What Are The Health Consequences Of Drinking Contaminated Water?

"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.... "
Albert Schweitzer

There are a lot of things that cause water to be contaminated, ranging from agricultural run-off to abuse 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 heavy price - it has resulted in a serious increase in degenerative diseases.

Before chlorine came along in the early 1900s, pesticides, herbicides and the tens of thousands of other chemicals that we are exposed to, the average person had a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer. Today 1 in 3 can expect to get cancer in their lifetime...one out of every 2 men.

The dependence on man-made chemicals has become so high that we can now find traces of these low level toxins in all public water supply around the globe. A report by the Ralph Nader Study Group, after reviewing over 10,000 documents acquired through the Freedom Of Information Act, outline that U.S. drinking water contains more than 2100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer.

The Federal Council On Environmental Quality also reports that over two thirds of all cancers are caused by these low level toxins and that once contaminated, our ground water will remain so for tens of thousands of years! As humans, we look for someone or something to blame, usually the big factory up stream. I am not denying the fact that this large multi-corporations are somehow responsible, it is also us individuals that are the most to blame. Read the article on Arsenic in drinking water and lead in drinking water

Most of the contaminants in our drinking water can be traced back to improper (abuse) or excessive use of normal compounds such as lawn chemicals, gasoline, cleaning products and even prescription drugs. We should know that every chemical that goes down the drain, on our lawns, on our agricultural fields or into the environment in any way eventually winds up in the water we drink.

The local municipal water treatment equipment is not designed to remove these synthetic chemicals and typically only consist of sand bed filtration and disinfection, just like an ordinary swimming pool filter. Nowadays water treatment facilities are much the same as they were at the turn of the century. Drinking water plants are old and out of date, and water supplies are increasingly threatened by and contaminated by chemicals and microorganisms.

"The way we guarantee safe drinking water is broken and needs to be fixed."
Carol Browner, U.S. EPA

Dr. David Ozonoff of the Boston University Of Public Health has cautioned the public that, the risk of disease associated with public drinking water has moved from the theory to the real life. Most illnesses that in the past could not be linked to a probable cause, can now be directly linked to toxins in our drinking water.

Using pesticides and herbicides has become high to the extend that they are now commonly found in household tap water every day.

In 1994 the Environmental Working Group made a study of 29 major U.S. cities and found that all the 29 cities had traces of at least one weed killer in the drinking water... They drafted a report titled Tap Water Blues went that basically outlined that Millions of Americans are routinely exposed to one or more pesticides in a when they drink one glass of tap water

These initial tap water experiments 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 pesticides in the tap water of five cities. Fort Wayne Indiana had nine different pesticides in a single glass of tap water!

Furthermore 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 4 to 9 chemicals in every bottle!

Drinking such contaminated water has serious effects on our health, especially in little children who have much more sensitive systems and still developing. It is a known fact that young children also consume a much larger volumes of fluids per pound of body weight and therefore get a bigger dose, yet non of these factors are considered when the EPAs maximum contaminant levels are set. In 1993 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report discussing this issue, I quote "children are not little adults, their bodies are less developed and incapable of detoxifying certain harmful compounds".

Cancer has resulted in the death of most of our family and friends - in fact one in every seven people will die from this man made disease. The Center For Disease Control Death states that deaths due to cancer are increasing at alarming rates. It is well known that cancer is an environmental disease.

The World Health Organization and the National Cancer Institute agree that most human cancers, perhaps as many as 90% are caused by chemical carcinogens in the environment. This shocking revelation is crucial for change because it means that most cancers could be prevented by minimizing or eliminating our exposure to chemical carcinogens.

You can read a wide range of water usage articles. They discuss the use of water in the house and home ... topics covered include filters, heaters, softeners and water in the garden.