USA Water Filter Blog

Elevated lead levels found in the drinking water in two Verona homes forced the township to alert residents to the dangers of consuming the heavy metal.

The township tested 30 sites last year and found the two homes had lead levels higher that the federal allowable threshold. When the town retested the sites, they again showed elevated levels.

According to state protocols, that meant the town needed to begin an education campaign.

“It was only two sites, which was an anomaly to begin with,” the township engineer, James Held said.

Lead throughout Verona’s system has been at very low levels or nonexistent, and neither of the two homes had previously tested positive for elevated lead levels, he said.

“The lead that’s occurring is not coming from the groundwater or the surface water,” said Karen Fell, of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection Safe Drinking Water Program. “It’s instead present in the pipes and the plumbing and there’s some level of corrosivity – acidity basically – that’s present in the water, naturally occurring, that makes it leach out.”

Among other suggestions, the town is asking residents to run water for 15 to 30 seconds before drinking or cooking with it; to use only cold water for cooking and preparing baby formula; to test for lead; and to check plumbing fixtures for lead.

http://www.nj.com/news/local/index.ssf/2010/11/verona_warns_residents_to_watc.html

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As a nurse who worked in the health care system for many years, most people don’t know how many drugs have been dumped into the sewer system. Billions of pills from hospitals and nursing homes all over the country, from narcotics, to psychoactive drugs, hormones, antibiotics, left over cancer drugs and more.

A potent cocktail for anyone who drinks the water and bottled water if you tested it, it is not much better, if it is better at all. Many places have grade D water and it barely passes regs and the towns and municipalities don’t have the funds to upgrade the water facilities. They don’t even test the water for these things, much less mitigate the tons of pharmaceuticals dumped into the system.

I have seen it with my own eyes and was told to dump stuff in myself. I tell people this and they don’t even believe it, so I say check for yourself. How many of you even read the water reports or what the water is tested for.

We are letting the major corporation which include healthcare facilities abuse our environment, they get breaks on taxes when they should be paying more considering the huge ,obscene profits the drug companies make. The obscene profits made by healthcare facilities, who charge 40 bucks to a patient for a bottle of Maalox. We all need to speak up about this destruction of our water and environment. In the town I lived in there were days that the water was unfit to drink by the infants and the elderly as declared by the water company itself. Not in the media, just in the reports that nobody reads or seems to care about.

If you care about your children you will act on this and make complaints to the people who can do something about it. I was already poisoned by well water three times and have been poisoned for years without even knowing it.

Is it any wonder cancer is everywhere? Is there a church anywhere that does not have a list of people with cancer to pray for?

Cancer and pharmaceuticals are both big business aren’t they?

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/poisoned-water-of-the-usa

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Some lawmakers in Florida want to add a surcharge onto every bottle of water consumers buy.

Legislation filed in Tallahassee would tack a 6 percent surcharge onto every bottle of water purchased. The goal of the surcharge is to protect Florida’s water supply.

Most water purchased in Florida is pulled directly from local springs, which environmentalists said crushes the long-term health of the surrounding ecosystems.

Spring water is key to maintaining the levels of rivers, lakes and streams. When its extracted, Julie Wraithmell, a spokeswoman with Audubon of Florida, said everyone suffers.

The money raised by the surcharge would go directly toward restoring the springs areas, which Wraithmell said is only fair.

“There isn’t any kind of a severance fee or a charge per gallon extracted, so how do we mitigate for the impacts on our state from this really growing use?” she said.

Lawmakers have already tried to enact legislation for this purpose, by slapping water companies with user fees, but the proposed legislation went nowhere.

So environmentalists like Charles Pattison said the next best option is to charge the consumer.

“Those are people that, typically, a few pennies aren’t going to make any difference one way or the other,” said Pattison, who is with 1000 Friends of Florida. “I think most people would be willing to protect the environment through that type of relationship.”

http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2010/november/178051/Lawmakers-propose-surcharge-on-bottled-water

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I was completely infuriated with the comments from John Challinor of Nestlé Waters Canada (the Post, Nov. 17).

He has completely missed the point on why bottled water is so damaging. Let me educate him.

1. Most plastic is made from oil or natural gas. That oil is miles underground (sometimes under a mile of ocean, as well) so it has to be pumped to the surface where it is transported to a refinery and then transported further to a factory to be made into a virgin plastic. The virgin plastic is then transported again to a bottle-making facility.

How much greenhouse gas has been generated in all of the manufacturing and transporting so far?

Would Mr. Challinor like to disclose what percentage of virgin plastic is used in his bottles?

2. The bottle is made in the factory and then transported to the bottling facility. Unfortunately, due to the shape, you can’t flat pack the bottles — like Tetra Paks, for instance — so the bulk of the volume during this transportation is air.

3. The bottle is filled with water at the bottling facility and then transported to a distribution facility.

4. The bottle would then be transported to a city facility where it will be refrigerated until it is bought. How much energy goes into that refrigeration?

5. Now you buy it for $2. Ask yourself how much money Nestlé makes off of that price considering there is only one ingredient in bottled water. You’re paying for their huge marketing campaign to convince you to drink it.

6. You enjoy the water for around 15 minutes to a half-hour.

7. About 60-80 per cent of these bottles are then thrown in the garbage. Stats vary on how many plastic bottles are recycled, but even 10 per cent is too few given that they are unnecessary.

8. Now that plastic bottle heads to the dump. As much as 50 per cent of that wasted plastic will end up in the ocean, for example, in the North Pacific Gyre. That plastic in the ocean is sometimes mistaken by birds and fish as food and some is fed to their young.

If it does end up in the dump, it slowly leaches toxic chemicals into the ground that will eventually make it into the ground water or plants. The chemicals have to go somewhere, they can’t just go away.

None of this takes into account the paper in the label, the ink on the label, the plastic wrap around the bottle packs and all the associated manufacturing and distribution.

What about the caps? Making the bottle thinner or the cap smaller doesn’t get rid of the problem.

All of this just because it was easier than turning on a tap and fill up a glass or reusable bottle.

http://www.insidehalton.com/opinion/letters/article/907412–water-bottle-s-damage-starts-before-landfill

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WHENEVER RELATIVES come over from the UK, they are always wary of using the tap water and often comment that they were under the impression that Spanish tap water upsets their stomachs. The truth of the matter, as RTN found out this week, is that the water that comes from the Torrevieja Water Treatment Plant is purer than many bottled waters.

RTN took part in a tour of the plant alongside the Torrevieja International Cofradias in a visit organised by the Officer in Charge of Foreign Residents at the Torrevieja Town Hall, Graham Knight.

There are four types of waste water treated at the plant and around the Torrevieja municipality, there are 28 different pump stations serving the plant. The majority of water treated at the plant is household waste water and as explained by our able guide, Jesus, there are three different processes that the water goes through which makes it almost 100% pure. The state of art laboratory at the plant controls all the treatment processes which includes filtration, biological and chemical treatments.

SUMMER INFLUX

The plant has the capacity to deal with more than 60,000 cubic metres of waste water every day and that equates to the waste water of nearly half a million people.

Opened in 1982, the plant has since been extended twice. When it first opened, it processed just 4,000 cubic metres per day, which shows how the Torrevieja population has exploded during the last 28 years.

The plant also has the capacity to deal with the annual summer influx of holiday makers and during the winter months, parts of the plant are closed off completely as the need is not there. One hundred percent of the water treated at the plant is recycled and reused and pipework into the plant spans 321 kilometres from La Mata to Los Balcones.

PURE

The plant is computer controlled to manage the flow of waste water through the pumping stations and alarms are installed to notify the plant of any blockage or breakdown immediately so that a team of engineers can be despatched to the station to rectify the problem.

Only twenty six people work at the plant, yet it is efficiently run. Jesus commented: “Most treatment plants have only two stages of filtration process, but here in Torrevieja, we have three. This is when the water goes through a UV filtration process which makes the end result perfectly clean and pure. In fact it is as clean, if not cleaner than bottled water. It’s definitely good enough to drink straight from the tap.”

http://www.roundtownnews.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26306&Itemid=9

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Water is a vast, yet valuable commodity in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal.  As I trek along the numerous rivers and streams; step over black, narrow water hoses that lead from these natural waterways to outdoor community water stations for washing dishes, clothes, rice, and more; gaze at the irrigated rice fields; and admire the snow covered peaks; I wonder why porters must carry thousands of cases of bottled water up the rocky and dusty paths of the Himalayas.  In Kathmandu, I turn on the tap and puzzle over the few drops of water that fall from the faucet (and when it does come out of the tap, there may not be any hot water, but that’s another, yet related story).

I hear there is a water shortage in Kathmandu.  How can this be, I ask myself, thinking of all the water rushing down the mountains?  Looking at statistics on water, I see that 96% of urban residents have access to “improved” drinking water .  But I also read statistics showing the population in the Kathmandu Valley has doubled in the past five years.  Statistics also show that 89% of rural residents have access to “improved” drinking water , but I’ve witnessed many people hauling water several kilometers from their homes.

The infrastructure was inadequate in Kathmandu before the population doubled.  With so much new construction, the wells have been contaminated.  In rural Nepal, the infrastructure is substandard or non-existent.  The situation is so critical that there is a mandate in the current interim constitution and the proposed constitution to ensure clean water for all individuals in Nepal.  Even when the proposed constitution is ratified, it will still be years before this mandate is satisfied.

Meantime, the Nepalis have learned how to cope with the situation.  Their daily use of safe water in Kathmandu is limited by either insufficient supply from individual wells or from the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited  (KUKL).  Americans can, in turn, learn from this as well.  What, might you ask, can we learn?  We, who have water at our immediate disposal, don’t think about it being a limited resource.  As the biggest users, and one might say biggest wasters of water, we Americans should ask ourselves what changes we would make in our daily lives if we had a limited supply of water.

http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/component/content/article/13-top-column/11147-water-waste-not-want-not.html

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Re: Bottled water doesn’t compete with tap water, Letters, Nov 16.

I was surprised to read a personal response from one of Canada’s largest bottled water producers to the recent article highlighting the growing movement among Canadian citizens to stop buying bottled water.

I wanted to provide the following response:

As much as 25 per cent of bottled water is simply tap water sold back to us at 2,000 times the price (source: Polaris Institute).

In some municipalities as many as 80 per cent of plastic bottles are not recycled which leads to more than 10 billion plastic bottles ending up in our community landfills (source: Canadian Federation of Students).

According to recent estimates, the Canadian bottled water industry uses as much as 1.5 million barrels of oil a year for production and distribution of a product that for the vast majority of Canadians is not safer than the water that they can get from their tap (source: Polaris Institute).

In Nanaimo we have had access to safe clean drinking water for over 100 years and our tap water is tested daily (annual water quality reports are available at www.nanaimo.ca).

To date, almost 100 cities have moved to eliminate the sale of bottled water in their facilities, several colleges and universities have chosen to stop selling bottled water on their campuses and on April 26, Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter committed to stop using bottled water in provincial facilities.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/109283894.html

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There’s been a lot of debate about the decline of bottled water sales in the United States.

Environmentalists like to claim the public is more eco-conscious and has found other ways to hydrate without using single-serve disposable containers.

Water bottlers are quick to point to the sour economy and consumers cutting back on overall spending, not just on their particular product.

But we here at On The Cheap have another theory not likely to get much traction in the mainstream media. After several years of rapid growth, U.S. bottled water sales started falling in 2008, the same year the first On The Cheap column appeared in The Morning Call.

And what was one of our first-ever columns about? You guessed it. Bethlehem resident Don Mellinger suggested we bring an icy container to Musikfest and refill it at the water fountain rather than buy expensive bottles of water.

It’s all coming together now, isn’t it?

It’s likely to be another tough year for the bottled water industry after we share this tip from Lower Macungie resident Dawn Smith, a shrewd cheapster who likes to read the fine print.

“This is a good one,” Dawn said. “Want to save on the full price on bottled Nestle Pure Life water? Read the label.”

Dawn was nice enough to include a label in her note to us. It says: “Source: Public Water Supply, Allentown, PA.”

“So, just fill your empty Nestle water bottles from any Allentown faucet,” Dawn said.

That’s great news, Dawn. We drink Allentown tap water every day from a pint glass we got at the Allentown Brew Works. We fill it up at the office water fountain, which is between the men’s and women’s bathrooms. The only downside is the water pressure drops at the fountain when you hear a toilet flushing. But you get used to that after awhile and it still beats dropping a buck for a bottle of water from the office vending machine.

We did some number-crunching in the On The Cheap lab and figure Dawn’s tip could save you nearly $2,500 over 20 years.

http://articles.mcall.com/2010-11-06/business/mc-allentown-on-the-cheap-1107-20101106_1_bottled-water-nestle-waters-north-america-jane-lazgin

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The Stamp Student Union food court was packed with its usual crowd yesterday afternoon, but not everyone was lining up for McDonald’s or Taco Bell.

Instead, dozens of students guzzled cups of water at an SGA-hosted event that tasked students with determining the difference between bottled and tap water. The Student Government Association teamed up with MaryPIRG and Quench to organize Tap That, a campaign intended to educate students about the negative impacts of water bottles on everything from the environment to their wallets.

During the event, students drank out of clear plastic cups containing tap water from the student union’s filter stations and Aquafina bottled water, the university’s official bottled water, to see whether they could taste the difference. In addition, students were encouraged to sign a MaryPIRG petition to kick water bottles off the campus and could enter a raffle to win reusable water bottles provided by Dining Services.

Members of the three organizations used the opportunity to chat with students about the disadvantages of bottled water, noting its negative impact on ecosystems and students’ failure to recycle the empty bottles. Event organizers also targeted students’ pockets, informing them that tap water is substantially cheaper than bottled water and that about 90 percent of the bottled water price goes toward producing the bottle itself.

SGA Director of Sustainability Matthew Popkin said the taste test was an interactive way to inform students about the pitfalls of plastic bottled water and to encourage them to switch to toting reusable water bottles around the campus instead.

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/bottled-water-loses-to-tap-in-taste-test-1.1770525

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Plastic beverage containers — usually made of polyethylene terephthalate, an inexpensive, shatter-resistant and recyclable resin — are ubiquitous. And these days, evolving green initiatives, new laws and changing consumer attitudes are feeding an expanding loop that converts our trash into products you can drink from, wear or even walk on.

Last year’s statewide ban on plastic bottles entering landfills means many formerly discarded items now have a chance of being reincarnated in a hot new body instead of getting a one-way ticket to a stinky graveyard (it takes an estimated 700 years for a plastic bottle to even begin to decompose).

This is good, insofar as it keeps them (at least temporarily) from ending up down in the dump. But considering the amount of trucking and processing involved in producing a “recycled” container that’s, at best, still 90 percent virgin material, there are serious questions about the effectiveness of all this.

An in-depth analysis by Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (tinyurl.com/26u8tgz) concluded that “The benefit of recycling [plastic water bottles] relative to disposal is so small that it cannot be considered significant. In contrast, drinking tap water in the ‘typical’ reusable bottle reduces these impacts anywhere from 72 to 96 percent, even if the reusable bottle is washed frequently in a highly inefficient dishwasher.”

Other uses, such as carpet, may be somewhat more viable. But in any case, tossing that plastic bottle in the recycling bin marks the start of a long, complex, often circular journey that might wind up (though perhaps in altered form) right back in Buncombe County. Here’s a typical route a container recycled in Buncombe County might take.

http://www.mountainx.com/news/2010/111710follow-that-bottle

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