Safe Drinking Water
(Page 2 of 6)
June/July 2003
By Lynn Keiley
CONTAMINANTS
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Federal law requires municipal water supplies to be monitored to be sure regulated contaminants do not exceed legal limits. In older homes, lead is a concern, as it may leach into water on its way to the tap. Chlorine, commonly used to help disinfect water, brings along its own host of health concerns.
People on private wells don't enjoy the benefit of having someone else monitoring contaminant levels in their water, so they must be diligent about testing it themselves and maintaining their wells. Nitrates and bacteria are by far the most common pollutants in private systems. "We view nitrate contamination as a signal that there also may be a bacterial problem," says Rhonda Janke, an agronomy extension specialist at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. High levels of nitrates and/or bacteria indicate that you have a plume of pollution seeping into your well, possibly from a local farm or industrial area. "Look uphill; look upstream," says Janke. "Anything that's above your well has the potential to run into it, even if it's a mile or two away."
Cut Back on Chlorine
Chlorine is added to public water supplies to kill disease-causing microbes. But as our rivers, lakes and streams become increasingly polluted, municipalities are trying to remedy problems by adding increasing amounts of the chemical. Chlorine reacts with organic matter in the water supply to create byproducts that have been linked to birth defects and an increased incidence of miscarriages in pregnant women. According to an assessment conducted jointly by the Environmental Working Group and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, from 1996 to 2001 more than 16 million people in 1,258 communities depended on water supplies contaminated with chlorine byproducts that exceeded legal limits for at least 12 months in a row. The solution to this problem, says the EWG, is to clean up our water supplies. While you may not be able to single-handedly clean up your local river, you can protect yourself and your family with a simple activated carbon filter. Just be sure to change the filter regularly so you don't end up adding back the bacteria that the chlorine was supposed to kill in the first place.
BACTERIA, CYSTS AND OTHER DISEASE-PRODUCING ORGANISMS
Many different types of microbes can be found throughout our environment, some friendly, some problematic, and water is no exception. Although many types of bacteria do not cause disease themselves, their presence may signal a more serious problem. Coliform bacteria, a group of bacteria commonly found in animal digestive systems (including humans), usually do not cause disease, but their presence suggests that fecal matter from sewage or animal waste is finding its way into your water supply.
Certain types of coliform, particularly such toxic strains as E. coli 0157:H7, can cause serious, even life-threatening, illness in children and people with depressed immune systems. Most often though, drinking bacteria-laden water causes fever, gastrointestinal illness and other flu-like symptoms.
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