AquaPro Solutions: Clear or Contaminated?

Clean, pure water at Crater Lake, Oregon

Your water is one of the most important things in your daily routine. You use it in the morning to shower, to wash your clothes and your dishes, and most importantly to eat with and drink. Water is the foundation of life and of modern society and without clean, drinkable water, much of what makes our civilization so advanced would be rendered moot. For that reason, public water systems are an important part of our daily lives. We couldn’t do without them.

But, looking at the public water system and the unfiltered tap water that you drink and use everyday, are you truly getting a safe and sound source of water for your family? There are dozens of problems with normal tap water. In some cities it’s bad enough that few if any residents drink it. Bottled water companies are growing larger every day because of the move by many to not drink the tap water.

Contaminants

Water treatment itself is a process that every major city in the nation has mastered and performs every day as a service for its citizens. Starting with the source (which varies as much as the quality itself) the water is screened, tested, and then treated with various compounds and chemicals to remove the hundreds of different possible contaminants.

When people think of contaminants, they often consider the obvious ones first – those of diseases and manmade chemicals. However, there are plenty other possible problems that the treatment plants are designed to remove.

One of the first steps in treatment is to add lime or soda ash to water to balance the pH levels. As a treatment, this is also supposed to help minimize the decay of lead piping into the water. Lead itself is a contaminant that, especially in older water systems, can lead to serious health problems.

The next step is yet another additive process. Called coagulation, different compounds of metals are added to the water and charged to help remove the organic compounds by separating the water. The process does a great job of removing the possible organic contaminants, but it leaves trace elements of things like aluminum and iron. For those with nasty water stains in your porcelain fixtures, it is the result of iron levels in your water.

After filtration and the removal of the sludge that coagulation separates out, water is disinfected. The disinfection process produces much of what we consider contamination in our drinking water. While the process is necessary to remove any viruses, bacteria, or free floating life forms that would be harmful when drank, disinfectants will often linger in the water long after treatment.

Many countries require that disinfectants remain in the water the entire treatment process (which can take varying lengths of time) to keep it clean. Chlorine has long been one of the most popular and least expensive disinfectants used for drinking water. Not only is chlorine toxic in gas form, it has a habit of binding with certain organic compounds to create chemical by products such as THM and HAA that are considered carcinogenic. The only solution is to try and remove as many organic compounds as possible before disinfection.

Other disinfectant options such as Ozone or UV radiation are less dangerous in terms of creating harmful byproducts, but tend to leave no residual disinfectants, and thus chlorine or a chlorine derivative will be added afterwards anyways.

Some places even add further chemicals to their water, including fluoride in an attempt to limit tooth decay. However, such additions are not always necessary, and in high enough volumes, fluoride is vastly unhealthy.

Health Effects

Water is not exactly clear and pure coming through your pipes. It is true that water can harbor harmful organisms and natural metals. However, the tradeoffs of their removal are harmful chemicals and the possibility of chemical byproducts that do not naturally occur.

You might have grown up with the taste of tap water and do not find it wanting, especially as the treatment plants have tried to enhance how they treat water. However, children are not given the luxury of such an option, and honestly, the cold hard facts are that the water coming from the average tap is not as pure and safe as it could be.

Within many of the nation’s pipes, lead lining still flakes off, or leaks admit other contaminants, which when combined with all of that disinfectant added by the city, create those horrible chemical byproducts.

This is why drinking water filters are becoming increasingly popular in today’s homes. Aluminum in your drinking water for example combines with the fluorides and creates a compound that has been found to contribute to cognitive decline, leading to early onset Alzheimer’s. Even for those whose water treatment plants use iron instead of aluminum, fluoride (which many plants add to their water) breaks down aluminum naturally, including from your cookware and appliances. Filters will go a long way in removing up to 99% of those harmful metals from your water.

Chlorination in the water is not only bad for your health but it can be a serious cause of that brittle, unresponsive head of hair you’re constantly annoyed with. How does your hair feel after a swim at the local pool? It can’t be much better after a shower. At home shower filters are probably the only way to assure that your shower water is kept clean and safe for your skin and hair every day. You might even find yourself making progress with that unruly mane of yours.

But it is the general health effects that bother most people. Metal and chemical filled water is generally not good for the human body. It doesn’t provide the same refreshment and it doesn’t taste very good. Silver content might discolor the skin and an over-saturation of fluoride will discolor the teeth. Your household fixtures will turn color and decay and your children will complain about the odor and taste of water, making it that much harder to get them to drink the water they need every day.

While the city does its best to remove the contaminants and organisms from our drinking water and make it safe for our everyday use, it’s becoming increasingly clear that all they accomplish is creating an entirely separate problem for us to deal with in our water. Home water filters are probably your safest line of defense in getting not only safe water every day, but crisp and clean water that your whole family will actually enjoy.

Clear or Contaminated?