TAP WATER
- Tap water comes from reprocessed city sewage and is highly contaminated with pharmaceuticals and other pollutants (CNN News, ABC News).
- Tap Water Is Full Of Disease-Causing Contaminants – Most municipal water flows through lead pipes over 100 years old picking up harmful toxins and pollutants before the water treatment plant (which performs very limited functions) and also afterwards when the water is on its way to your house.
- Tap water contains many harmful chemicals which are used to clean the water from its source, but are left in water. Many cities municipal water contains arsenic, chlorine, mercury, asbestos, herbicides and pesticides, and fluoride. Arsenic – Which has been directly linked to cancer and many other diseases, has been found in 85% of our cities’ water. Exposure to lead found at “alarmingly high levels” in many cities by Consumer Reports, can cause learning and behavioral problems in children, lower IQ, high blood pressure, and problems to the reproductive and nervous systems.
- 80% of city water systems were not equipped with filters that meet EPA standards. In addition, most cities add the harmful Chlorine and Fluoride to water. Fluoridated water, which is banned in much of Europe but still common in the US, is linked, according to Preventative Dental Health Association, to cancer and infertility. According to a 1994 study in Journal of American Medica Association, drinking fluoridated water doubles the chances of hip fractures in older people.
- The Centers For Disease Control warns that “50% of the water purification systems in the country sometimes let through the same parasite (Cryptosporidium) that in 1983 caused illness to half of the population of Milwaukee, WI”
- Gallup’s 2009 Environment survey finds contamination of water sparking more U.S. public concern than air pollution, extinction of species, the loss of rain forests, and global warming. Public worry about these issues generally fell between 2000 and 2004, but has since edged higher. Pollution of drinking water is Americans’ No. 1 environmental concern, with 59% saying they worry “a great deal” about the issue.
- Many are also concerned today by bio-terrorism threat to our water supplies as there are 168,000 different public water supplies in the U.S., many of which are completely unprotected.
- Water treatment facilities are outdated and are no better than swimming pool filters.
- The Ralph Nader Research Group did a study and found that there are over 2,100 carcinogens in tap water supplies across the nation. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the only thing that is certain is that the more they look the more contaminants they find.