SOME THINGS TO
THINK ABOUT
SOME THINGS TO
THINK ABOUT
HEALTH - HEALING - WELLNESS
PAGE 546
Chlorinated Tap Water
Drinking Water Treatment: Why Chlorine is so Very Dangerous
Rethinking Chlorinated Tap Water
By Joseph G. Hattersley / Barry Carlson
Let's explore this. When chlorinated water is run through a hose or carried in a pail followed by milk as in a dairy, what happens? "Very tenacious, yellowish deposits chemically similar to arterial plaque" form; with unchlorinated water this does not happen.
CBS' "Sixty Minutes" show July 11, 1992, displayed two laboratory rats, both of them eating standard rat chow and drinking chlorinated water. One rat had clear arteries. The other was also drinking pasteurized, homogenized milk. When the animals were sacrificed and cut open, the arteries of its milk-drinking companions were clogged. A scientist in a white coat winked at the camera and said, "He [the rat he was holding] is the only one doing research on that." The researcher didn't say why, but the powerful dairy and chemical lobbies come to mind.
Dairy buckets and hoses, and rats' arteries resist the arterial-wall damage known as atherosclerosis. But what can chlorinated water and milk, particularly homogenized milk, do to the far more susceptible arteries of humans? The arteries of young chickens are about as susceptible to such damage as people's arteries. Therefore, as a first approximation, J.M. Price, MD gave cockerels (roosters less than a year old) only chlorinated water. They rapidly developed arterial plaques; and the stronger the concentration of chlorine, the faster, and worse the damage. Other cockerels given unchlorinated water developed no such damage.
The residents of the small town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, had no heart attacks despite a diet rich in saturated animal fats and milk--until they moved away from Roseto's mountain spring water and drank chlorinated water. After that, consuming the same diet, they had heart attacks. The Roseto example is dramatic enough, but the needed detailed comparisons and follow-up are not likely to be done.
What is going on here? Highly reactive chlorine is one of the industrial waste products profitably disposed of into us Americans like garbage cans, then on into the environment. Chlorine oxidizes lipid (fatty) contaminants in the water. It thus creates free radicals (highly reactive sub-atomic particles lacking an electron) and oxysterols (formed when lipid molecules combine with oxygen molecules).
We require moderate numbers of both free radicals and oxysterols. The immune system employs free radicals to kill cells that its cellular immune mechanism cannot handle. A second mechanism using free radicals initiates programmed cell death known as apoptosis. Moreover, moderate quantities of oxysterols, like cholesterol itself, serve a protective function. But excess free radicals and excess oxysterols damage arteries and initiate cancer, among many other kinds of harm.
How well does the incidence of heart attacks match the areas where, and times when water is/was chlorinated? Chlorination spread throughout America in the second and third decades of this century, about 20 years before the mushrooming of heart attacks. Light chlorination, we will recall, yielded slow growth of plaques in Price's cockerels; and so chlorination of people's drinking water at the usual low concentration would have been expected to take at least 10-20 years to produce clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis. The timing fits, and the Roseto example fits.
A physician team led by William F. Enos autopsied three hundred GIs who had died in battle in the Korean War. These men, who had passed induction examination as healthy, averaged 22.1 years of age; the doctors wondered what they would find. To their shock and amazement, in seventy-seven percent of the 300 they found "gross evidence of arteriosclerosis in the coronary arteries." In several, one or more heart arteries were partly or completely blocked.
Although Dr. Enos did not try to explain his grisly discovery, he assumed arterial clogging had developed gradually. Seeming to support that assumption, almost 20 years later advanced arterial damage was discovered in ninety-six percent of nearly 200 consecutive babies who had died in their first month outside the womb. Two of those babies' coronary arteries were blocked, causing infantile heart attacks.
But did arterial damage in fact develop slowly? The water American soldiers had to drink in Korea was so heavily chlorinated that many could hardly tolerate it. In Vietnam too, autopsies of American solders found heart-artery damage. Again, water supplied to them had been heavily chlorinated. Did much of these soldiers' arterial damage develop, not gradually but quickly as in Dr. Price's cockerels? The truth-slow or rapid development of clogging-may never be known.
Industrial chemist J.P. Bercz, PhD, showed in 1992 that chlorinated water alters and destroys unsaturated essential fatty acids (EFAs), the building blocks of people's brains and central nervous systems. The compound hypochlorite, created when chlorine mixes with water, generates excess free radicals; these oxidize EFAs, turning them rancid.
SIDEBAR: Most Western diets already contain very little of critically needed omega-3 EFAs. These are found in fish oil, better, in flaxseed oil; also in moderate quantity in first-virgin olive oil. These EFAs (except in olive oil) go rancid quickly. Therefore, to extend their products' shelf life food processors remove all health-promoting EFAs while destroying or discarding most needed micronutrients.
Processors substitute either saturated fats or, now, partially hydrogenated trans, transformed fats. Found in all boxed and packaged foods that have long lists of hard-to-pronounce chemical names on the side, trans fatty acids consumed in large quantity can cause heart attacks and many other degenerative diseases.
Cancer-fighting nutrients become deadly when combined with chlorinated tap water. It has been discovered that some of the most valuable nutrients and essential anti-disease phytochemicals form cancer-causing substances when combined with chlorinated tap water. This includes familiar foods like soy, fruits, vegetables, tea, many health products, and even some vitamins.
In addition, chlorine reacts with organic compounds in water to produce trihalomethanes (THMs) such as carcinogenic (cancer originating) chloroform and carbon tetrachloride. It is the combination of chlorine and organic materials already in the water that produces cancer-causing byproducts. The more organic matter in the water, the greater is the accumulation of THMs.
In a study of more than 5,000 pregnant women in the Fontana, Walnut Creek and Santa Clara areas of California, researchers from the state health department found that women who drank more than five glasses a day of tap water that contained over 75 parts per billion of THMs had a 9.5 percent risk of spontaneous abortions, i.e. miscarriage. Women with lower exposure to the contaminants showed 5.7 percent risk. No comparison was given for women who ingested no THMs.
Taking a warm shower or lounging in a hot tub filled with chlorinated water, one inhales chloroform. And worse, warm water opens the pores, causing the skin to act like a sponge, and so one will absorb and inhale more chlorine in a 10-minute shower than by drinking eight glasses of the same water. This irritates the eyes, the sinuses, throat, skin and lungs, makes the hair and scalp dry, worsening dandruff. It can weaken immunity.
A window from the shower room open to the outdoors removes chloroform from the shower room air. But to prevent absorption of chlorine through the skin, a shower-head that removes chlorine from shower water is a must.
SIDEBAR: Chlorine in swimming pools reacts with organic matter such as sweat, urine, blood, feces, mucus, and skin cells to form chloramines. Chloroform risk can be 70 to 240 times higher in the air over indoor pools than over outdoor pools. If the pool smells very much of chlorine, do not go into it.
Canadian researchers found that after swimming for an hour in a chlorinated pool, chloroform concentrations in the swimmers' blood ranged from 100 to 1,093 parts per billion (ppb). Researchers even recorded increases in chloroform concentration in bathers' lungs of about 2.7 ppb after a 10-minute shower in chlorinated water. For many people the intake through those routes is much greater than in water taken orally.
Another issue: There is evidence that adding chlorine, a common process in conventional drinking water treatment plants, makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic.
Studies in Belgium have related development of deadly malignant melanoma to consumption of chlorinated water. Franz H. Rampen, et al., of the Netherlands, state that the worldwide pollution of rivers and oceans and the chlorination of swimming pool water have led to an increase in melanoma. That disease is not associated with exposure to ultraviolet light. People who work indoors all the time, exposed to fluorescent lights, have the highest incidence of melanoma.
Long-term risks of consuming chlorinated water include excessive free radical formation, which accelerates aging, increases vulnerability to genetic mutation and cancer development, causes difficulty metabolizing cholesterol, and promotes hardening of arteries.
Excess free radicals created by chlorinated water also create dangerous toxins in the body. These have been directly linked to liver malfunction, weakening of the immune system and pre-arteriosclerotic changes in arteries (which, as we saw, struck Dr. Price's cockerels and may have happened to American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam). Excess free radicals have been linked also to alterations of cellular DNA, the stuff of inheritance.
Chlorine also destroys antioxidant vitamin E, which is needed to counteract excess oxysterols/free radicals for cardiac and anti-cancer protection.2
Other harm from chlorination. A study in the late 1970s found that chlorinated water appears to increase the risk of gastrointestinal cancer over a person's lifetime by 50 to 100 percent. This study analyzed thousands of cancer deaths in North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin and Louisiana. Risk of such cancers results from use of water containing chlorine at or below the E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency) standard and "is going to make the E.P.A. standard look ridiculous," stated Dr. Robert Harris, lead scientist in the study.
Later, a meta-analysis found chlorinated water is associated each year in America with about 4,200 cases of bladder cancer and 6,500 cases of rectal cancer. Chlorine is estimated to account for 9 percent of bladder cancer cases and 18% of rectal cancers. Those cancers develop because the bladder and rectum store waste products for periods of time. (Keeping the bowels moving regularly will minimize such risk.) Chlorinated water is also associated with higher total risk of combined cancers. Chlorine in treated water can cause allergic symptoms ranging from skin rash to intestinal symptoms to arthritis, headaches, and on and on.
Why does chlorine in water cause these problems?
It destroys protective acidophilus, which nourishes and cooperates with
the immunity-strengthen
Recently, a joint study was undertaken in Japan
by research scientists at the National Institute of Health Sciences and
Shizuoka Prefectural University. They determined that natural substances
originating from these foods react with chlorinated tap water, forming
dangerous compounds, named MX, which stands for "unknown mutagen". They
are similar to well-known and more easily detected cancer-causing THMs (trihalomethanes)
In 1997, scientists in Finland determined that MX was 170 times more deadly than other known toxic byproducts of chlorination, and was shown in laboratory studies to damage the thyroid gland as well as to cause cancerous tumors.
The Japanese scientists specifically mentioned that MX is created by the reaction of chlorine with plant phytochemicals such as catechins, which are contained in tea and flavonoids (found in fruit). To make things worse, it is certain that the fresh plant foods we eat react even with the chlorinated tap water we drink with our meals. This means that fresh fruits, cooked and raw vegetables, green tea, black tea, herb teas, soy products, vitamin pills, various health supplements, and even some pharmaceutical drugs, in combination with chlorinated water can all be implicated in cancer. These foods contain a significant amount of phytochemicals including hormones, sterols, fatty acids, polyphenols, and ketones—the subgroups that include flavins, flavonoids, flavones, tannins, catechins, quinones, isoflavones and tocopherols.
These compounds are some of the most valuable and promising anti-cancer nutrients found in our foods and health supplements. Coenzyme Q10 is a quinone, vitamin B-2 is a flavin, vitamin E is a tocopherol, citrus fruit bioflavonoids like hesperidin, quercetin, and rutin are all flavonoids. Green tea contains catechins, phenols, tannins, and isoflavones. Potentially all of these substances, and many more, are subverted by chlorination.
The deadly cancer-causing agents that are produced are extremely toxic in infinitesimal amounts, so small and obscure that they are extremely difficult to detect. Very little chlorine is required. When the concentrations of phytochemicals are high, such as in health supplements or even fruits and vegetables coming from more fertile soil, the deadly combination with chlorination intensifies.
As this message spreads, it will no doubt shake the very foundations of the chlorine and water treatment industries, let alone the government agencies that are implicated along with them. There certainly should be cause for serious alarm within the nutritional supplement and food industries, as well as those segments of the medical industry that might awaken to the problem.
This message is of utmost importance to the public, because chlorine, acid rain, hard water, heavy metals, chemicals, fertilizers, and depleted dead soil will be exposed as major causes and contributors to cancer and degenerative disease; they will also be found to be responsible for damaging the body's immune and hormonal systems by mutating the food-based plant estrogens and phytochemicals that support those systems.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, exceeded only by heart disease. According to the National Cancer Institute, about 1,228,600 new cancer cases were expected to be diagnosed in the year 2000. Since 1990, approximately 11 million new cancer cases have been diagnosed, and about 564,000 Americans were expected to die of cancer in 2,000, more than 1,500 people a day.
In the year 2000, about 564,800 Americans were expected to die of cancer, more than 1,500 people a day. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., exceeded only by heart disease.
Breast cancer is epidemic in this country. One in every nine American women will face breast cancer. Every three minutes, a woman is diagnosed, and every 13 minutes, a woman dies from the disease. The American Cancer Society estimated more than 200,000 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, and more than 40,000 would die from the disease. In addition to invasive breast cancer, 61,980 new cases of in situ breast cancer were expected to occur among women during 2006.
It has been known by the water treatment and chemical industries for many years that chlorine reacts negatively with natural organic compounds. These industries call the compounds DBPs (disinfection by-products) and they are known to cause cancer in populations whose drinking water contains them. THM, the most commonly known DBP, causes a high incidence of bladder cancer and causes spontaneous abortion of fetuses.
Chlorine, fluorine, and fluoride are chemically related to iodine and compete with it for assimilation, blocking iodine receptors in the thyroid gland. Dioxin, a dangerous chlorine-related compound found throughout the food chain, is one cause of low thyroid. Rather than feeding the body's endocrine glands, including the thyroid, as nature intended, the hormone-like nutrients found in food are altered by chlorine and turned into mutagens that do permanent damage to the glands. Also, the serious deficiency of valuable phytochemicals in modern diets may be responsible for undernourished hormonal functions in those with otherwise healthy glands.
To help rid yourself of the chlorine in your system and get the intended benefit from your food and nutritional supplements, you may want to try humic extracts (especially fulvic acids), that are said to provide natural chelation properties. Chelation means that the chemicals actually bond with or "pick up" the toxins. They detoxify the liver and the digestive tract by attaching to toxic build-up, including heavy metals and chlorination byproducts, and then disarm, neutralize, and remove these toxins as waste products. Fulvic acids also work as nature's most powerful antioxidants, neutralizing dangerous free radicals, and supplying hormone-stimulating micronutrients.
The chlorine issue should come as no real surprise to any biochemist. Chlorine has been combined with many other normally safe organic substances to form some of the most powerful deadly toxins known, such as dioxin, DDT, and PCBs. The bottom line is that chlorine is the one of the major culprits in disintegrating health, not the substances with which it reacts.
Is there a better substitute for chlorine in water treatment: Yes. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) destroys infectious organisms and impurities in water 4,000 times better than chlorine. Ozone (O3) treatment is equally effective. Eleven hundred cities, worldwide, treat their drinking water with ozone; many have done so since as early as 1901.
To generate ozone, dry air or oxygen is passed through a high-voltage electrical field. Ozone drinking-water treatment in Andover, Massachusetts successfully controlled the effects of algae blooms and eliminated water quality problems. Potential THM formation was reduced by an average of 75 percent.
But H2O2 and O3 are relatively cheap; moreover, the only byproducts are pure oxygen and hydrogen, so no one can make a big immediate profit on them. (Hydrogen is a potential major energy source for electricity generation and for zero-emission vehicles, and so it could be important in future years.) France and Germany, wiser and less controlled by the chemical industry, chlorinate water only in emergencies.
The chemical companies pulled off a huge coup when they bamboozled America and Canada into chlorination. They make big profits disposing of excess chlorine into our drinking water; otherwise, they would have to pay to destroy it. So now, we know why American water is not treated with safe, cheaper, more effective ozone. Now, we know why Dr. Price's revealing studies with cockerels were never followed up.
SIDEBAR: Swimming in chlorinated water. Drinking and swimming in chlorinated water can cause malignant melanoma. Sodium hypochlorite, used in chlorination of water for swimming pools, is mutagenic in the Ames test and other mutagenicity tests. Redheads and blonds are disproportionately melanoma-prone; their skin contains a relative excess of pheomelanins compared to darker people.
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA)
tests have shown that "in the water we drink, over 2,100 organic and
inorganic chemicals [including pesticides, heavy metals, radon,
radioactive particles] and parasitic organisms including cryptosporidium
have been identified; 156 of them are pure carcinogens. (In 1993,
cryptosporidium killed more than 100 and infected over 400,000.) Of those,
26 are tumor promoting [they can make an existing tumor grow]. Exposure to
cryptosporidium in people with lowered gastrointestinal immune function
could lead to chronic GI infection. Other examples include recurring cases
of Legionnaire'
A public notice recently issued in Washington, D.C. warned that a high level of bacteria in the [chlorinated, fluoridated city system] water made it unsafe for dialysis patients, AIDS patients, organ transplant patients, the elderly, and infants. Water contamination is the worst in small communities that cannot afford proper treatment; the EPA has not released this information.
And hearings before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight discussed Pfiesteria outbreaks among people drinking chlorinated water. The organism, which kills fish, sickens some people; they get sick from drinking the water, not from eating infected seafood. The EPA's Robert Perciasepe said, in written testimony that "Any new public health policy on this issue needs to consider reduction of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in our waters." A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would require managers of municipal water systems to tell customers what contaminants have been found in local drinking water. But with present crude test methods, that would offer little help.
Sherry Rogers, MD, pioneer in and authority on environmental medicine (EM), raises the number of chemicals in drinking water to 5,000. And 85 percent of American aquifers supplying wells below 8,000 feet altitude are contaminated with heavy metals; a recent federal report says the water you drink may have been recycled from sewage waste back to drinking water five times. As the late Kevin Treacy, MD of Australia said, "If municipal water were introduced now, it would not be allowed."
SIDEBAR: Plants do not thrive as well on chlorinated as on unchlorinated water; wild animals do not develop atherosclerosis until they drink chlorinated water in American zoos. Although their food, selected by people, is not the same as what they caught, plucked or dug up in the wilds, evidence suggests chlorinated water, together with its thousands of other chemicals, is the worst culprit in their arterial clogging.
Scientists in Minnesota grew embryos from healthy frogs in plain tap water. Some of the frogs had no legs or other had six legs or an eye in the middle of the throat. Earlier, deformed frogs were found in the U.S., Canada and Japan. And we are drinking and growing our food in it.
The EPA called 129 of the contaminants found in water supplies "dangerous" singly, let alone in combination. Pesticides and other toxic wastes run off farmlands and pastures or are dumped by factories, pollute rivers and seep into underground aquifers. Aptly called "biocides" by Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD, pesticides are designed to end life; few have been shown to be safe. The EPA depends on producers of pesticides to test their safety: the wolf guards the hen house. It should be no surprise that the tests take a long time, and many have been fraudulent.
Further, one poison is tested at a time; synergistic effects of combinations, potentially far worse, are ignored. Besides, many of the so-called "inert" substances in pesticide combinations are more toxic than the "active;" one of the "inerts" is DDT, prohibited for American farm use since 1973.
Are these contaminants dangerous in such minute quantities? Yes! In a laboratory, healthy living cells weakened, malfunctioned and some died within seconds or minutes when exposed to toxins commonly detected in American drinking water such as mercury, nickel, cadmium and lead at the extremely low concentration of only one part per billion (ppb).
"The drinking of chlorinated water has finally been officially linked to an increased incidence of colon cancer. An epidemiologist at Oak Ridge Associated Universities completed a study of colon cancer victims and non-cancer patients and concluded that the drinking of chlorinated water for 15 years or more was conducive to a high rate of colon cancer." Health Freedom News, January/February 1987
"Long-term drinking of chlorinated water appears to increase a person's risk of developing bladder cancer as much as 80%," according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Some 45,000 Americans are diagnosed every year with bladder cancer. St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press, December 17, 1987
"Although concentrations of these carcinogens are low...it is precisely these low levels which cancer scientists believe are responsible for the majority of human cancers in the United States." Report Issued By The Environmental Defense Fund
"Chlorine itself is not believed to be the problem. Scientists suspect that the actual cause of the bladder cancers is a group of chemicals that form as result of reactions between the chlorine and natural substances and pollutants in the water." (organic matter such as leaves and twigs.) St. Paul Dispatch & Pioneer Press, December 17, 1987
Greenpeace reports have found chlorine-based compounds to be the most common toxic and persistent pollutants in the Great Lakes
In its proposal for revamping the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has recommended examining chlorine's impact on health and the environment (SN: 1/22/94, p.59). The agency's proposed $2 million, one-year chlorine study would look at the effects of the use of chlorine and chlorine compounds in the manufacture of paper, solvents, and plastics and in disinfecting waste water and drinking water, says EPA' James F. Pendergast.
Contaminants may enter water supplies at many points before reaching the tap. The carcinogens in drinking water at the point of use may result from contamination of source water, arise from the treatment processes, or enter as the water is transported to the consumer. Varied carcinogens may contaminate the source water, but they usually exist in drinking water at low concentrations. However, chemicals that enter drinking water during water treatment are limited in number, but appear in drinking water supplies with greater frequency than most source water contaminants.
Under conditions of average temperature, humidity, and activity, the human body loses and, therefore, must replace about 2.3 liters of water each day. Two-thirds of this consumption is in the form of water or some other beverage. Concerns about the health risks or taste of drinking water may cause those who consume tap water to shift to bottled water, or other beverages. These beverages may include sweetened soft drinks and alcoholic beverages, which can pose health risks greater than those associated with drinking water.
To stop chlorination of drinking water to eliminate the elevated cancer risks from chlorination by-products would be foolhardy. Nonetheless, the data provide strong evidence to support expanded efforts in research and development of alternatives to chlorination for the disinfection of drinking water. Chlorination is particularly effective in preventing recontamination during distribution. Alternatives must provide a similar level of protection. Perhaps the most viable alternative is point of use water treatment units.
The weight of the evidence suggests that chlorination by-products pose substantial cancer risks that should be reduced.
MORE FACTS & SOURCES:
DID YOU KNOW???
"Drinking tap water that is chlorinated
is hazardous if not deadly to your health."
"Known carcinogens are found in
drinking water as a direct consequence of the practice of
chlorination"
"Cancer risk among people drinking
chlorinated water is 93% higher than among those whose
water does not contain chlorine."
"Chlorine is the greatest crippler and
killer of modern times. While it prevented epidemics of one
disease, it was creating another. Two
decades ago, after the start of chlorinating our drinking
water in 1904, the present epidemic of
heart trouble, cancer and senility began."
The National Academy of Sciences
estimate that 200-1000 people die in the United States each year from
cancers caused by ingesting the contaminants in water."
"The cause of atherosclerosis and resulting heart attacks and strokes is none other than the
Chlorine gas was used despicably during
WWI. When the war was over, the use of chlorine was diverted to poisoning
the germs in our drinking water. All water supplies throughout the country
were chlorinated. The combination of chlorine and animal fats results in
atherosclerosis, heart attacks and death."
"48-49 states are failing to adequately enforce
existing drinking water regulations."
"Florida had 521 excessive contaminants violations
and 5,250 monitoring and reporting violations."
"Scientists discovered that chlorine reacted with
organic material in water to produce hundreds of chemical by-products,
several of which have proved in animal studies to be carcinogenic."
"Drinking chlorinated water may as much as double
the risk of bladder cancer."
Skin disorders like eczema, psoriasis and chronic dryness are all heavily effected by the moisture content of the skin.
Showering and bathing in chlorinated tap water robs skin and hair of their natural protective oils, causing scaling and itching. Chlorine is a strong oxidant and causes damage to skin and hair even at very low levels. Most tap water maintains a residual chlorine level greater than is recommended for swimming pools, 1.5 ppm.
Chlorine also kills much of the beneficial bacteria on the surface of the skin that offers a natural defense against skin disorders.
By removing chlorine from our shower water, where most of the exposure to chlorine occurs, and keeping our bodies hydrated properly, we allow our body's natural healing mechanisms to work properly. In many cases shower filtration can help prevent and cure skin disorders. As with most health problems, prevention is usually more effective than treatment.
Joseph G. Hattersley
Federal regulations require chlorine treatment of the water supplied to urban/suburban America from surface sources such as lakes, reservoirs and rivers. That constitutes about 75 percent of water that Americans consume. (Water from underground sources generally is not chlorinated unless it is supplemented by surface water. My hometown, Lacey, Washington, and some surrounding communities that are supplied water by Lacey, are fortunate to be among that group; I'd like to see that continue.)
Chlorination is inferior water treatment on at least two counts.
The main problems with tap water are:
Let's examine the fluoride problem first:
In 1973, British Columbia was considering mandatory fluoridation. They gave the job of researching and reporting the topic to Richard Foulkes, MD. Foulkes then wrote a 1900 page report and he recommended that legislation be passed to make fluoride mandatory in Canada. Based on that work, Canada began to fluoridate.
Then something happened. Little by little, Foulkes found out that the statistics that his researchers had based their findings on were largely falsified. It took Foulkes several years to uncover the truth, but by 1992, he shocked the country by backing down from his original recommendation:
"I now hold a different view. …the fluoridation of community water supplies can no longer be held to be either safe or effective in the reduction of dental caries….Therefore, the practice should be abandoned."- Foulkes, 1992
Foulkes is not some tree-hugger from Santa Cruz. He is one of Canada's top scientific researchers. Many cities in Canada listened and stopped fluoridating. Want to read a first-hand story about lies and greed and disregard for human health and crooked deals between government and industry? Read Dr. Foulkes stuff.
Another pro-fluoride Canadian scientist, Dr. Hardy Limeback, changed his tune when he learned that 30-60% of Canadian children now have visible signs of overexposure to fluoride, something called "dental fluorosis". In a Toronto Star interview with Michael Downey, Limeback said:
"Children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste. Or drink fluoridated water."
Such research also prompted the Canadian Dental Association in 1992 to keep fluoride supplements from children of three and under. But attacking fluoride supplement pills is just a smokescreen to protect fluoridation of drinking water.
Most research has found all the above ill effects at concentrations even less than the standard 1 PPM which exists in most city water. It's not the supplements that are killing us; it's the fluoridated water.
If fluoridation is as safe and effective as the American Dental Association says it is, why don't other countries do it?
The U.S. is nowhere near the top of any health list which compares other countries of the world. So what are the healthy countries doing?
If fluoride is so great, why have the following countries either never fluoridated or else stopped when they found out how bad it was?:
Only about 2% of the population of Europe is subjected to fluoridated water.
Let's discuss the other problems with tap water:
Chlorine:
The experimental use of chlorine began in the 1890's to combat water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid. It quickly gained wide acceptance because of low cost and high efficiency in killing just about everything hazardous in the water. Chlorine allowed population centers to spring up and thrive without any epidemic outbreaks.
The problem with chlorine is that it is a known poison and the safety of drinking this poison over the longterm (i.e. your lifetime) is highly uncertain. Also, chlorine reacts with water-borne decaying organic matter like leaves, bark, sediment, etc. to create a family of chemicals called trihalomethanes and other highly toxic substances. Trihalomethanes, or THM's, include chemicals such as chloroform, bromoform and dichlorobromethane, all of which are extremely carcinogenic even in minute amounts.
Chloramine:
Chloramine is another substance used now in many larger municipalities (i.e. Los
Angeles). In systems where the level of chlorine is at the highest acceptable
level but need still more disinfection, the utility will then add a
chlorine/ammonia compound. Chloramine is represented as totally safe but with
the Disclaimer to not give chloramine-treated water to your animals or use it in
your fish tanks (it kills fish)!
Bacteria:
If you are on a municipal system with chlorination or chloramine, theoretically
you are protected against bacteria. However, if the level of chlorination isn't
high enough from the municipal source to your tap, bacteria can re-infect the
water anywhere along the distribution system. The piping system -- whether it's
the mains or your house plumbing -- has bacterial growth in it happening all the
time.
If you are on a spring or a wall, with no chlorine, then you are very vulnerable to bacterial contamination. Even the most pure sources cannot prevent occasional contamination from animals either dying or defecating in the source, or from neighboring pollution (i.e. septic tanks) traveling from an adjoining watershed to contaminate the source. Also, the pipes are again a source of bacteria.
Many people do periodic testing on their well or spring source and rely on this method to assure themselves that they have good water. What they don't realize is that there are a few problems with testing.
First, the test is only good for the moment the sample was taken. Bacteria can have "blooms," if the conditions are right, which potentially occur hours, days or weeks after the testing and therefore remain undetected. Other casual contamination can occur from animal or human sources, as mentioned above, which the test never detected because the sample was taken before the contamination occurred.
Second, testing can be very expensive to do, depending on what is being tested for. Most basic tests cover bacteria (i.e. E. coli), levels of sediment and decaying organic matter, and amount of total dissolved solids (mineral levels such as calcium, magnesium, iron, sulfur, etc.). With any extra testing the price goes up per test. Lead, asbestos and specific chemical contaminants are more difficult and therefore much more expensive to test for.
Lead:
Lead is a cumulative toxin that stays in the tissue permanently, especially in
brain tissue. It also affects a person in relation to their body weight.
Therefore, an exposed adult can fend off the toxic effects for some time but in
children, brain and developmental damage occur quickly and permanently.
Lead pipes and lead solder in the distribution system are the main sources of lead pollution. Boston Globe estimates that 98% of all households have lead in their plumbing. Houses older than 20 years and less than five years are most at risk. Also, houses in areas of soft (low mineral levels) water tend to corrode the lead from the pipes more easily.
Asbestos:
Asbestos is another potential carcinogen that can come either from water with
naturally occurring asbestos (such as in areas that have a lot of serpentine
rock) or from asbestos-lined water pipes. Thousands of miles of these pipes were
laid throughout the U.S. in the 1950's and have yet to be replaced.
Asbestos is so small that it is unfeasible to remove it at the water treatment
plant. To build such a removal facility is prohibitively expensive and would
clog up the plant within five years of being in operation.
Chemical
Pollution:
Chemicals are, for the most part, odorless, colorless and tasteless, therefore
undetectable. Chlorine is the most predominant chemical in our water. Some of
the most dangerous chemicals are present only in trace amounts (parts per
billion) but highly toxic even at these minute levels. Sources are usually
industrial or commercial, like leaking underground storage tanks for gasoline or
industrial solvents such as TCE (trichloroethane). These leaking toxins end up
in the groundwater or in the municipal supply through breaks or cracks in the
main water pipes. The biggest family of these toxics are VOC's or volatile
organic contaminants, including various plastics, gasolines and petroleum
products.
Next is the herbicidal group such as dioxin (2-4D) and lindane, used as a
defoliant in modern logging operation and found in many wild and rural areas.
Along with the herbicides comes the pesticidal group such as DDT, malathione and other toxics used in insect eradication and control.
Also, the THM's mentioned before are a big pollutant because of the amount of chlorination used nationwide. They are a separate class of chemical from chlorine itself.
Cysts:
This last group includes microscopic worms, parasites and protozoa. The biggest offenders are giardia and cryptosporidia which cause major diarrhea, dehydration, intestinal disorders and even death in people with compromised immune systems. Water experts estimate that over 63% of water problems in the Unites States today are directly caused by giardia and cryptosporidia.
Giardia is seven to fourteen microns in size and cryptosporidium is from three to 5 microns in size. When the environment becomes inhospitable (like the presence of chlorine or the absence of water), both parasites can go into the cystic form (like a hard, round impermeable microscopic egg). The cyst form is chlorine resistant and very hard to kill.
Municipal utilities are unable to completely remove these cysts. Cysts have been found in most major municipal water systems in the U.S. Milwaukee, Wisconsin had a huge outbreak of cryptosporidia in 1993 that killed over 100 people. San Francisco, California has repeatedly tested positive for giardia in its chlorinated water that traveled hundreds of miles from the Sierras.
The human body is over 70% water. To think that contaminants in our drinking water have little or no bearing on our short term and long term health picture is to ignore reality. Federal, state and local authorities will strive to do their best to insure that we get the best water possible but they can't undo all of the damage to our water sources over decades of ignorance and abuse.
It's up to us to take personal responsibility to safeguard the water we use to drink and prepare our food. That responsibility starts at each household's kitchen tap. Removing all contaminants at the kitchen or bathroom taps just before consuming the water is the most logical, efficient and economical solution to drinking water purification. In this manner, only the drinking water is filtered (rather than all the household water). Also, there is no possibility for re-contamination (i.e. in a holding tank) after purifying the water.
Bottled water in some cases can be of high quality, but its cost makes it a less-than-ideal solution. There is also a potential problem with the cloudy plastic (PVC) containers from your grocery store as they transfer far too many chemicals into the water. Therefore let's look at filters for a better solution.
"Buy a filter or be a filter." That's one company's slogan.
Today there is enough grassroots consciousness about the dangers of tap water that cheap carbon filters are now available in any hardware store which attach easily to the kitchen faucet. It is likely that such filters get rid of most of the chlorine - for a while.
But to really get the resistant biologicals, the fluoride, heavy metals, and other contaminants, the customer may consider one of the high-end drinking water filters. These cost between $200 and $400 and come in models for both over and under the sink.
Names like Alpine, MultiPure, and Spectrapure are among the dozens of brand names that have come along during the past 20 years. Multipure seems to be out front at this time. Everyone claims to be the best, of course, but we can find some important similarities in their advertising. When you begin to compare the better water filters, you notice common concerns:
Chlorine, THMs, chloriform, chloramines, cryptosporidium and giardia lamblia, cysts, fluoride, minerals, pesticides and toxic chemicals, heavy metals, MTBEs, nitrates.
Killing microbials is not a big deal since most of that's been done by chlorine. Most contaminants are removed by the better filters. The problem when choosing a filter seems to come down to four main concerns: fluoride, minerals, THMs, and nitrates.
It is difficult to find one filter that does everything: many reverse osmosis filters take out fluoride, but also the healthy minerals. Many of the high-end carbon filters will not remove fluoride or nitrates, but leave the healthy minerals.
Fluoride is obviously an important one. Find out if the filter you are about to buy removes fluoride, and what percentage. After what we've learned about fluoride, we should expect a filter to remove it, wouldn't you say? Problem is: the demand.
Due to fluoride advocate propaganda, most Americans don't even realize fluoride is bad for them, and therefore don't think about it when considering a water filter.
NSF is a third-party non-profit testing agency that has been rating water filters for the past 50 years. Always ask - is it NSF-certified? For what? Don't be fooled if they say 'NSF-tested.' There's a big difference between "tested" and "certified".
Minerals is an area of some controversy. You've got the hard water/soft water debate. Hard water has more minerals in it, which obviously is better for the bones and teeth, and probably for the heart as well.
Most naturopaths and holistic nutritionists don't like distilled water because they say it leaches minerals from the bones and teeth. In general, that seems logical, although some expert say it doesn't make any difference unless the person is extremely malnourished.
The truth is, no formal studies comparing distilled with mineral water have been done, so it's all pretty theoretical. But thinking about the Hunzas and their 120-year lifespan that was attributed to the glacial mineral waters they drank, one can see the value of minerals in drinking water.
A high-end water filter should take this discussion into consideration and give reasons about the importance or unimportance of filtering out certain minerals.
It comes down to this choice: reverse osmosis or carbon block. With reverse osmosis you can remove fluoride but you also remove many minerals, and wasting about 4-9 gallons to get one gallon of pure water. With high-end carbon mesh filters, you can get rid of everything but fluoride, and you'll still have minerals.
You will find the best price on the internet for high quality REVERSE OSMOSIS filtration systems at http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/cgi-bin/water?healingdaily .
If on the other hand you wish to go for a more affordable carbon block type filter, you can find them on the internet, also high quality Aquasana filters.
Chlorinated Tap Water
Article by Dr. Zoltan P. Rona MD MSc
Most people never give it a thought. After all, our elected public officials
keep assuring us that chlorinated city tap water is completely safe for human
consumption. Numerous scientific studies, however, report that chlorinated tap
water is a skin irritant and can be associated with rashes like eczema.
Chlorinated water can destroy polyunsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E in the
body while generating toxins capable of free radical damage (oxidation). This
might explain why supplementation of the diet with essential fatty acids like
flax seed oil, evening primrose oil, borage oil and antioxidants like vitamin E,
selenium and others helps so many cases of eczema and dry skin.
Chlorinated water destroys much of the intestinal flora, the friendly bacteria that help in the digestion of food and which protect the body from harmful pathogens. These bacteria are also responsible for the manufacture of several important vitamins like vitamin B12 and vitamin K. It is not uncommon for chronic digestive disorders as well as chronic skin conditions like acne, psoriasis, seborrhea and eczema to clear up or be significantly improved by switching to unchlorinated drinking water and supplementing the diet with lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidus.
Chlorinated water contains chemical compounds called trihalomethanes which are carcinogens resulting from the combination of chlorine with organic compounds in water. These chemicals, also known as organochlorides, do not degrade very well and are generally stored in the fatty tissues of the body (breast, other fatty areas, mothers' milk, blood and semen). Organochlorides can cause mutations by altering DNA, suppress immune system function and interfere with the natural controls of cell growth.
Chlorine has been documented to aggravate asthma, especially in those children who make frequent use of chlorinated swimming pools. Several studies also link chlorine and chlorinated by-products to a greater incidence of bladder, breast and bowel cancer as well as malignant melanoma. One study even links the use of chlorinated tap water to congenital cardiac anomalies.
Anything you can do to filter tap and shower water that eliminates or even minimizes chlorine would certainly be helpful and possibly curative for some immune system problems. The use of at source water filtration devices is increasingly popular and affordable. Discuss their use with your health care practitioner.
Fackelmann, K.A., Hints of a chlorine-cancer connection. Science News, July 11, 1992;142:23.
Flaten, Trond Peter. Chlorination of drinking water and cancer incidence in Norway. International Journal of Epidemiology, 1992;21(1):6-15.
Messina, Virginia. Chlorine and cancer. Good Medicine, Winter 1994;8-9.
Morris, Robert D. Chlorination, Chlorination by-products and cancer. American Journal of Public Health, July 1992;82(7):955-963.
Rothery, S.P., et al. Hazards of chlorine to asthmatic patients. British Journal of General Practice, Jan, 1991;39.
Shaw, Gary M., et al. Chlorinated water exposures and congenital cardiac anomalies. Epidemiology, November 1991;2(6):459-460.
Drinking Water Treatment: Why Chlorine is so Very Dangerous
DANGER! Natural organic substances such as fruits, vegetables, and soy products can form dangerous cancer causing compounds when combined with chlorinated water
JUST SAY “NO! NO! NO!” TO CHLORINE!!!
Some of nature’s most valuable and essential anti-cancer and anti-disease phytochemical nutrients, which are commonly found in food, have been discovered to form deadly cancer causing substances when consumed or combined with chlorinated tap water. This discovery includes familiar foods including soy, fruits, vegetables, tea, many health products, and some prescriptions.
Recently, a joint study was undertaken in Japan by research scientists at the National Institute of Health Sciences and Shizuoka Prefectural University. They determined that natural organic substances react when exposed to chlorinated tap water, forming dangerous cancer causing compounds named MX, which stands for “Unknown Mutagen”. They are similar to the already well-known and more easily detected cancer causing THMs (trihalomethanes).
Earlier studies by scientists in
Finland in 1997 determined that MX is 170 times more deadly than other known
toxic by-products of chlorination, and was shown in laboratory studies to damage
the thyroid gland as well as cause cancerous tumors.
There is nothing wrong with the organic substances themselves. It is chlorine
that is at fault for turning them into the deadly THM and MX cancer cocktail.
The reality is that the organic substances have been shown to be highly
beneficial combined with pure drinking water.
It is certain that the fresh plant foods we
eat similarly react with the chlorinated tap water we drink with our meals,
creating toxins. This means that fresh fruits and vegetables, green salads,
green tea, black tea, herb teas, soy products, vitamins and various health
supplements, and even some pharmaceutical drugs all can be implicated in
combination with chlorinated water.
The dangerous cancer causing agents which are produced are extremely toxic in
infinitesimal amounts so small and obscure that they are very difficult to
detect. Very little chlorine is required.
Many years ago laws were passed making
chlorination of water mandatory. Now, the chlorine industry and government
agencies must continue their existing policies, because if sudden or drastic
changes are made the legal liabilities would be staggering. This predicament
could make the tobacco industry scandal seem insignificant in comparison.
Educating people to the dangers of chlorine would be admitting to knowledge of
the problem, which could invalidate past studies and certainly raise serious
legal problems.
Although Chlorine has essentially eliminated the risks of waterborne diseases
such as typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery, there are many pathogens that are
not controlled by chlorine. Better methods of water treatment exist, such as
ozonation, and many alternatives are already used throughout the world.
This message is of utmost importance to the general public, because chlorine will one day, in the near future, be exposed as a major cause and contributor to cancer and degenerative disease. Chlorine will also be found to be responsible for damaging the body’s immune and hormonal systems by mutating the food-based plant estrogens and phytochemicals that support those systems. A healthy immune system should be your first and best line of defense against disease.
What can you do?
Eliminate or reduce all chlorine wherever possible. Don’t drink chlorinated
tap water. The best way to remove it is to get a reverse osmosis filter, because
reverse osmosis also removes fluoride, which is rated a 4/5 on the world poison
scales (5 is the highest point). We got a very reasonaly priced reverse osmosis
filter from ebay.com and a water cooler and some 5 gallon jugs. We use a 2
micron filter. This was as small as we could go and still get a decent flow of
water, because of the high level of contaminants in our town water.
Don't bathe in chlorinated water if possible. Filters are available for faucets and shower heads.
The bottom line is that the real culprit is chlorine, not the substances with which it reacts. Many people have larger filter systems installed right on the water line entering their house. Chlorine is everywhere...the ice tea you order at a restaurant was probably made with chlorinated water, your salad leaves may have been washed with chlorinated water...it goes on an on. Many people who read about the dangers of chlorine for the first time are horrified and shocked that this toxic substance is flowing right out of their faucets. But, it is, and knowing about it can only help you to evaluate how you will can effectively deal with this toxic addition to daily life.
WATER TEST KITS
If you're wondering whether a water source has chlorine in it, you can purchase water testing kits at your local pool supply store. They're inexpensive and will tell you if that bottled water you're buying is really free of chlorine or not.
We have 2 suggestions:
1. Try to reduce toxins as much as possible from your daily routine
2. Supply your body with products that will de-tox and flush existing toxins from your system.
FULVIC can flush chlorine and other toxins from the body.
www.relfe.com
Low levels of chlorine in tap water used for bathing can almost double the risk of bladder cancer, a study claims.
Scientists found chemical by-products from mains water containing the disinfectant can be absorbed through the skin in the bath or shower and accumulate in the bladder.
Swimming in public pools can also present a risk because chlorine levels are much higher.
The risk is caused by chemical by-products called THMs which are produced when chlorine is added to water.
Researchers found that those living in areas with high-chlorine content water, who bathed in it regularly, were 83 per cent more likely to get a tumor than those in low-chlorine areas.
Those who drank high-chlorine tap water were 35 per cent more likely to get bladder cancer.
Regular swimming in pools increased the risk by 57 per cent.
Absorbing chlorine through the skin is thought to be more dangerous because it bypasses the liver, which filters out many harmful chemicals when water is swallowed.
Chlorine has been used to disinfect Britain's household water supplies for 100 years.
Regulations say THMs must not exceed 100 micrograms per litre. The Spanish study, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests only 50 micrograms - present in some areas of the UK - is required to increase the tumor risk.
Researchers at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research in Barcelona compared 1,200 men and women with bladder cancer to a healthy group, questioning each about their exposure to chlorine.
Lead researcher Dr Cristina Villenueva said: "Inhaling or absorbing THMs may lead to a higher concentration in target organs, such as the kidney, bladder or colon.
"Experimental studies have shown a significant uptake of THMs when showering, bathing or swimming in pools. If confirmed, this has significant public health implications."
Bladder cancer, of which the single biggest cause is smoking, kills nearly 5,000 in the UK every year.
A spokesman for the National Pure Water Association said: "There is now a lot of research on chlorine in drinking water that shows we should be concerned.
"Water firms use the cheapest products possible to disinfect water, such as chlorine. Yet there are safer methods used by other countries, such as ozone gas or ultraviolet light."
In 1999, a government committee decided against removing chlorine from water, despite evidence of a slight increase in the risk of bladder cancer.
A spokesman for the Drinking Water Inspectorate said the amount of THMs in water ranged across the country from one microgram per litre up to 50 - but no higher. "This report hasn't changed the World Health Organisation"s view that the evidence is not sufficient to support chlorine being the cause of bladder cancer," she added.
Ed Yong, campaigns officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "This is one of a number of studies suggesting this link, but larger studies are needed before we can say for sure if high exposure to chlorinated water can cause bladder cancer.
"In the meantime, people shouldn't be worried every time they step into the bath, shower or swimming pool. Any potential cancer risks must be weighed against the risk of the many infectious diseases caused by improperly disinfected water."
Three years ago chlorine in water was linked to a risk of birth defects or miscarriages.
With the aggregation of millions of people in large urban centers, there is an unprecedented amount of human waste to be treated. In this treatment, pathogenic microbes (bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and parasitic worms) must be removed or reduced to harmless levels. It is well known that in any community, at any time, there are always small numbers of people who are either manifestly ill, in some stage of illness but not demonstratively so, or healthy carriers of diseases. Together, these are indications of a communities normal background of pathogenic microorganisms in which feces are in the sewage. As a result, sewage is a great threat to human health, especially for those who come in contact with water drawn from sewage contaminated sources.
Generally, sewage consists of 99.9% water and 0.02% solids. Although the amount of solids may seem small, in comparison to the amount of water that is flowed in a large city such as Washington D.C, solids amount to 200 tons/day (Benarde). Of this 40-50% is protein, 40-50% consist of carbohydrates, and the remaining 5-10% is fat (Benarde). All these substances are broken down from fecal matter. Fecal matter is known to be the leading cause of death, with a toll of 10 million a year. Some examples of diseases are typhoid and cholera; these are very common in third world countries, due to the lack of sanitation. In modern industrialized countries, sanitation is taken to higher step than in developing countries. For example in the United States, drinking water runs through a series of treatment steps before it is flowed into households, as for third world countries, water is usually pumped by a well with no treatment at all. Because of this, serious diseases develop in untreated, unsanitary water.
In the United States, several steps are done before water can reach a household. The first process to treat water is the primary treatment, sewage goes to a treatment plant, in the treatment plant the untreated water flows through coarse and fine screens to trap floating objects such as fecal solids and other items. The coarse screens consist of a bank of vertical bars set approximately 1 inch apart. Behind the screens is a comminutor, which grinds the remaining solids to a size that should prevent damage to the machinery that later are used to filter (Benarde).
The following step is secondary treatment, depending on the type of secondary treatment to be given; the sewage will pass to either a bio-filter or an activated sludge aeration tank. Both are based on the stabilization or neutralization or organic waste by biological action. Although pathogenic microorganisms are partially removed in the settling process and filtration and aeration mechanically remove others, it is the process of chlorination that destroys the great majority of organisms. In addition, chlorine leaves a residual in the water system can further disinfect, as water is discharged into the watercourse.
Water supplies were first chlorinated at the turn of the century, and over the following two decades chlorination was introduced for the disinfecting of drinking water in industrialized countries. In the chlorination process, chlorine reacts mainly with natural water constituents to produce a complex mixture of by-products, including a wide variety of halogenated compounds, the actual levels of which depend on the amount of chlorine added and the type of water source. Estimates of the total halogenated organic matter generated during chlorination suggest levels ranging from 10-250 micrograms/liter of chlorine (Groups, webpage). The main chlorination by-products are trihalomenthanes and chlorinated acetic acids. These by-products are responsible for most of the bacterial mutagenicity found in chlorinated drinking water. The formation of trihalomethanes occurs when organic material is reintroduced to treat water. The chlorine residual left from secondary treatment reacts with the organic material to produce trihalomethanes, highly mutagenic and carcinogenic solvents.
Over the years, there has been several cases researched that have without unreasonable doubt led a strong connection of serious health hazards due to chlorinated water. In the latest study, Drinking Water Mutagenicity and Gastrointestinal and Urinary Tract Cancers: an Ecological Study in Finland, reported in the American Journal of Public Health (August, 1994), a study was done on 56 Finnish municipalities and is the largest long term study ever done. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between exposure to mutagenic drinking water and cancers of the gastrointestinal and urinary tract. Statistically significant exposure-response association was observed between exposure to chlorinated water and incidence of bladder, kidney and stomach cancers. In an ordinary municipality using chlorinated surface water, this exposure would indicate a relative risk of 1.2 for bladder cancer and 1.2 to 1.4 for kidney cancer compared with municipalities where non-mutagenic drinking water was consumed. This is a direct relationship, chlorinated water and cancers. Another example is chlorine has been documented to aggravate asthma, especially in those children who frequently use chlorinated swimming pools. Several studies also link chlorine and chlorinated by-products to a greater incidence of bladder, breast and bowel cancer. If there is such a high health risk, why is chlorine used? It is believed to be the most cost-effective way to treat water thoroughly. Government officials feel that the sacrifice of a few cases of cancer and other health problems is well worth it, in comparison to no sanitary water at all. This is an acceptable notion, but with the technology enhanced in industrialized countries, there are several other alternatives.
One of the best, but more cost effective ways to treat drinking water is through ozone. Ozone is bubbled through the water, breaking down all parasites, bacteria, and all other harmful organic substances. Chloroamines is also another alternative, its good because it does not form trihalomethanes, but it also doesn't leave a residual, which may be bad, because drinking water can contain bacteria and other harmful substances. From the three different choices given to treat drinking water, chlorine seems to be the most effective. In a population of one million people its believed that 56 will get cancer when water is treated with chlorine, 11.8 will get cancer with Chloroamines, and 63 will get cancer with ozone (Stern). This shows of the following three, chlorine would be the best choice, it may be questioned why not Chloroamines, Chloroamines don?t due a great job of killing pathogens. Until there is another alternative to safer drinking water, the only educated alternative is to use home filtration apparatus. In general, these filtration units take out over 90% of the chlorine available to a glass of treated water.
References:
Benarde, Melvin A. Our Precarious Habitat (fifteen Years Later). Chapter 11. John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Group 3. Chlorinated Drinking Water. Web page. 193.51.164.11/htdocs/Monographs/Vol/52/of-water.htm.
McAdam, Thelma. Chloramine in Water Supplies Poses Hazardous to Plants and Fish. Hans home page www.hans.org/index.html#WATER
McAdam, Thelma. Finnish Study Links Chlorinated Water to Cancer. Hans home page @ www.hans.org/chlorine.html
Rona, Zoltan. Rethinking Chlorinated Tap Water. Web page. www.wwonline.com/rona/chlor.html
Sneed, David. State water pipeline leaks chlorinated water, killing fish. Web page. Av.yagoo.com/bin/query?p==chlorinated+water&b=
Stern, Sherry. Enviromental Quality and Health. Spring Quarter lecture.
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