Waiting Room
Drinking water… is it safe enough?
Tracy Morton MD
After oxygen, water is our most important basic need. Water is necessary for all life. All our internal metabolic processes depend on it. Contaminated and polluted water accounts for millions of deaths worldwide, mostly children in the developing world. It makes sense to question where the water we drink comes from, what is added to it, and whether there are health effects of different water sources.
Not long ago, the question of “tap water or bottled” was irrelevant. The vast majority of us drank water straight from the tap. Municipalities had responsibility for ensuring water was clean, plentiful and cheap. Twenty years ago, on the heels of the successes of Perrier, the bottled water industry began an aggressive campaign in North America to market bottled water as an alternative to tap water. Images of freshness, purity, spring or glacier sources, and vitality promote the idea that bottled water is superior to tap water. In 1976, the per-capita bottled-water consumption was six litres per year, while today, the average North American consumes 129 litres per year. This is a lucrative, multi-billion dollar business: in 2006, we spent $60 billion worldwide on bottled water.
So what about tap water? Is it safe? The short answer is yes. Most tap water is treated with chlorine to kill bacteria and some districts add fluoride to reduce tooth decay. Despite the wide variety of municipal water sources, tap water in Canada is almost always safe. There are rare exceptions: Walkerton’s water crisis in 2000 led to the death of seven people. (A public enquiry found the utilities manager negligent.) Assuming that our municipal workers are doing their jobs properly and there are no water advisories, tap water is as safe as, or even safer than, bottled water. Though industry has promoted bottled water as universally safe, independent testing by the Natural Resources Defence Council of over 100 brands showed that 1/4 of the tests showed elevated levels of arsenic, bacteria and other contaminants that exceeded quality standards. Furthermore, most bottled water comes in plastic bottles that can leach phthalates—substances thought to reduce male fertility and affect the development of genitals of boys in utero—into the water. (In fact, Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP, Nathan Cullen, has spearheaded an effort to ban phthalates in Canada.)
Though not directly a health issue, there are phenomenal environmental costs to consuming bottled water. There is a huge amount of plastic produced, most of which ends in landfills (or strewn around our environment, as well as in rivers, lakes and oceans)—only a quarter of these plastic containers are recycled. There are energy costs to the bottling and transportation of water resulting in an underappreciated ‘carbon’ cost to buying bottled water.
Drinking plenty of water is the foundation of a healthy diet. We need to start turning on the tap instead of reaching for the bottle.
For more info, go to:
• www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/bw/bwinx.asp: bottled water testing by Natural Resources Defence Council
• www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottled_water
Julie Chaplin CHHP
Did you know that the amount of water on the planet has been the same since its beginning? Water is neither created nor destroyed, but transforms from one form to another. “Water is in the air, on and within the earth, and constitutes a major part of all living matter.” (Staying Healthy with the Seasons by Dr. Haas) Our planet’s surface is made up of 70-80 percent water, as is the human body. Water is the circulatory system of the Earth and the clouds, mountain snow, lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans are all part of this water circulation.
For humans, water is required for blood circulation, cleansing, processing and eliminating wastes, fighting off infections and other foreign agents, and for the flow of urine, saliva, perspiration, tears, and sexual fluids. The kidneys, bladder, lungs, large intestine, and skin are organs of elimination – the kidneys and skin eliminate water through urine and sweat, which are waste products of the blood. If the kidneys are suffering from toxins, heavy metals and chemical additive overload, they have difficulty clearing the system. It is important to drink purified water because it dissolves toxins and foreign deposits in the body. Insufficient water consumption can cause toxicity, constipation, tension, overeating, dryness, kidney damage, inflammations, fevers, and overheating.
The amount of water each person requires on a daily basis is different for everyone and is dependant on many factors. Paul Pitchford, author of Healing with Whole Foods, states that water requirements are increased by physical activity, consumption of meat, eggs, and salty foods, fevers, and dry, hot, windy climates. Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, author of Our Body’s Many Cries for Water says to divide your weight in pounds by 2 and that is how many ounces of pure, filtered water you should drink every day.
It is believed that high-quality water is difficult to find because of the pollution in our atmosphere; when rain and snow falls it picks up smoke, dust, germs, lead, minerals and a host of chemicals; unfiltered rain and snow water are no longer recommended to consume. Mountain streams and country wells are questionable based on where the water originates and the wells’ proximity to chemical agriculture and livestock. Surface water is exposed to residues of poison sprays, fertilizers, and animal excrement, and then seeps into the ground. Once water is polluted with chemicals or other wastes, its life energy is diminished.
Dr. Haas recommends that drinking good water is crucial to good health. However, he believes that nowadays, with planetary pollution, it is necessary in most places to use some kind of drinking-water filtration. There are three water-filter and purification options: activated charcoal filters, reverse-osmosis (RO) purifiers, and water distillers.
Activated charcoal filters are the best alternative if water-soluble products such as nitrates, nitrites, and sodium fluoride are not present in the water source, but make sure your filter is replaced regularly.
RO purifiers take out almost all toxins, gases and minerals, and are now price-competitive. However, they discharge several gallons of waste water for each one they purify.
Water distillers evaporate water and then condense the vapour, theoretically leaving all contaminants behind and resulting in 100 percent purified water. However, Dr. Haas states that distilled water is devoid of oxygen and is thus a dead liquid. Since purified water from RO purifiers or distillers will not have the life energy that rainwater had before pollution surrounded the earth, it can be improved by leaving the purified water in an open glass container for a day or so, exposed to sunlight if possible.
For us living in the North, our water comes from a variety of sources. For information on your local water—where it comes from and what is done to it—contact your municipal office. As an example, the drinking water in Smithers comes from three deep wells, and chlorine is only added once a year during the spring water-main flushing program. According to www.town.smithers.bc.ca, “The Town aims to provide the community with the best quality of water available.”
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