busyA Really Good Reason to Shower Before Hopping in the Pool
Chemicals used to treat both drinking water and swimming pool water reacts with organic material to form disinfection by-products (DBPs). Ho-hum... why should we care, right?
We should care because when you add swimmers to a pool you have just added lots of organic material. A new study by the University of Illinois shows that of the hundreds of compounds created, some are toxic, some cause birth defects, some cause cancer and others are genotoxic, which means that they damage DNA.
I don't care if the government thinks that the original chemicals or their byproducts are "safe" in drinking water in certain amounts. The byproducts are particularly alarming: after all, when you swallow drinking water, it contacts the "organic material" of your body. I look around at the skyrocketing rates of cancer, infertility, birth defects, and other health problems and generally conclude that the government is doing a downright pathetic job of protecting people from contaminants. I want drinking water that is actually clean and pure, containing neither pathogens nor chemicals.
April 10 2009, 02:21:26 UTC 12 years ago
Really, apply logic to this. Water is the most absolutely vital aspect of human existence. The only thing that kills us faster than a lack of water is a lack of sleep. And we've had water purification technology like this for decades, nor has it been unique to the United States. If there was actually a medical problem, we'd know by now. It's hard to cover up a sudden and consistent burst in birth defects and cancer rates.
Odds are pretty good your distilled water comes from a municipal aquifer.
Thoughts
April 10 2009, 02:29:18 UTC 12 years ago
2) Localized spikes in disease are noted. What's happening is a pervasive rise across multiple types of problem. The human body is not evolved to deal with the amount of environmental contamination it now faces from multiple sources. And as long as people think "oh, it's safe" that's not going to change.
3) If I poured tapwater straight into an aquarium, it would kill the fish. That's not something I want to swallow.
Re: Thoughts
April 10 2009, 03:40:38 UTC 12 years ago
2) I agree that we dump a lot of toxins into the environment, and that's going to have an effect. And, again, I don't trust this blog, because they are out to sell something (not in the financial sense, but definitely in the social sense).
To be honest, I see a lot of confirmation bias on your blog. Not that anyone, including yours truly, is immune from that, but I think it makes everybody more effective if they approach views they agree with just as critically as views they don't. Having grown up around plenty of far-left and far-right types, I've learned that beyond a certain point, there is no essential difference in tactics.
1) If it's actually distilled, this would be true. But honestly, the water market is full of people who basically hook up a garden hose to a bottling machine and just slap a label on it. People think they can tell the difference: truth is, most of them really can't.
And even if it is distilled, there's still the problem of, well, the fact that this stuff was bottled and trucked to wherever you bought it so you could buy it.