How clean is your drinking water?

By | March 10, 2008

Recent surveys (link, link) are reporting that low levels of pharmaceutical chemicals (antibiotics, hormones, anti-depressants, etc.), active ingredients in personal care products (hand-wash soap, etc.), fire retardant chemicals (coatings on clothes, mattresses, sofas, carpets, etc.) are present in drinking water even after they have been treated. We don’t know yet as to what would happen with prolonged exposure to these chemicals. In Charleston area, it’s already been reported that excessive concentrations of some of these chemicals were found in marine mammals, such as dolphins (link). What does this mean to you?

9 thoughts on “How clean is your drinking water?

  1. Hampton

    I don’t understand with the technology we have today and the resources available to us how we can have such polluted water. I know that the water that we treat is not clean to begin with but there should be no reason to have such dirty water. This will cause many severe illnesses if the government and officials start acting on this problem.

  2. Mike McLaughlin

    This is appalling and disrespectful to the environment. People should do their parts to keep the waters clean. I just read this article in the P&C and just thinking about it again is depressing.

  3. Logan

    I don’t see this as threatening as the media makes it seem. So our water is not 100% pure. Until further research is done to show actual negative effects of these impurities, I won’t lose any sleep. We should be more concerned with the germs on our hands and in our air than the soap in our water. Studies actually show that citizens of 3rd world countries with contaminated water sources have better immune systems. Our purification could just end up making us weaker.

  4. ccstout

    it is quite depressing learning that the more technological humans become the more we continue to hurt our enviroment. It seems to me that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but we then sacrafice our eniviroment by hurting nature we even put our own health at risk.

  5. murraydonna

    Logan makes an interesting point. “Purifying” water could be more damaging than not. Although, in the less developed countries he mentioned, the water probably doesn’t contain the toxins and detriments we have destructively placed throughout our own development. I will continue to boycott bottled water and drink tap water from my nalgene bottle, even if I’ll develop endocrine problems and a million different cancers!

    – Donna

  6. Jonathan

    Most people aren’t aware that most of the chemicals we are using will eventually find their way into the waters, which inevitably lead to the ocean. Therefore, it is no surprise that the Charleston area marine wildlife is in such poor health. I ma glad that companies like 3M are removing some of those chemicals from their production line. However, these are only small steps working to solve a bigger problem. More research on animal health and chemical presence in the water should be presented to the corporations using these harmful substances.

  7. Cam Foster

    The problem with this is that manufacturers and plants don’t always have the most strict dumping policies and it is much easier and cheaper for them to dump waste rather than to clean it. Dumping waste underground or near a water supply polutes the water. Also, neighborhood and farm run off puts chemicals into the water making it unsafe to drink.

  8. Laura

    Before reading this blog I was not aware that our water was so polluted even AFTER being purified. This is ridiculous in my opinion. We should do more to keep our waters clean even if it’s just little steps at a time.

  9. Logan

    Before researching this topic it had never crossed my mind that our drinking water was so contaminated. With today’s technology i figured that our water was basically 100% clean and thats why water is so expensive. I agree that this problem needs to be worked on but the problem with sea life is going to be haven to be proven further for people to start taking serious action.

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