Cleaning Your Home’s Water
In most “developed” countries, water quality standards are pretty high, and the stuff is easy to come by. We don’t spend our days gathering water for our family, and we don’t—for the most part—worry about dysentery, hepatitis, cryptosporidium, and salmonellosis spread by sewage-contaminated water. In developing countries, however, more than 3 million deaths per year are caused by water-related diarrhea, and most of those deaths, regrettably, fall to kids.
So, in comparison to many places in the world, water in the U.S. looks darn good.
“Clean” and easy water isn’t our biggest problem. That said, high standards don’t guarantee risk-free water. We use chlorine, so we don’t worry necessarily worry about what comes out of the tap. Ironically, though it helps us in many ways, chorine poses different kinds of risks.
The chlorine we add to our water system interacts with organic stuff already in the water, and creates disinfectant by-products such as “trihalomethanes,” or THMs. Not good. This combination has been shown to increase miscarriage rates, birth defects, and cancers (especially bladder, rectum, and colon cancers).
Chlorine isn’t the only addition to our water that may have dangerous side effects. In recent years, studies have shown the presence of antibiotics, cholesterol-lowering drugs, beta-blockers, birth control pills, chemotherapy leftovers, and hair sprays in our water supplies.
So, what can we do to protect our families from unwanted chemicals? The first thing I suggest is to put a filter between your faucet and your body. Whether it’s drinking water, or bathing water, both need to be “washed” before they have the chance to affect us—and particularly our kids.
You may have already focused on drinking water, but our skin is our biggest organ, so chemicals can become bio-available via that route. And when we shower and bathe, chemical-filled steam can enter our bodies through our lungs. Depending on whose study you believe, you can receive between 6 to 100 times more chemical exposure from breathing versus drinking unfiltered water.
I have found no financially acceptable system that removes every bit of yucky stuff from water YET (but I keep looking). For the most part, though, activated charcoal and reverse osmosis are two good treatment options (my complaint about reverse osmosis is that it wastes lots of water). Some folks install whole-house filters, which is what I did. When I was researching, I looked for a filter that could handle the things my municipal water company apparently could not, like trihalomethanes. (Your water company should send out reports, if not, give them a jingle.) You can also use filters on showerheads and bath faucets.
Protecting ourselves in our own homes really isn’t a rational solution for the long run. We need to look upstream, literally, and figure out how to keep water free from these contaminants in the first place. One important way we can do that is (not surprisingly!) support organic foods. Pesticide run-off from crops is a big source of our contaminated water supplies. By supporting sustainably harvested crops, we also support cleaner natural resources—like water—for our kids’ future.
