There’s No Genie in that Bottle
by Tao Oliveto
More bad water news appeared recently - fear of pharmaceuticals. Trace levels of prescription drugs have been found in some water supplies. Strangely, we won’t hesitate in swallowing the latest quick-fix for pain-relief, depression, appetite control or menopause, but we panic when considering the possibility of ingesting our neighbor’s prescriptions by drinking water from the tap. So, it’s back on the bottle for many - sad news for the environment and for our overall health.
It’s still unknown exactly how much contamination our treatment plants can remove from our drinking water, but going back to the waste of bottled water obviously doesn’t solve the problem, especially since 40% of bottled water, including Aquafina and Dasani, is simply filtered tap water. Never mind that numerous studies have shown that bottled water is generally no safer or healthier than tap water. When fear leads, people follow and the bigger fear usually wins.
Moreover, the problems of drinking bottled water have not disappeared. Dioxins and other plastic-derived toxins can and do leach into water in plastic bottles. (I’ve previously posted details here and here.) Remember, we are also paying up to 10,000 times more to drink this bottled water than what is coming from the tap.
Environmental costs? Still with us. It takes more than 10 million barrels of oil - emissions included - to produce bottled water. Americans still throw away over 60 million plastics water bottles each day, each taking up to 1,000 years to break down - more pollution, more toxins getting back into our soil and water supply…the vicious cycle continues.
I stopped wanting to drink from the tap when I was overpowered by the smell of chlorine but it made more sense - economically and otherwise - to purchase a counter top filter to improve the quality of what I was drinking. I started with a basic, inexpensive version, but even since I’ve upgraded to a 3-filter system, it has paid for itself 10 times over by now if I compared it to buying even the cheapest bottled stuff. There are many models available. You can start here.
(There is no perfect solution to our water contamination at present, although a return to the sanity of composting human waste, rather than sending it directly into our water system would eliminate much of it.)
Filtered tap water is still the best option for our health and the environment.
Tags: environment, health, water
April 12th, 2008 at 12:05 am
On the topic of composting human waste, that’s sort of the problem. Sewage sludge has been used as fertilizer on crops and of course it too contains pharmaceuticals and all sorts of other nasty stuff which gets into food. Once you put it into the environment, it’s pretty hard to get it out. It has to go somewhere, and it won’t necessarily stay there or stay in the form it started in (or was transformed into in a lab). I was quite disturbed to hear that antibiotics have even made their way into plants that we eat. One obvious easy thing to do is to cut down on industrial meat eating and thus on production. If there wasn’t such a high demand for meat, and cheap meat, we wouldn’t be giving 2/3 of our antibiotics to our livestock and then ingesting it via our water, our vegetables, etc.
I’m honestly not as worried about antidepressants in the water as this out of control antibiotic and hormone and hormone mimicking materials spread throughout our environment. It’s become ubiquitous, it seems like, like plastic, as well. I’ll never forget reading how plastic breaks down into ever tinier pieces and is now found in every handful of sand you pick up anywhere in the world. And so it is with all our chemicals.