The water you are drinking right now probably isn’t as pure and healthy as you thought. Though you probably know that tap water is loaded with toxic chemicals like chlorine and fluoride, what you don’t know is that there are 35,000 pesticides in use that contain 600 chemicals BUT municipal water systems are only required to test for 6! Many of these chemicals are known to be associated with birth defects, nerve damage, sterility and cancer.
The government’s General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that 20% of the nation’s 65,000 community systems are unable to meet minimum standards set by the Safe Drinking Water Act. More than 700 organic chemicals have been identified in drinking water including suspected cancer-causing agents.
According to an Associated Press investigation, the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans are contaminated with the numerous prescription drugs that have been passing through our bodies and into our toilets for decades!
True story: a trendy nightclub in New York City only serves bottled water, which costs $5 for a tiny half-pint container. One thirsty clubber tried to refill her bottle from the restroom tap. “You can’t do that,” says the attendant. “New York’s tap water isn’t safe.” It’s true, New York City is one of the municipal systems known to contain trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and tranquilizers.
The other side of that story is that even that trendy $5 bottle of water may not be safe either! But due to all the marketing that this $20 Billion industry does, we actually think that bottled water is safer than tap water when in fact the opposite is probably true. Some of the most popular bottled water brands are nothing more than filtered tap water, which we already discovered is questionable.
According to the EPA, “some bottled water is treated more than tap water, while some is not treated at all.”
In a four-year scientific study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), they tested 103 brands of bottled water and found a third of the tested brands were found to contain contaminants such as arsenic and carcinogenic compounds.
A study at Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University concluded that, “use of bottled water on the assumption of purity can be misguided.” The Kansas Department of Health and Environment tested 80 bottled waters and 78 of them contained contaminants like nitrate (which can cause blue-baby syndrome), in higher doses), nitrite, chloroform, bromodichloro-methane, arsenic and lead. More than half contained traces of phthalate, a carcinogen and hormone disrupter that can leach out of the plastic into your water. Phthalates are not legally regulated in bottled water because of industry pressure. Plastic bottles made of polycarbonate can release the potential hormone disrupter bisphenol A (BPA) into the water.
As if that’s not enough, if you drive around for miles to save 10¢ on a gallon of gas you may be surprised to realize that a $1.49 bottle of water costs you $21 a gallon. And it would be cheaper to drink champagne at that trendy NY nightclub than that $5 bottle of water!
Once you figure out the dirty truth about “pure” water, you’ll want to learn about healthier, more affordable alternatives. The best, most affordable way to get pure, healthy water is to make it yourself! But doing that is not as simple as it sounds. In order to understand why you’ll need to learn more about the life-giving water most people take for granted, including why drinking healthier water, particularly alkaline water, is the single most important, cost effective thing you can do for the health of your family.
This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and is not intended to substitute for the advice from your own physician or health care provider.
Some scientific concepts may be stated in generalized or simplified terms to make complex principles easier to understand for the lay reader; however the underlying scientific principles and concepts accurately describe the theories they represent to the best of the writer’s abilities.