Plain old tap water: It’s easy and quick. It’s convenient, and it comes right out of your kitchen faucet.
However, as we’ve seen sometimes tap water is contaminated with a host of pollutants that may increase your risk of severe health problems. At the very least many people will accept that it tastes bad and doesn’t smell great either, if it did there wouldn’t be a bottled water or water filtration industry at all.
Let’s take a look at some of these chemicals and how they can adversely affect the health of you and your family.
It’s a fact that Chlorine has been added to drinking water by water treatment facilities since the late 1800’s. By 1904, adding chlorine had become the standard practice in water treatment. A hundred years later chlorine is still the most widely used chemical to purify water.
We use chlorine not because it’s the safest and one of the most effective means of disinfectants; we use it because it is the cheapest we can get.
We have achieved significant technological advances, but we still pour bleach in our water before we drink it. To be clear the water that arrives at your home from your local water supplier should and will comply with the Australian Drinking water guidelines, (water sampling results can be found on their websites) however the acceptable level of chemicals and other potentially dangerous elements is something that is hard for all health experts and governing bodies globally to agree on.
The long-term effects of drinking chlorinated water have been recognised only recently. According to the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality,
“Cancer risk among people drinking chlorinated water is 93% higher than among those who use non-chlorinated water.”
Water filtration pioneer Robert Slovak talks about the dangers of disinfection byproducts.
“Disinfection byproducts are the result of disinfecting water with chlorine. It is important to note that while consuming chlorine is certainly not healthy, DBPs are TEN THOUSAND TIMES more dangerous! In addition to being a powerful carcinogenic, DPBs have also been linked to liver, kidney and nervous system problems.”
