Drinking Water--Here Today, Gone Tomorrow--Unless We Take Action Now

What is shared by all human life and for that matter all life? The only answer is WATER. We humans consume about 5 to 8 gallons a day if it is available. We drink what is available where we live or what we buy bottled (usually in plastic and usually municipal water that may or may not be purified additionally and then shipped from distant locations , stored, and gradually contaminated with harmful chemicals that continue to leach out of the plastic containers into the water that we eventually drink. If we are able to use municipal water for which we pay a regular monthly fee we also drink contaminated water that contain both regulated and unregulated toxins at usually very small concentrations. Each sip of water we take contains a veritable cocktail of micro contaminants that can slowly accumulate in all of our body organs and individually or synergistically kill life sustaining cells or cause cancerous mutations and disease, disability, and death. If you doubt these facts read many sources of information that I have discussed in previous blogs.

You can start with the Water Quality Report that your water utility department issues annually. Don' stop there because it will not contain much really useful information. Follow up with resources from the EPA, National Institute of Health, Environmental Working Group, and many books dating from Rachael Carson's, "Silent Spring" in published in 1962 to my book, "A Drinker's Guide to Pure Water" published in 2006, and other more recent reports available from the Sierra Club and others. After studying these sources you should begin to understand the devil of a problem that you unconsciously ignore as you consume more toxic and carcinogenic chemicals with every drink of water you imbibe or ingest.

The high incidence of cancer raises the obvious:"Why is cancer so prevalent?" Why are medical problems that harm vital organs so common? Why are newborn infants, who have obtained all the life support for 9 months from their mothers body, often born with cancer, various diseases, and physical defects? Read and study the overwhelming evidence that implicates and sometimes pinpoints manmade chemicals as the direct cause. Read independent Medical Reports from Medical Colleges and Institutions, reports from the Center for Disease Control, and National Institute of Health as well as reports from diverse environmental groups involved in protecting the vital fresh water supplies on Earth from more accumulative contamination. Educate yourself. Educate others. Your life may very well depend upon what you and others learn.

We, human beings, often ignore or dismiss factors that determine our physical well being if we cannot experience an immediate cause and effect between that factor and our health or sickness. Our consumption of water and the effects of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals are shrouded in that category of unrecognizable influences that are not detected by our normal sensory means. We ordinarily can't see any micro contaminants in the water we consume. We can't feel or hear them. We generally cannot taste them. We, therefore, are unaware of sensory undetectable things. We also often fail to understand the connection between the contaminated water we all drink and ingest with our foods, and the potential diseases that incubate over varying durations of time in our bodies without any symptoms, often until it is too late to treat or cure. We almost never know what or why the particular disease struck. Why me? Why you? For the same reasons millions of others are harmed by chemicals that were never intended by nature to be in our bodies. These unwanted and harmful chemicals are like ticking time bombs ready to explode without prior notification. They are deadly and the fuse can ignite at any time.

Our ignorance is understandable but not excusable. Become informed and then take action to improve the quality and safety of the water we and everyone needs, and take action to prevent future contamination of our limited fresh water supplies. Myriad diseases and often treatable but incurable cancers are caused by contaminants in the water that all of us consume. Billions of dollars of unnecessary medical costs are incurred annually because of contaminated water that poses as drinkable because our local water municipality says that they adhere to Federal standards. Who can vouch for the adequacy of the very limited Federal standards when barely 100 chemicals are regulated out of the many tens of thousands of man made (as many a thirty thousand or more in active use today) chemicals that contaminate most fresh water sources on Earth.

Water treatment technology in use today is incapable of completely removing any of the many tens of thousands of micro constituents that poison fresh water sources everywhere. Most of the inhabitants of Earth are blindly consuming water that has have been contaminated with deadly manmade chemicals that were concocted and made and used mainly over the last eighty years. The petro-chemical industries, agricultural pesticide and herbicides companies, specialty chemical producers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, power generating industry, electronic and computer industry, and many other types of manufacturers and processing operations continuously discharge and distribute products that are made and used worldwide and that are steadily increasing the concentration of toxins and carcinogens in Earth's fresh water sources and oceans.

Since detoxification processes cannot remove the thousands of contaminants that currently are in Earth's water, the rate at which ongoing contamination is occurring makes the problem greater and more dangerous day by day. We are poisoning ourselves and the Earth with toxins and carcinogens that have already had deadly consequences, and the situation worsens and will do so until our planet becomes unable to support life as we know it. To prevent this eventually calamity the production and use of deadly man made chemicals must be substantially curtailed and cease in the relatively near term.

This critical problem is currently ignored by most of the world's leaders and populace, while instead being preoccupied with political and economic issues that are meaningless by comparison. The industrialized countries of the world are responsible for almost all (excluding natural substance that are toxic) poisons and carcinogens that contaminate water. The economically poorer countries of the world, that often already suffer from water shortages and natural contamination, are further harmed by the economically advantaged countries that produce or control production (wherever it occurs) of virtually all man made toxic chemicals that are commonly used for seemingly mundane purposes without our awareness of their deadly potential. While headline grabbing issues divert our attention from major environmental issues that confront our planet,including the well debated issue of climate change that ignorant leaders and others often dismiss as inconsequential or not factual, we engage in endless political rhetoric, war making, and relatively insignificant issues, while life determinant issues are often ignored by leaders and by the majority of people who are supposedly educated, and often entirely ignored by those who are not educated. Many of us are not informed and/or do not want to be informed about vital issues that will determine the viability of life on our planet. We are too easily distracted by inconsequential matters and and entertainment that saturates the media while ignoring really vital issues that require thought and study.

Each of us has the responsibility to protect the fresh water sources that we all depend upon. Get informed about the reality of how we are making our planet's water deadly and the threat to all life that is inevitable if action is not taken soon. Force the political and government leaders to give vital environmental issues the highest priority. Think beyond your locality and state boarders and beyond national boundaries. Think globally about the Earth's future. Humans are the only ones who can take that necessary action to protect all life on Earth now and into the future. Do not pass up this once in a lifetime chance to do something for the benefit of all living things including ourselves and future generations who depend upon what we do, or what we do not do, now. Drinking water is here today and will be gone tomorrow unless we take action now.