In comparison to other many other countries around the world, our water here in the United States is fairly safe. However, we also know that some water sources and tap water still produce harmful contaminants that a reverse osmosis system could eliminate, somewhat as the last line of defense for your family's drinking water. As a developed nation, we have factories and businesses and corporations in various locations. Sometimes, as studies have shown, contaminants from some of our industries leave behind traces of contaminants which get into our drinking water. No matter how safe our nation's drinking water is, we know some locations must deal with pesticides, chemicals, or even ingredients in rocket fuel.
A recent article in Reader's Digest discusses the information consumers are given regarding harmful contaminants in their drinking water, the things our nation does correctly, and things we still have some concern over. With so many forms of media publishing studies or articles on drinking water, it can be overwhelming to consumers who drink their water from the tap, or financially-draining (and not environmentally friendly) for others who resort to drinking bottled water only. As their article states, newspapers all over state that more than 60,000 chemicals are used all over the country - and can get into our drinking water - yet the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only enforces limitations on less than 100 of those. Perchlorate, an ingredient used in rocket fuel, has been a common theme among recent reports that show its presence in water systems in 26 states. This also relates to the stories of families who can light their tap water on fire because of what is found in it.
WATER SOFTENER COMPARISON
The article also looks into the pros and cons of tap water versus bottled water, the risks of certain contaminants, and ways to make water safer for consumption. Unfortunately, even with the good quality of drinking water we have in this country, we have citizens who cannot drink or cook with the water that comes straight from the faucet. One couple in a small town in northern Pennsylvania has that problem. After building a house by himself, one man and his wife began noticing some strange qualities in their water - an orange tint and sediment in the bottom of drinking glasses. The washing machine would fill with sludge at times. Eventually, their water was spurting and bubbling like "Alka-Seltzer." On New Year's Day, 2009, a neighbor's water well exploded. The Pennsylvania department of environmental protection determined that methane from a natural gas well had seeped into the water supplies of several families. A spark from a motorized pump is thought to have set off the blast. Several of the neighbors had so much gas in their water, they could actually light it on fire.
According to the article, "Gas companies have long known about the deposits, but only in the past couple of decades have improvements in a drilling method called hydraulic fracturing-or fracking-allowed them to tap these reserves. Fracking involves drilling a deep hole and then injecting about a million gallons of water, sand, and chemicals under high pressure. The jet of material breaks up rock, releasing gas that's captured at the well head." Fracking is a concern of environmental groups because they worry that toxic chemicals often used in fracking, along with the possible migration or entrance of methane gas, pose a threat to private water supplies and to rivers and other drinking water sources. As found on one website, fracking is debated for a few reasons - some say it can cause earthquakes, while others simply don't like the fossil fuel production it enables - but most of the controversy has focused on how it affects water supplies. Still, there's little comprehensive data showing how much fracking chemicals wind up in groundwater, and drilling companies aren't required to disclose what chemicals they inject into their wells. "In Pennsylvania alone, there have been more than 50 cases of "methane migration" in the last five years, often resulting in natural gas bubbling out of a home's faucets."
Lisa Jackson, head of the EPA, states that progress has been made regarding contamination since the 1970's with similar problems as mentioned above. She is quoted as saying, "we've made progress on that, but now we have to worry about what happens when it rains. Water runs over city streets, suburban lawns treated with fertilizer and pesticides, and agricultural lands that may also have been treated or have animal feeding operations, and into our rivers and streams. Runoff is now thought by most folks to be the biggest source of water pollution." These sources also have filters to try and keep the water as pure as possible, but studies show that there are still a variety of substances plaguing our water. Jackson adds that they are currently looking to group contaminants by similar-acting solvents. As of now, each time they regulate one chemical, they find something else they need to worry about.
Common contaminants (chemicals, disinfectants, inorganic chemicals, etc...) found in drinking water include, but are not limited to, chlorine, chlorites, haloacetic acids, total trihalomethanes, arsenic, barium, chromium, copper, cyanide, fluoride, lead, mercury, nitrate, selenium, and many more. Within the regulations, some of these contaminants have been shown in scientific studies to cause health issues. When ingested in larger amounts for those sources or systems which are exceeding government regulations, mercury, lead, and fluoride can all have major health effects on children and adults. However, major viruses and illnesses were avoided in the past because of improved public drinking water systems. "Building a good tap water system is how we got rid of cholera, typhoid, and dysentery in the early 1900s,"says expert Peter Gleick.
Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, stated in the article, "If you live in a big city in the United States, you should be confident of your tap water. If you live in a small rural community with a little water system, you're much more likely to be at risk. These small systems are more vulnerable to things like agricultural runoff and septic tank leakage." As previously mentioned above, the EPA and the federal government currently have water regulations for more than 90 contaminants. According to their website, the Safe Drinking Water Act is a process that the EPA must follow to identify and list unregulated contaminants which may require a national drinking water regulation in the future. They must periodically publish this list of contaminants (called the Contaminant Candidate List or CCL) and decide whether to regulate at least five or more contaminants on the list (called Regulatory Determinations). The EPA uses this list of unregulated contaminants to prioritize research and data collection efforts to help the agency decide whether it should regulate a specific contaminant. The EPA has two categories of drinking water standards - a national primary drinking water regulation and a national secondary drinking water regulation. When making the determination to regulate a contaminant, they must consider three items - the potential adverse effects of the contaminant on the health of humans, the frequency and level of contaminant occurrence in public drinking water systems, and whether regulation of the contaminant presents a "meaningful" opportunity for reducing public health risks.
Jackson also explains that "Almost 290 million people in this country depend on 50,000 water systems for safe water. We don't pay attention to this system, because it works-about 92 percent of Americans drink water that meets federal safety standards. Where we don't meet the standards, we know what we have to do to get there." What experts do know is that reverse osmosis can be an excellent form of defense in removing unwanted substances from drinking water. Newer reverse osmosis systems also follow environmentally-friendly guidelines and waste 90% less water than traditional systems. Reverse osmosis systems are a much more cost-effective way to supply your family with safe drinking water than buying plastic water bottles. Studies have shown that water within the plastic can have harmful effects. Antimony, which is found in PET plastic bottles, in small doses can cause dizziness and depression; in larger doses it can cause nausea, vomiting and death. But more than that, it results in a plethora of plastic waste filling the landfills and even polluting our water sources. According to environmental advocacy websites, in 2007, nearly 50 billion water bottles were sold, while between 30 and 40 billion of those ended up in mountains of garbage in landfills, not recycled. It takes 17 million barrels of oil per year to make all the plastic water bottles used in the U.S. alone. That's enough oil to fuel 1.3 million cars for a year.
Reverse osmosis is a type of household water filtration system. In more technical terms, it is a membrane filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute stays on the pressurized side and the pure solvent is allowed to pass to the other side. In simpler terms, reverse osmosis is a process in which dissolved inorganic solids (such as salts) are removed from a solution (such as water). This is done by household water pressure pushing the tap water through a semi-permeable membrane. The membrane allows only the water to pass through, not the impurities or contaminants. Most reverse osmosis systems will remove contaminants like sodium, sulfate, nitrates, mercury, phosphate, lead, arsenic, magnesium, fluoride, chloride, and many others.
Water supplies in the United States are more improved and safer than they used to be. Regulations aim to reduce health risks due to unwanted or harmful substances found in tap water, and ongoing studies look at which contaminants must be limited for human consumption. Even though it tends to be some of the cleanest tap water on Earth, there are still contaminants that studies have shown to have some or unknown health risks present in our drinking water. Studies have linked a wide range of unregulated chemicals to cancer, hormonal changes and other health problems - and even some regulated ones haven't had their standards updated since the '70s - but no new pollutants have been added to the list since 2000. In 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson imposed stricter limits on four cancer-causing chemicals in water, and also unveiled a new strategy for taking on other water contaminants. On top of using newer technologies and working more closely with state agencies, Jackson announced plans to start evaluating and regulating chemicals in related groups instead of one by one, a move aimed at making it easier to add new substances to the Safe Drinking Water Act. This, however, comes with controversy and resistance. The safest drinking water comes from reverse osmosis systems which stand to be the last and strongest line of defense for tap water.
How Can Our Country's Water See More Improvements? WATER SOFTENER COMPARISON
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