Every day we hear about new studies that have somehow found something else that is potentially harmful to us. Certain vitamins cause cancer instead of preventing it, artificial sweeteners will eventually kill us, forgetting to floss will shave 5 years off your life, blah, blah, blah, blah. What about the water you’re drinking? I heard something at a Water Quality Association conference about 5 years ago that completely blew me away. To this day, I still can’t believe the media hasn’t focused more on this subject.
The topic that was being discussed was what scientists were discovering about certain frog species in rivers and bodies of water around the world. As I started to zone out, doing major head bobs, my ears perked up when I heard the word hermaphroditic. The speaker was kind enough to dumb it down for those of us who struggled through Biology 101. She continued to describe that they were finding male tadpoles that were becoming hermaphroditic and developing both male and female organs. After hearing this statement, I suddenly sat up straight and gave the speaker my full attention. I felt like I was in a secret CIA conference- why on EARTH hadn’t I heard about this before? Why hasn’t 60 Minutes covered this? Why aren’t people freaking out??? Frogs are changing sexes!! This was crazy!! The speaker then went on to talk about estrogen being found in rivers and streams that were causing frogs to turn into females. What?? Boy frogs are turning into girl frogs? Again, why aren’t people freaking out about this?
I walked around the conference for the rest of the weekend realizing that my business had a truly needed future. Pharmaceuticals, hormones & pesticides are getting into our water supply. After researching this further, it turns out that a lot of municipal water supplies don’t even test for pharmaceuticals. You can really start to freak yourself out if you think about how your water may contain the Prozac your neighbor is taking, the birth control pills your sister is taking, & the Ritalin that your friends son is taking. Shouldn’t that concern the population a little bit?
Now for the magic question- how can these elements be removed from your water supply? Unfortunately, there isn’t a single slam dunk technology that will take care of all of these elements- there are just too many of them. For now, Reverse Osmosis systems are the best option for reduction that is available for residential applications as long as they contain an activated carbon filter in the system which most do. For more information to freak out on, read the following USA Today article. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm
Yours in water,
H2O gal
Posted in: Drinking Water, Water Testing