The Pure Water Newsletter #1, 1999 Issue
The Pure Water Newsletter
#1, 1999 Issue
"Improving the Quality of Life trough the Quality of Water."
News and Views about Water and Health from http://www.purewaterinc.com/
>> Note: This newsletter is sent only to subscribers who requested it. This publication may be freely redistributed if copied in its ENTIRETY <<
IN THIS ISSUE
- Welcome!
- Water in the News
- Featured Article By Dr. Michael Colgan, Author of "Optimum Sports Nutrition"
- Distilled Water Tip
- Your FREE Gift!
Welcome!
Welcome to the first edition of The Pure Water Newsletter brought to you by Pure Water, Inc! Every month or so we will bring you up to date on Drinking Water and Health issues surrounding your drinking water.
We appreciate you joining our growing online family and we will do our best to keep you informed. Later in this edition we will present you with the opportunity to claim your FREE gift for signing up for The Pure Water Newsletter.
Please visit us at the Pure Water, Inc web site for new contests, news headlines, product info, business opportunities etc. http://www.purewaterinc.com/
Business Opportunity
Pure Water Brandoffers a number of business opportunities to anyone wanting to get into the drinking water business. Whether you want to start a bottled water plant, a water store, or get people involved with the best drinking water systems for the home or office, Pure Water Brandcan give you that opportunity.
http://www.purewaterinc.com/html/business_opportunities.htm
Water in the News!
ABC News-IVs Aren't the Best Way to Rehydrate Athletes
When champagne sprayed through the locker room after the Dallas Cowboys clinched a spot in the 1993 Super Bowl, Emmitt Smith was nowhere to be found. The star running back was so dehydrated that he could barely stand, let alone celebrate.
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/ivs980528.html
Science News Online-Drugged Waters
Does it matter that pharmaceuticals are turning up in water supplies? Chemists at an agricultural research laboratory run by the Swiss government were screening lake water for pesticide contamination when they ran across a puzzling result....
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/3_21_98/bob1.htm
Salon Newsreal: Fear of fluoride
Is it possible that America's 50-year embrace of fluoridation has been a terrible mistake? "Would you brush your teeth with arsenic?" asks Dr. Robert Carton, a former scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency. "Fluoride is somewhat less toxic than arsenic and more toxic than lead, and you wouldn't want either of them in your mouth."
http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1999/02/17news.html
Boulder Weekly-America's tap water may be making us chemically unbalanced.
For the past 25 years, tens of millions of Americans in hundreds of cities and towns have been drinking tap water that is contaminated with low levels of insecticides, weed killers, and artificial fertilizers.
http://www.boulderweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=1318
How Important is Clean Water?
By Dr. Michael Colgan, Author of "Optimum Sports Nutrition"
You are mostly water. Even your bones are one-quarter water. Your brain and muscles are three-quarters water. Your blood and lungs are over 80% water. The most important substance in your body is water - pure H20.
The quality of your tissues, their performance and their resistance to disease is dependent on the quality of the water you ingest. And you need a lot of water every day. A 150 lb. Person contains 40 quarts of water, and that must be replaced every five to ten days. Let's look at how we obtain that water.
Tap Water
Many falsely believe our water is safe because it comes from a treatment station. Water treatment authorities treat water to minimum standards. More than 60,000 different chemicals now contaminate our water supplies. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to get them out with the obsolete and under-funded treatment systems now in use. In 1994 the Resources Defense Council reported that over two-thirds of our water treatment plants are obsolete. And it's not going to get any better.
Even those contaminants they target specifically often remain. Lead, for example, was finally banned from water in 1986 by The Safe Drinking Water Amendment Act. But the Environmental Protection Agency's report in 1993 showed that 819 water systems throughout America have toxic levels of lead remaining in the fully treated water.
Water authorities also add chemicals to the water-chlorine and aluminum in particular. Chlorine was necessary to prevent epidemics of disease, and it has done that job well, but it carries with its own burden of disease. Chlorine reacts with organic wastes, which are often not filtered out of the water and this forms trihalomethanes and other chlorine by-products. Some of these by-products are known carcinogens. It is very difficult to isolate potential carcinogens in drinking water because of all the other confounding risk factors.
There have been some epidemiological studies which have shown an association. A recent study evaluated the risk of bladder cancer from tap water containing chlorine by-products. They found that bladder cancer risk increased with duration of chlorinated surface water was significantly associated with risk for bladder cancer.
Dr. Morris with the Department of Family and Community Medicine did a review on drinking water and cancer, and concluded that many contaminants in water are carcinogens. Of the known contaminants, the strongest evidence for cancer risk involved arsenic, but the use of chlorine for water treatment to reduce the risk of infectious disease may also account for a substantial portion of the cancer risk associated with drinking water.
Other much more toxic chemicals can also seep into your water supply. Hydrazines are colorless liquid compounds that have been found at various Department of Defense hazardous waste sites. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Health, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the World Health Organization have all classified Hydrazines as possible cancer-causing environmental contaminants. These substances have been found in water supplies, especially in those areas near hazardous waste sites.
As more research is done in this field, other areas of concern are being isolated. A recent study shows that in some regions, tap water supply may be associated with an increase in spontaneous abortions. Because of the difficulty in isolation the individual factors involved, we may never know the actual chemical(s) responsible.
Okay, tap water is hazardous to your health. Let's look at the alternatives. The first is non-chlorinated well water. Unfortunately, this is not any safer. All the contaminants that form a problem in city or municipal water supplies also are a problem for wells. Add to this the threat of bacteria from non-chlorinated water. If you are on well water, you should have it tested for contaminants and bacteria counts, and if you have any sense, you will not drink it. Contamination levels can change with the seasons and with the weather. Our own water supply is well water. We do not drink it. I'll get to the filtration system we use shortly.
Bottled Water
This has proved to be a profitable alternative for the bottled water companies. The problem here is that the burgeoning water industry is almost entirely self- regulated. Most bottled water is simply tap water put through minimal conditioning filters to make it taste better. The only bottled water that is truly clean is bottled "distilled" water. We will examine distillation in the next section.
Filtering Your Own Water
Probably the cheapest and easiest long-term solution is to filter your own water. But what sort of filter should you use?
The most basic filter system is an activated carbon filter. A study tested the effectiveness of three carbon filters for removal of chemicals and microorganisms. They removed 50% to 70% of the total available chlorine and 4% to 33% of the total organic carbon. But the bacteria count increased steadily with time of use and remained elevated over the period of the study. Total coliform bacteria were found to persist and proliferate on the filters for several days after contamination. Silver containing activated carbon filters suppressed total coliform bacteria but not other types of bacteria. In simple language, the filters were bacteria breeding grounds.
A more recent study looked at the microbiological quality of water from the Brita water filter system. They tested these in both households and a laboratory setting. In 24 of 34 filters used in households, bacterial counts increased in the filtered water. In 4 of 6 filters tested in the laboratory, bacterial counts in the fresh filtrate were higher than in tap water after approximately on week of use. In some cases colony counts in the filtered water were 10,000 times higher than those in tap water. They then checked new, unused filters and found that 5 of the 13 were contaminated with bacteria or moulds. This is obviously a poor choice as a filtration system.
A much better alternative is the new reverse osmosis system. This should ideally be a four-step process, involving several different stages of filtration. A good system will produce water that is 20 to 40 ppm of contaminants. The average tap water is 200 to 500 ppm of contaminants. These work well but must be adequately maintained with regular changes of filter material, more so in heavily contaminated areas.
The Best System
The very best filtration system is a home distiller. There is a wide variety available today to suit most wallets and drinking needs, from small portables for apartment dwellers to large family systems. Distilled water is pure H20 just as Nature intended it. It's a process that has been refined over a long time and essentially involves the boiling of water, catching the pure steam and condensing it back into water. All the contaminants are left in the boiling chamber.
When shopping for a distiller there are some important things to look for. It needs to have vents so that volatile gases can escape and not be incorporated back into your clean water. The boiling tank must also be flushable, so that all the contaminants left behind can be removed. If not, they will slowly build up and clog the boiling chamber.
Don't believe the hogwash put out by "spring" or "mineral" water companies that distilled water leaches the minerals from your body. Any basic college test will reassure you that the human system doesn't work that way. If it did, your cells would be at the mercy of all the varying osmotic gradients created in your gut by every meal you eat.
Another bogus argument is that distilled water doesn't provide essential minerals. Neither do "mineral waters", at least in any useful quantity. We get our minerals mainly from vegetables or from supplements made directly from mineral-rich soils.
We use and recommend the distillers from Pure Water Inc., a company that produces good quality distillers that carry good warranties. The latest models can be stand-alone or connected into you water supply system, and provide drinking water to your faucet and water to your refrigerator for ice water and ice cubes. If you are interested in receiving more information from Pure Water, their number is 800-875-5915.
Whatever system you choose, do it today. Water is the most important nutrient in you body, and you need that water to be clean and pure.
By Dr. Michael Colgan, Author of "Optimum Sports Nutrition" Article reproduced with permission from the COLGAN Chronicles.
Follow this link to buy "Optimum Sports Nutrition" by Dr. Michael Colgan on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0962484059/purewaterinc
Distilled Water Tip
Better Coffee and Tea......
Using distilled water to make coffee or tea requires less coffee grounds and tea leaves when making these beverages with tap water. Ordinarily, you can cut back the amount of coffee grounds or tea leaves by approximately one-third when making these drinks. There will be somewhat of a lighter color, but it still preserves their rich flavor when using distilled water for these beverages; in fact, a much less bitter taste. Using distilled water in these beverages is a simple way for the homemaker or restaurant owner to save approximately one-third on costs of these drinks; and, there will be no ugly film on the surface of the coffee or tea which sometimes occurs with tap water.
Your FREE Gift!
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>> This publication may be freely redistributed if copied in its ENTIRETY <<
"Improving the Quality of Life trough the Quality of Water."
News and Views about Water and Health from http://www.purewaterinc.com/
(c) copyright 1999 Pure Water Inc.
