Water Filter Comparisons

The Health Effects of Drinking Water Contamination

“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.” Albert Schweiter

U.S. drinking water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.
–Ralph Nader Research Institute

The causes of tap water contamination are numerous and range from agricultural runoff to improper use of household chemicals and everything in between. While the standard use in our society of over 75,000 different chemical compounds has offered added convenience and productivity in our lives, it has also come at a tremendous price; drastic increases in degenerative diseases. In the early 1900s, before the prevalence of chlorine, pesticides, herbicides and the tens of thousands of other chemicals that we are exposed to every day, the average person had a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer, today one out of three people can expect to get cancer in their lifetime.

Our use of man made chemicals has become so extreme that we can now find traces of these low level SOCs (synthetic organic chemicals) in virtually every public water supply around the world. A recent report by the Ralph Nader Study Group, after a review of over 10,000 documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, confirmed that “U.S. drinking water contains more than 2,100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.” The Federal Council On Environmental Quality reports that “up to two thirds of all cancers may be attributed to these low level toxins.” And that “once contaminated our ground water will remain so for tens of thousands of years.”

Our tendency is to blame it on the big factory up stream and while industry has certainly played its part in our water contamination problems, it is “us” individuals that are most to blame. The majority of the contaminants found in our drinking water can be traced back to improper or excessive use of ordinary compounds like lawn chemicals, gasoline and cleaning products.

Once we realize that everything that goes down the drain, on our lawns, on our agricultural fields or into the environment by any means eventually winds up in the water we drink, we begin to see just how fragile our water supplies really are.

Our municipal water treatment facilities are not designed or effective for removing SOCs and typically consist only of sand bed filtration and disinfection, much like a standard swimming pool filter. For the most part, today’s water treatment facilities are much the same as they were at the turn of the last century: they filter out the visible particles and add bleach!

“Drinking water plants are old and out of date, and water supplies are increasingly threatened by and contaminated by chemicals and microorganisms.,” Natural Resources Defense Council.

One of America’s leading authorities on water contamination, Dr. David Ozonoff of the Boston University School of Public Health states, “The risk of disease associated with public drinking water has passed from the theoretical to the real.” Many illnesses that in the past could not be linked to a probable cause have now been linked to toxins in our drinking water.

The use of pesticides and herbicides has become so excessive that they are now commonly found in household tap water and bottled water with alarming frequency.

A 1998 study of 29 major U.S. cities by the Environmental Working Group found that all 29 cities had traces of at least one weed killer in the drinking water. The report titled “Weed Killers by the Glass” went on to say that “millions of Americans are routinely exposed to one or more pesticides in a single glass of tap water.”

These first ever tap water testings found two or more pesticides in the drinking water of 27 of the 29 cities, three or more in 24 cities, four or more in 21 cities, five or more in 18 cities, six or more in 13 cities, and seven or more in the tap water of five major U.S. cities. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, nine different pesticides were found in a single glass of tap water!

As a startling side note, it was reported that in these 29 cities, 45,000 infants drank formula mixed with tap water containing weed killers and that “over half of these infants were swallowing four to nine chemicals in every bottle!”

The tragic health effects of consuming these highly toxic chemicals are magnified many times over for small children because their systems are more sensitive and still developing. Small children also consume a much larger volume of fluids per pound of body weight and therefore get a bigger dose, yet none of these factors are considered when the EPA’s maximum contaminant levels are set. The National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 1993 on this subject, stating “children are not little adults” and their bodies are less developed and simply incapable of detoxifying certain harmful compounds.

Another major flaw in the estimated risks of chemicals in our drinking water is the false assumption that only one chemical is being consumed. The regulations are set based on what is assumed safe for a 175-pound adult drinking water with only one chemical present and do not take into account the combined toxicity of two or more chemicals. In a 1995 Science Advisory Report to the EPA it was stated that “when two or more of these contaminants combine in our water the potency may be increased by as much as 1000 times.” Regardless of the differing opinions it is safe to assume that there is no acceptable level for pesticides and weed killers in our drinking water.

Industrial solvents like TCE and Benzene make their way into our water supplies from literally hundreds of sources. Airports and military bases degrease planes and engine parts with TCE, one of the most concentrated toxins in existence. One teaspoon of TCE will render undrinkable over 250,000 gallons of water and yet thousands of gallons are used in uncopntained applications each day. Perchloretheylene, cyanide and benzene are used in such common industries as dry cleaning, car washes and photo processing, much of which ends up going down someone’s drain and into our water supplies. It has been shown that areas with the highest levels of these carcinogens in their water supplies also have the highest incidence of cancer. Jaqueline warren of the Natural Reseources Defense Council commented on the subject, “The one thing we know for sure about toxins in our drinking water is that the more we look the more we find.”

Cancer extracts a staggering toll from our society. One on every seven people will die from this man made disease. According to the Centre for Disease Control “Death from cancer is increasing more rapidly than is the population” It is now widely accepted that cancer is an environmental disease. The World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute both suggest that most human cancers, perhaps as many as 90% are caused by chemical carcinogens in the environment. This realization is paramount for change because it means that most cancers could be prevented by minimizing or eliminating our exposure to chemical carcinogens.

While the powerful chemical industry argues that the levels of these toxins in the environment are not significant, scientific evidence has shown otherwise. A National Cancer Institute report to the Surgeon General concluded that “no level of exposure to a chemical carcinogen should be considered toxicologically insignificant for man.”

We spend billions of dollars each year seeking a cure for cancer. The disease is merely a result of the real problem, environmental pollution. If we were to direct these billions of dollars and the same intense effort towards curing the problem of pollution instead of learning to live with the result, we would do future generations a great service and we could realistically stop the “cancer epidemic.”