There's Probably Dangerous Chemicals In Your Tap Water—Here's Everything You Need To Know To Stay Safe

[rangerrebew]

There's Probably Dangerous Chemicals In Your Tap Water—Here's Everything You Need To Know To Stay Safe
By Markham Heid July 28, 2017
 

Remember the movie "Erin Brockovich"? Of course, you do.

But unless you've rewatched it recently, you may not remember that Brockovich—in real life, and in the movie—was fighting a company suspected of polluting a small California town's drinking water with a cancer-causing contaminant called chromium-6 (aka, hexavalent chromium).


http://www.prevention.com/health/dangerous-chemicals-in-your-tap-water

[Suppressed]

A lot of BS in this story.

"We've known about chromium-6 since Erin Brockovich, but it's still a pervasive problem, and there's no federal legal standard for it," says Nneka Leiba, MPH, the director of Healthy Living Science at the EWG.

 

The national primary drinking water regulation that established the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for total chromium of 0.1 mg/l (milligrams per liter) was promulgated in 1991.

How could this be, you ask? "The Environmental Protection Agency hasn't put a new contaminant on its regulated list since 1996, which is when the Clean Water Act was passed. We've learned so much more about chemicals since then, but we still haven't made any improvements in our policies," Leiba explains.

 

EPA has recently released health advisory numbers for PFOA and PFOS.  If they are talking MCLs, fair enough, but that doesn't mean there's a problem. For example, the UCMR program is sampling water systems as a screening.

Yes, it could be better...should be better.  But there's not enough money to ensure the drinking water is clean...these programs have been cut.

[Cripplecreek]

All I really need to know is to not give too much credence to the endless fear mongering.

[Victoria33]

All I really need to know is to not give too much credence to the endless fear mongering.

@Cripplecreek
@mystery-ak

Bob, being an earth scientist, knows what is under the ground here, knows what is in the water and doesn't trust this city water.  He buys distilled water and adds back chemicals that need to be there (one can buy bottles of these chemicals for that specific purpose) so the distilled water won't leach out chemicals out of a body, which it will do on its own.  Many years ago my son was a chemist and told me never to drink distilled water on its own due to that leaching process.

Way back in time, in the 1930s and 40s, people drank water from wells with no checking what was in that water - it's a miracle we didn't all die, but here we are still alive.  During that time period, the govn. let us alone and it's a miracle we didn't all die, but here we are still alive.  Maybe we were better off back then as govn. is all over us now, dictating what we can do and can't do.  I have lived so long I have witnessed this creeping govn. take us over.

This county we are in and the city we are in and the property owner's assn. here, is heaping so many taxes on the house owners, they are selling these $350,000-million dollar houses and moving to the country to get away from this place.  Maybe we were better off in the 1800s than we are now.

[Cripplecreek]

@Cripplecreek
@mystery-ak

Bob, being an earth scientist, knows what is under the ground here, knows what is in the water and doesn't trust this city water.  He buys distilled water and adds back chemicals that need to be there (one can buy bottles of these chemicals for that specific purpose) so the distilled water won't leach out chemicals out of a body, which it will do on its own.  Many years ago my son was a chemist and told me never to drink distilled water on its own due to that leaching process.

Way back in time, in the 1930s and 40s, people drank water from wells with no checking what was in that water - it's a miracle we didn't all die, but here we are still alive.  During that time period, the govn. let us alone and it's a miracle we didn't all die, but here we are still alive.  Maybe we were better off back then as govn. is all over us now, dictating what we can do and can't do.  I have lived so long I have witnessed this creeping govn. take us over.

This county we are in and the city we are in and the property owner's assn. here, is heaping so many taxes on the house owners, they are selling these $350,000-million dollar houses and moving to the country to get away from this place.  Maybe we were better off in the 1800s than we are now.

I drink my well water without concern or checking. I've been drinking water from this well for 20 years and have always had well water everywhere I've ever lived.

[goatprairie]

I drink my well water without concern or checking. I've been drinking water from this well for 20 years and have always had well water everywhere I've ever lived.

Many new houses now come with reverse osmosis machines attached to the water supply. This is because of nitrates from fertilizers put in by farmers leaching into the soil. We live next to a farm field and have well water. We  have nitrates in the well water, but we haven't had it tested since we bought the house thirteen years ago. The previous house I lived (also next to a farm field) had over the limit of safe nitrates per million, and I had to have a reverse osmosis machine installed.
But you would probably have to drink a bathtub of nonfiltered water every day for it to have an effect on an adult.
Nevertheless, my wife refuses to drink tap water and only drinks water from the spring water jugs she buys in stores.  Or she will occasionally drink water from the reverse osmosis tap (which is next to the regular tap.) I drink a lot of water straight from the tap , and I 'm still breathing. I will wait for reports of  farmers, who've lived their entire lives without having reverse osmosis machines,  dying from ingesting nitrates before I stop drinking out of the tap.

[Wingnut]

The source of this hysterical piece is the Environmental Working Group (EWG)   A subversive group of leftist libs that want you all to live in a comune and eat "Organic".    They pump out bullshit fake clickbait stores with titles like: Do you know what’s in your tap water? What about your shampoo? What’s lurking in the cleaners underneath your sink? What pesticides are on your food?  Do you know what safeguards they use to protect your water, soil, air and your kids? Which large agribusinesses get your tax dollars and why?  What are GMOs? What do they do to our land and water?

[andy58-in-nh]

The source of this hysterical piece is the Environmental Working Group (EWG)   A subversive group of leftist libs that want you all to live in a comune and eat "Organic".    They pump out bullshit fake clickbait stores with titles like: Do you know what’s in your tap water? What about your shampoo? What’s lurking in the cleaners underneath your sink? What pesticides are on your food?  Do you know what safeguards they use to protect your water, soil, air and your kids? Which large agribusinesses get your tax dollars and why?  What are GMOs? What do they do to our land and water?

Environmental Working Group

EWG's Board of Directors includes former Weatherman member David Fenton, who worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council to manufacture the 1989 Alar pesticide scare; Fenton has also done public relations work for Cindy Sheehan's Gold Star Families for Peace, and Win Without War.
 
 Other key players at EWG include: Board Member Drummond Pike, founder of the Tides Foundation; Media Operations Director Michael Casey, who served as the press secretary for the 1992 Clinton-Gore Presidential campaign; Chairman Kelsey Wirth, the daughter of former Colorado Senator and current United Nations Foundation President Tim Wirth; and Bill Walker, a Greenpeace veteran who heads EWG's Oakland office.

More at discoverthenetworks.org (click on link above)

[goatprairie]

The source of this hysterical piece is the Environmental Working Group (EWG)   A subversive group of leftist libs that want you all to live in a comune and eat "Organic".    They pump out bullshit fake clickbait stores with titles like: Do you know what’s in your tap water? What about your shampoo? What’s lurking in the cleaners underneath your sink? What pesticides are on your food?  Do you know what safeguards they use to protect your water, soil, air and your kids? Which large agribusinesses get your tax dollars and why?  What are GMOs? What do they do to our land and water?

We have growing numbers of centenarians all who grew up in times of no health-Nazis around  to tell them what to eat and drink. How did they manage to survive to 100 without the health-Nazis telling them everything they ate and drank was going to kill them?

[jmyrlefuller]

Then, of course, there's that notorious dihydrogen monoxide.

[RoosGirl]

Well water is one thing, and I would encourage anyone on a well to test their water periodically.  Depending on your source, you can potentially develop contamination from things like e coli or other. 

As for people on city water, I understand that articles like this can seem like their fear mongering, and they probably are to some extent, but let me remind you of the incident in Louisiana a couple years ago now I think, where a person was infected with brain eating amoeba from municipal water, and I know of one local municipality that during some road renovation and utility upgrades discovered that during previous renovations that water services to the house were hooked up to the reuse water mains that are supposed to only be used for watering.  And if you knew *some* of the people that are hired to maintain municipal water treatment plants you might opt to test your water more frequently. :)

[Wingnut]

Then, of course, there's that notorious dihydrogen monoxide.

Deadly stuff!

[goatprairie]

Then, of course, there's that notorious dihydrogen monoxide.

"You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it." W. C. Fields

[roamer_1]

Maybe we were better off in the 1800s than we are now.

@Victoria33

A big part of my own recovery and move toward health was in finding out the chemicals in city water were making me sick.

I came here, to natural spring water, and my health improved by leaps and bounds.

[truth_seeker]

Blue Zones depict the longest living people, and their lifestyles

It doesn't mention water, btw. Here is what it does say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone

[Victoria33]

@Victoria33

A big part of my own recovery and move toward health was in finding out the chemicals in city water were making me sick.

I came here, to natural spring water, and my health improved by leaps and bounds.

@roamer_1

Yes, when Bob the earth scientist says don't drink the water, I'm not drinking the water.  He has to lug those huge jugs of distilled water into the house, but he is not going to drink this city water.

When I was a small child we would go to the grandparents who lived in the country in Arkansas.  That was when roads in Arkansas were still dirt roads.  They had a well which I'm sure was never checked for anything, and I got sick with stomach cramps and diarrhea every single time we went there. It had to be the water that caused that.

I'm glad you got better when you changed the water.

[Taxcontrol]

I am of the opinion that every person who wishes to be self reliant, needs to have a means of purification of water.  Look at your local lake or river water and think of what it would take to turn it into drinking water.  How would you filter it?  How would you purify it / sanitize it?

[Cripplecreek]

I am of the opinion that every person who wishes to be self reliant, needs to have a means of purification of water.  Look at your local lake or river water and think of what it would take to turn it into drinking water.  How would you filter it?  How would you purify it / sanitize it?

Water from the ground is safest followed by stream or river water followed by lake water.

[goatprairie]

Most city water has a five step filtering/purification process before it reaches a home.  I've lived out in the semi-country drinking non-filtered, non-purified well water  for the last seventeen years. Despite being almost surrounded by farms in both locations, I've never been sick from the water.  And  I rarely use the water from the reverse osmosis tap. 
As far as overall health, since I've started getting annual flu shots, I've never been sick.  Before that every time I visited the grandkids within a day or two I'd come down with whatever they had. And they usually had something.
I haven't had so much as the sniffles in three years.  Moral of story: get the flu shot.

[Wingnut]

All this talk about water is making me thirsty.

DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun
From the land of sky blue waters (waters),
From the land of pines, lofty balsams,
Comes the beer refreshing,
Hamm's, the beer refreshing.

[goatprairie]

All this talk about water is making me thirsty.

DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun
From the land of sky blue waters (waters),
From the land of pines, lofty balsams,
Comes the beer refreshing,
Hamm's, the beer refreshing.

The scene of the forest and the female voice singing is one thing I've remembered about that Hamm's ad after the last time I saw it which must be more than fifty years ago.

[truth_seeker]

Most city water has a five step filtering/purification process before it reaches a home.  I've lived out in the semi-country drinking non-filtered, non-purified well water  for the last seventeen years. Despite being almost surrounded by farms in both locations, I've never been sick from the water.  And  I rarely use the water from the reverse osmosis tap. 
As far as overall health, since I've started getting annual flu shots, I've never been sick.  Before that every time I visited the grandkids within a day or two I'd come down with whatever they had. And they usually had something.
I haven't had so much as the sniffles in three years.  Moral of story: get the flu shot.

That was my primary doctor's advice, when I asked him about the controversy.

[Wingnut]

The scene of the forest and the female voice singing is one thing I've remembered about that Hamm's ad after the last time I saw it which must be more than fifty years ago.

Their commercials were memorable.  Loved the Hamms Bear.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

I remember in Scouts we used to use an iodine tablet to purify water to drink.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

When I was a young boy growing up in New Hampshire, I used to eat a lot of ice in the winter time. Had a habit of chewing pond, and swamp, ice.

Then one time after doing that I tried to pee and it stung like hell and blood came out. Had to go to the ER.

Don't assume natural water is safe to drink.