Who Drinks Municipal Tap Water?

By Stephen Bucaro

About five thousand households in the upscale communities of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley Arizona were informed that, because of an equipment malfunction, they had been for unknown period of time, drinking water contaminated with the carcinogen trichloroethylene.

These communities get their water from an aquifer that has been designated as a hazardous Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. The groundwater contains contamination from manufacturing plants, military facilities, drycleaners and landfills. Trichloroethylene is used as a degreasing solvent, spot remover, in adhesives, in manufacturing processes, and in dry-cleaning. My question is, who is foolish enough to drink tap water?

If you live near an industrial area, your tap water is surely contaminated with toxic chemicals like dichloroethenes, vinyl chloride, perchloroethylene, other chlorides, and metals, including lead. If you live near a rural area, your tap water is surely contaminated with Fecal coliforms and E. coli, bacteria from human and animal waste, runoff from cow and hog manure that can cause serious illness and death.

If you drink tap water you may be experiencing unexplained bouts of diarrhea, cramps, nausea, headaches, or other symptoms. It's very foolish to be drinking municipal tap water. I believe you can safely bath in tap water and use it to wash dishes and laundry, but it's unsafe to use internally. Don't use municipal tap water to make drinks, cook rice, cook noodles, or bake.

Most people understand that water from the municipal water supply is unsafe and have switched to bottled water for internal consumption. But is bottled water completely safe? Many people don't realize that the bottled water they are drinking comes from the municipal water supply. They're drinking glorified tap water. Some bottled water claims to come from pure, pristine, sparkling springs. The fact is that all spring water contains bacteria.

You should not be drinking bottled spring water or bottled water that uses any kind of filtering process. Carbon filters and reverse osmosis filters remove some contaminants and then add their own contaminants that give the water a funny taste. The only bottled water that can be totally free of contaminants is distilled water. Distilled water is produced by boiling the water until it turns to vapor, and then cooling it until it recondenses.

But is all distilled water completely safe? If the source water contains volatile contaminants, they can boil off and recondense along with the water. A good quality bottled water uses carbon filtering to remove the volatile contaminants before putting the water through the distillation process. But distilled water can contain contaminants introduced by the distillation apparatus or by the plastic bottle that it's distributed in. So what are you to do?

Fortunately, mother nature has given us the equipment to detect most chemical contaminants, our nose and taste buds. Most chemicals are not tasteless and odorless, they give a distinct plastic or air plane glue like oder or taste. Try different brands of distilled bottled water, and give them the taste and oder test. Nothing tastes as fresh and pure as cool clear water. When you find a brand that tastes fresh and pure, stick with it.

When you purchase water at the grocery store, bring it directly home, don't leave it sitting in a hot car. High temperature can cause chemicals from the plastic bottle to leach into the water. Also, just because you found a certain brand to taste fresh and pure one time, doesn't mean it always will. At some point the water processing company's equipment may require maintenance or repair. A new component added to the distillation machine may add contaminants to the water until the component is broken in.

Don't be foolish enough to drink municipal tap water, which is surely contaminated with toxic chemicals or dangerous bacteria. Use your nose and taste buds to find a brand of fresh, pure distilled bottled water. Always monitor the taste and oder of your bottled water, and if you detect any chemical taste or scent, dump it and find another brand.

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