Is Our Public Drinking Water Safe To Drink?

Once again, a disturbing report has been published calling into question whether our public water is safe to drink.  This time, it isn’t evil corporations dumping chemicals into our water supply… now, it’s problems with the delivery system itself.

Our water infrastructure is older than sin.  Okay, maybe slightly newer than that, but mostly it dates from the WWII era.  And, like our crumbling roadways and bridges, these old water systems are failing at an alarming rate, leading to water main breaks and other breaches in the water supply system.

How often does this happen?  To the tune of something like 700 times a day… just for water main breaks.  That’s not counting incidents involving smaller water lines that may go unnoticed for a good period of time.  It’s gotten so bad that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country a D- on its report card for drinking water infrastructure in 2009!

Municipal Water Safe To Drink?

Think of a water pipe as a sealed system.  Water can flow along it and avoid being contaminated by the surrounding environment- it’s one of the things that is supposed to keep our water safe to drink.  But if that pipe gets cracked, the seal is broken and all sorts of contaminants can leak into the water that’s coming to your home.  Rainwater trickling down through the dirt will carry even more of that nasty sludge into the cracked pipes, leading to contaminated drinking water for anyone downstream from that location.

If it’s in the middle of a city, for example, think of all the chemicals and other pollutants that build up on the surface of a paved street, only to be washed into the ground when it rains.  This is going to trickle through the dirt and get into cracked pipes.

Or even worse, imagine if that split open pipe is near a sewage line which might ALSO be compromised.  One expert is already claiming that a recent E.Coli outbreak in Colorado is the result of cracked and contaminated water pipes.

If you’ve read many articles on this site, odds are you know that I’m not a big fan of municipal water supplies.  More and more terrifying reports are coming out on how unsafe our water is, like this study on how common drinking water contamination is from just one cancer-causing chemical.

But this issue of infrastructure goes beyond that.  Now, not only is our water polluted from the get-go, but even more toxic junk is getting into it as it travels to our homes!  Is there any wonder why I only drink filtered water?

Water Filtration

Notice I said FILTERED water, not bottled water.  Bottled water is just water in a bottle… it can be purified, not purified, whatever.  Many water bottling companies simply bottle already contaminated municipal water supplies.

However, this is not true across the board.  Plenty of bottled water IS filtered, and filtered to a significant extent.  As an example, I have a friend who used to work at a Dasani water bottling plant, and from his description, they filter the living beJesus out of their water before they bottle it.

So, you just have to do a little homework when you go to buy bottled water to make sure it’s filtered.  Or, you can get distilled water, which by law has to be actually distilled (which purifies it).

The other option is to get your own filter and do it yourself.  There’s a ton of filters on the market, ranging from small portable filters to pitcher-size filters to units that plug in under your sink and filter everything before it reaches the spigot.

Whatever your choice, make sure to filter your tap water to make your drinking water safe to drink.  I can’t stress this enough- you cannot rely on the government to protect you.  Take precautions now.

Filter out that nasty tap water and stay healthy!

American Society of Engineer’s report on water infrastructure:  http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water