Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 315 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 315 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 315 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 315 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Over a lifetime you will put more water into your body than any other kind offood or drink. So, paying attention to the water you drink is at least as important, if not more so, than inspecting the food that you eat.

The Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1974 and amended in 1986 and again in 1996 with more rigorous standards, required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set maximum allowable levels of contaminants in municipal water supplies and to periodically monitor compliance with these standards. Under these laws, the EPA issued minimum contaminant levels (MCLs) for 83 contaminants (for example, pesticides, radioactive materials, chemicals and bacteria). As part of the law, the EPA must continually update its monitoring to include more contaminants. The law also makes the EPA responsible for setting up criteria for safe purification procedures and for monitoring water purification in the United States. Sounds like the government has taken tapwater in tow, and the water drinker can imbibe without worry.

Not exactly! Even though U.S. water is touted to be the safest in the world and water-borne disease is uncommon in the U.S., there are still concerns about contaminants in the public water supply. Here are some of the reasons:

• Many municipal water purification plants are too old or too poor to totally comply with EPA standards.
• There may be contaminants that enter the water supply that are not on the EPA’s hit list, and thus they escape detection.
• Current testing and purification technology may miss some contaminants, which get past filtering systems and enter the water supply.
• Some germs may be resistant to current disinfecting methods, such as cryptosporidium, the chlorine-resistant parasite that was implicated in the 1993 Milwaukee water contamination episode, in which 40,000 people suffered gastrointestinal illnesses and over 100 immuno- compromised people died. Even so, this germ is still not on the EPA’s “most wanted” list for monitoring and detection. Other germs, such as E.coli and Giardia, are tiny enough to slip through some filtration systems.
• The long-term effects of drinking a gallon of chlorinated water every day for seventy years have not been determined.

CONTAMINANTS OF CONCERN
Here are the specific contaminants to be concerned about:

Chlorine. While chlorine (a chemical also found in household bleach) is a disinfectant that kills germs, it may also pose health hazards. Chlorine reacts with the leftover organic waste products in water to form a possible carcinogen, trihalomethane, which may increase the risk of bladder and rectal cancers. Chlorine vapors can be inhaled through shower steam (so ventilate your shower well) and even absorbed through the skin during showering with chlorinated water. (You can eliminate this risk by placing an inexpensive, replaceable, activated-charcoal carbon filter in the shower head and by using a chlorine-free ozone filtration system in your pool or spa.) There is also the possibility that chlorine used to kill germs in water, might upset the balance between harmful and useful bacteria in the human intestines, perhaps even killing the weaker bacteria and allowing the stronger, and sometimes more harmful ones, to multiply unchecked. While chlorination of the water supply has eliminated public health problems, such as water-borne outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis, the question about the overall safety of chlorination is still unanswered.

Agricultural chemicals. Pesticides which seeps into water from old pipes and plumbing solder. Lead plumbing materials were not banned until 1986, so many homes and municipal water systems still have pipes held together with lead solder.

Radioactive water. Another concern is the seepage of radioactive material into ground and surface water. This problem is of particular concern if you live near old radioactive dumping sites or downstream from them. Theoretically, these potential toxins are monitored by EPA testing.

WATERED DOWN SAFETY
You drink a glass of water that looks safe and tastes okay, and you don’t feel any the worse afterwards. So what’s the worry about the water? The problem is that disease doesn’t develop all of a sudden. Contaminants damage cells little by little, yet it may take years, or even decades, for the whole organ to fail or for tests to find cancer. This is why safe water is of such importance. You drink water every day, yet you may not know for 50 years whether the water you drank was good or bad for you. Actually, you’ll never know if it was the water, the food, the air, or back luck. Here are some alarming statistics:

• The National Resources Defense Council (a non-profit, public environment watchdog agency) reports that over two-thirds of the nation’s water treatment plants are obsolete and perhaps unsafe.
• Despite the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1986 which banned lead in plumbing, in a 1993 report the EPA admitted that 819 water treatment plants in the United States produce water containing above safe levels of lead.
• The government’s Office of Technology Assessment reported that the water in one-third of 954 American cities was seriously contaminated.

Water, the original health drink, is underrated and overshadowed by commercial substitutes. Consider these health uses of plain water.

Drown the cold. You’ve heard the expression “Starve a fever, feed a cold!” This bit of medical folklore is only half true. It’s best to “drown” the fever and the cold with water. Fever makes you perspire and lose water, which not only dehydrates your body, but dehydrates your brain, causing you to think and feel even worse from dehydration. During a cold, the mucus membranes of your nose and breathing passages lose water and dry out. Drinking water keeps these mucus membranes moist, which allows the inflamed lining of your nose and breathing passages to heal more quickly. Dehydration also thickens the mucus, making it difficult for the tiny hair filaments in your nose (called cilia) to oscillate back and forth and move the mucus and the germs along. As a result, the mucus plugs collect in the nose, sinuses, and airways and serve as a culture-medium for bacteria. Keeping the mucus and the membranes moist and water-logged keeps mucus plugs from forming and even getting stuck in the lower airways where they are difficult to cough up. In fact, among pediatricians, water has often been dubbed the “best and most readily-available cough syrup.”

Drink to go. Not drinking enough fluids is also a subtle contributor to problems with constipation, especially in the very young and very old. The colon is your body’s fluid regulator. If you’re not drinking enough, your colon robs water from the waste material and gives it to the body, causing the stools to be water-deprived, or hard. People eating high-fiber diets actually increase their risk of constipation if they don’t drink extra water along with fiber-rich foods, since fiber needs water to do its intestinal sweeping job. More fluids in your diet put more fluids in your bowels, lessening constipation.

Drink to think. Water even contributes to healthier brains. The brain is a water-loving organ. If it doesn’t get enough, it doesn’t work right. Dehydration can impair concentration, which is most apparent following sweaty exercise or doing brain work in hot weather. So, drink to help you think.

Why shell out extra bucks for bottled water when you could get tap water for free? Is bottled water cleaner?

In the Tampa Bay area, it turns out, it is.

Chemical tests arranged by the St. Petersburg Times were conducted on seven brands of bottled water and on the tap water from three cities, St. Petersburg, Tampa and Zephyrhills. The results were consistent: The municipal waters contained higher levels of harmful contaminants and metals than their bottled counterparts.

Beyond the science, things get murky. If you buy Zephyrhills Spring Water, for example, because you think it’s cleaner, more natural and more pure, be aware: Harmful bacteria, other pathogens and chemicals can be found in spring water, too.

In the multibillion-dollar bottled water industry, things are not as clear as the purified water you buy.

” ” ”

The Times hired Xenco Laboratories, a national firm with offices in Tampa and Miami, to analyze 10 water samples.

Xenco examined bottled samples of Zephyrhills, Deer Park and Publix spring waters as well as Nestle Pure Life, Dasani, Aquafina and Voss. For tap water, Xenco analyzed samples from public water fountains at the city halls in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Zephyrhills.

The test found:

” Bottled water samples contained lower levels of helpful elements such as calcium and magnesium than were found in the tap waters.

” The three tap waters all showed traces of potentially cancer-causing chemicals, including chloroform and bromodichloromethane, that went undetected in the bottled waters.

” The three tap waters contained traces of toxic metals, including lead, nickel and copper.

“It seems like the story is bottled water is lower in some of these contaminants,” James Jawitz, an assistant professor of environmental hydrology at the University of Florida, said after reviewing the test results. “Your area doesn’t compete well with bottled water.”

That’s because bottling companies purify the water and pour it directly into a bottle.

Cities purify the water, but have to keep it clean as it leaves treatment plants and snakes through miles of pipes to your faucet. The pipes contain harmful bacteria and other contaminants that must be destroyed.

“There are limitations to providing a large quantity of water,” said Myung Kim, water quality assurance officer for Tampa. “You have the issue of the pipes and you have the issue of pipeline that has been there for 60 years, 80 years and in some cases 100 years.”

To destroy bacteria and other contaminants, cities add chloramine, a combination of chlorine and ammonia, into the water.

The Times‘ chemical test found that in the three tap waters, the chlorine and ammonia combined with other matter in the water to form harmful contaminants, including the carcinogen chloroform.

It’s unclear the potential harm caused by chloramine and other increasingly common disinfection methods, including ozonation and ultraviolet light, but they are effective at killing bacteria such as E. coli.

“Having folks exposed to E. coli is of greater concern … than the risks that have been identified to date” from disinfection, said Jeff Greenwell of the state Department Environmental Protection.

Experts analyzing the Times’ test results emphasized that the level of contaminants in the water samples did not indicate any of the water was unhealthy.

“It’s all about consumer choice,” said Adam C. Bloom, of the National Science Foundation’s Beverage Quality Program. “There’s different occasions where tap water makes sense and different occasions where bottled water makes sense.”

” ” ”

In the bottled water aisle at the grocery store, the choices are dizzying. Distilled water. Drinking water. Spring water. Deer Park. Zephyrhills. The store brand.

Many consumers are enamored with the idea of “natural spring water.” It sounds healthy. But all water, bottled or tap, comes from the ground. It all gets processed, even natural spring water.

If it didn’t and you drank from a glass dipped in the spring, it could kill you.

“You wouldn’t want to do that,” said Jim McClellan, a spokesman for Nestle Waters North America, the nation’s largest bottled water operation. “There are bacteria that can live in the water as it comes out of the ground.”

Water can come from a spring, from surface water such as the Hillsborough River, or drawn by well from the ground.

No matter where it’s drawn from, to make water fit to drink it goes to a plant. It’s treated — some with blasts of ultraviolet light; some with ozone; some with old science lab techniques such as reverse osmosis (passing through fine membranes to extract contaminants); and some with the powerful bacteria-killing chemical chloramine.

Zapped, processed and mixed from various sources, the water is neutered of many of its original properties.

When it gets to you, the chemical tests show, the bottled water is cleaner than Tampa Bay area tap. Just don’t expect it to stay clean forever.

Bottled water has expiration dates (they can be hard to read) and can be affected by extreme heat because microbes and chemicals are in bottled water, even if undetected in testing.

“It’s not sterile,” Patricia Anderson, director of St. Petersburg water resources, said of bottled water. “It’s starting to change and degrade over time.”

Not only does the water change, chemicals that make up the plastic bottle can leech into the water.

” ” ”

In the Times chemical tests, almost every sample scored within drinking water standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But the bigger question is, how safe are those standards?

The goal of the EPA is to have the levels of many chemicals, compounds and bacteria at zero.

“Acceptable” levels of contaminants are higher than zero. Some say that’s due to prodding by municipalities, which have a vocal Washington lobby through the American Water Works Association.

Pat Kline, an engineer with the association, said the EPA standards have nothing to do with lobbying efforts. The standards are based on studies of what is deemed to be safe, because it is impossible to get contaminant levels in tap water to zero.

“You can get it down to fairly undetectable, but there’s no way you can say, ‘nothing,’ ” Kline said. “The goal is nothing detectable. At what point do you find an increased risk of cancer? I can’t tell you. I’m not a doctor.”

Researchers sometimes determine that the EPA standards are insufficient. In 2001, the National Academies of Sciences found that the EPA’s standard for arsenic in drinking water posed a cancer risk. In 2006, the academies said that the EPA’s standard for fluoride did not adequately protect the public.

“We all tend to trust government to protect us,” said Jim Stevenson, chairman of the Florida Springs Task Force. “We trust that when we turn the faucet on that the water is safe. That may not be the case.”

The Times‘ test examined the water samples for traces of bacteria, metals, fuels, nitrogen and phthalates, a toxic element in plastics — all chemicals that pose a health threat to consumers.

Most of the results fell within ranges experts would expect.

For one test, however, all of the samples, bottled and tap, showed high levels above EPA standards for diethylhexyl phthalates, an element of PVC and other plastics that at high levels has been associated with birth defects, reproductive problems and increased risks of asthma and cancer.

Experts questioned whether the results may have been due to contamination of samples, though Xenco stood by its results. Tampa said it is reviewing its water to ensure there are no problems with phthalates, which usually are concerns related to water bottles more than tap water.

U.S. consumers use some 50-billion plastic bottles a year for beverages, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which urges tap water over bottled.

“The bottom line is that bottled water doesn’t add up,” said Jennifer Powers, a spokeswoman for the council. “It costs the consumer a lot of money out of pocket and costs the environment even more.”

The bottled water industry doesn’t want to be seen as competing with tap water. The bottlers say they’re competing with soft drinks, Slurpees, coffee, even chocolate milk.

Then again, nobody has ever suggested that for good health we drink eight glasses a day of chocolate milk.

Ivan Penn can be reached at ipenn@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2332.

[Last modified: Mar 20, 2008 12:54 PM]

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It is said that alkaline water prevents disease and slows the aging process. They also claim it stops free radicals from forming, flushes toxins from cells and prevents toxins from accumulating, provides essential minerals, promotes normal blood flow and maintains normal blood pH. Alkaline water also is said to be better at hydrating the body because it penetrates cells more effectively.