drinking water. Continual surveillance is required as the waste water increases the contaminant amount in ground waters and continues to contaminate your water.

If dependent upon well water, obtain a comprehensive chemical analysis through an independent laboratory that does not sell water or treatment systems. Then decide what you should do. If you happen to live in a remote area, that alone does not assure safe water quality. Aquifers that provide your water can become contaminated at sites many miles, even hundreds of miles, from where your well is located. The contaminants may change in type and concentration from industrial or agricultural sources that are developing or changing over time.

If you choose bottled water, be selective. Most bottled water is no different than tap water and is regulated by the same inadequate EPA regulations. Contact the supplier and request a detailed chemical analysis of the water before you buy and use it. A further concern is the plastic container used for bottled waters. Certain harmful chemicals leach out of plastic containers and can cause additive contamination if the storage time before use is prolonged. Request information from your possible bottled water supplier before you make a decision.

The recommendations suggested here are to help guide you in your desire to use safe water. The future will depend upon our collective abilities to decrease, and eventually eliminate the production and use of manmade toxic chemical substances that nature never intended to contaminate earth’s most valuable resource, water. We all must become active in this for the benefit of all children yet to be born.

For more information: visit www.EnvironmentalHealthNews.org.

Zalman P. Saperstein has an MS and BS in Interdisciplinary Engineering from UCLA and was involved in research and development. He is the author of A Drinker’s Guide to Pure Water — Is Your Water Safe?
For more information, visit: www.safewaterguide.com.