Welcome to beautiful West New York, New Jersey. This is what my drinking water looks like:
Even outside of Flint, Michigan – it is apparent that are countless fuck-ups when it comes to drinking water.
I’m beginning to wonder – hey water authorities, you know it’s suppose to be clear, right?
Here are things I won’t do with my town-supplied water:
1. drink it
2. cook with it
3. give it to my dog
Here are things I do do with it:
1. bathe (but only when I really start to smell)
2. brush my teeth (but only when they really start to smell)
What’s G00d.
Your drinking water (and bathing water) may be harmful to you, and more likely – to your micro-biome. This is true even if it’s perfectly clear!
In the worst case scenario, your drinking water can poison you and slowly make you crazy.
But most likely you were already crazy to begin with.
We still don’t understand much about the effects of certain chemicals in our drinking water on our health. There are just too many chemicals to even begin testing! Why do companies want to poison us so much??
What’s worse – most of us aren’t even aware of what’s in our drinking water. And that’s partially because it varies so much based on so many factors. And partially because who gives a fuck.
Obligatory Gratitude
At this point I should note the following: I’m really thankful that our drinking water is treated. I realize that a sad micro-biome is less serious than let’s say oh…. typhoid.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to limit those aspects of water treatment that might cause us intestinal distress, or worse – the feeling of drinking the urine of a friendly ghost
Filters exist! And should probably be used in many areas. Filters even exist for your shower head. So now, you can shower EVEN WITHOUT your tin foil hat.
A Resource!
I want to learn what’s in my water. But I can’t because for some reason my town isn’t in this otherwise AWESOME database.
It’s the Environmental Working Group’s National Tap Water Database. All you need to learn more about your water is your zip code and the name of your water utility.
Since my town wasn’t in the database, I captured the info for my hometown where I grew up. While I don’t understand any of it, I’m going to assume based on the little red circles that I should expect a second head or extra big toe to pop up at any moment.
How am I not a mutant?
BTW, I checked a few towns on top of this. And even though my search was brief, I uncovered MANY towns whose water supply looks much worse than this. Sooooo many more red circles…
As I mentioned, I don’t know what’s in my town’s drinking water. But I’m not going to assume it’s anything good. Because:
1. It’s gray; and
2. when I use it for my humidifier, my ENTIRE APARTMENT smells like chlorine.
..so that scares me.
In Sum
You might not give too much thought to your drinking water. But it probably wouldn’t hurt to have throw a filter on your tap.
I don’t filter my water, just because our sink is weird. I buy jugs of water from 7/11 because I’m a class act. Eventually I’ll buy a Brita jug.
If you’re a total nutbag, you can even filter your shower water. Who knows – you might be right. Your shower water might be killing you.
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It’s funny how you address these things but it’s still a serious and legitimate concern. I laughed when I read this earlier but it’s just about 0200hrs and I just drank some water that was passed through a $100 filter (I bought from Whole Foods) that is attached to my kitchen sink faucet — I just sneezed and although I have a supreme immune system, I thought of this post.
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Thanks 🙂
Do you know what the filter is called? I’m looking into a few options. Our sink is a little weird, so I don’t know what will fit.
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I’ll take a picture when I get back to my casa and send it to you. I still have the box too. There’s a caveat though — Although I did contemplate the purchase for a few months, I didn’t do any research. I just picked it up when I had the beans.
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http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Enviro-Stage-Filter-System/dp/B000W9Q0GC
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Wow, that glass of water is some foul looking stuff. The report for our municipal water places it at a fairly pristine level. Well, I know that isn’t true! We drink the water of the great Lake Michigan where the intake pipe for our drinking water is just 100 yards or so from the discharge pipe from our sewage treatment plant. We can’t swim in the lake most summer days because the e-coli level is too high but we can drink and shower with the water. Hmmm…
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Yes!! The scary thing about it is that if I put it in my humidifier, the whole apartment smells like chlorine. So it’s definitely not something I want to be drinking.
The thing to keep in mind even with this database is that the data may be old. And even if it is current, it only represents a water sample taken at a series of moments in time.
So it’s still a better tool than not knowing anything, but you are definitely right to trust your eyes and your gut.
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Love this post, it is so sad that this is the state of our water now, I am freaked out about drinking any water that isn’t bottled but even then you have to worry about so many different things concerning plastic safety and then recycling, it’s a lot to just try and stay hydrated! Haha keep up the great informative and humorous posts!
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Thank you! Yes, I’m sure plenty of the things in our water are harmless – but then again, we’re drinking this stuff day in and day out – it’s best to be careful.
As I understand, a really good solution is putting a filter on your sink, and then maybe using one of those metal water bottles.
Actually, after I wrote this post a friend of mine commented on facebook that tests have shown that bottled water can have more contaminants than tap!! So who knows what to believe. I’ll get more info on that and hopefully write a follow up post in the future. Thanks for the comment and stopping by 🙂
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