Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’
Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’
Water of about 26 million is contaminated as new data offers the most robust look into exactly which communities are polluted
Most of these comments are people recommending bottled water or various filtration methods, both of which could work in varying degrees. Let’s not miss the point that people who will be most impacted are low income and might struggle to pay their tap water bill. Bottled water and filters are a stretch for those folks. The true fix is demanding more of our politicians to hold polluters accountable and push for better treatment of the tap water.
Aren't people paying taxes?
No idea why people would rather spend more money than to hold the government accountable to fix the services they pay for.
Conservative "government is the problem" brain rot is extremely pervasive.
I live in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina and we are dealing with this. Chemors, the maker of Teflon, has been dumping PFAS in our water.
My town recently built a reverse osmosis water treatment plant. It is the only way to get it out of the water. Traditional water filters don’t work.
Did they at least get Chemors to stop dumping the shit too??
Bottled water is the fucking problem. Don't whinge about anything climate based if you recommend plastic. The disconnect on solving contaminated water with plastic water bottles s mind boggling.
If you don't have a water source very close plastic beats glass very fast.
Glass is so much heavier that the additional fuel to transport it over 100km offsets whatever emissions plastic creates.
This is the classic "no good option" dilemma depending where you live.
In many parts of Europe you can buy the locally sourced water from glass bottles - but it doesn't make much sense buying glass bottles for climate change reasons otherwise
Everyone for years - "Why do you waste money on bottled water" (the big 5 gallon kind on a dispenser)
Me - Uh, have you ever had tap water?Isn't most bottled water just tap water packaged in landfill fodder?
Yeah, no, you're just paying to drink tap water and making a shitty company like Nestle rich in the process in addition to creating more waste.
Do yourself a favor and get a nice stainless steel or glass waterbottle along with a good filter or better yet, purifier. They won't get rid of everything but they reduce a lot of stuff you don't want to drink (like lead) and taste better than tap water.
What material are those bottles made out of by the way?
I'm a fan of under sink filters. Dead simple to install and replace the filter. I never trusted those dispensers because many of them are just local tap water.
It’s spring water from sparkletts. I made sure not to get just filtered tap water. Unless they are flat out lying about what is in the bottles (not saying it’s even a far stretch, but I can’t do any more due diligence)
Exactly. One thing I’ve learned from areas with unsafe drinking water is the beauty of stores dedicated to providing purified water (delivery an added bonus). Going back to the US and drinking “safe” tap water has always been pretty gross after that, even in houses with some filtration systems.
A home-based RO system would be nice, but I’ve always wondered if the ones people usually get (<$500) can compete with the quality of the commercial suppliers/stores that you typically see in other countries. Likewise for the small fill stations common on the outside of US grocery stores. Are all these systems truly of similar quality? I have a hard time trusting those tiny little under-sink setups and the unattended outdoor water fills.
I lived the majority of ky adult life with a roommate who kept a 100 gallon salt water coral aquarium for almost a decade. One of the most expensive, difficult, time demanding hobbies I've ever seen. He couldn't afford to replace the 20 or so gallon that needed to be replaced every couple weeks to keep the salinity and other chemical levels stable, so we had one of those under the sink RO filters. It always tasted great unless he forgot to change the filters. I worked at a Starbucks for quite a while and they basically just have a larger version of that which is changed out whenever the sensors ping their maintenance hq. Water there tasted the same.
Plastic bottled water to me is one of the ultimate fuck yous to the planet's ecosystem that most people could easily stop today. It's telling that the consumable plastic market is primarily owned by the oil companies, hell it's one of the many products that can be developed from the refinery process. Short answer is get a metal thermos or canteen and refill it with RO or some other filtered water, get one of those Brita pitchers if you can't or won't install an RO, and cut back on your plastic containers as much as you feasibly can.
After having one of those undersink systems, I can say they work, the water is very pure coming out, only issue being that it's basically pure water - no minerals, no anything -
some issues there with actual hydration since drinking pure water can kill you - look up hyponatremia.edit: might not be the case - see reply
The principle is the same as for the more expensive systems, what you don't get is
- potentially an UV inline lamp to sanitize stuff
- a pump to increase the pressure and increase efficiency/speed
- maybe a storage tank (some cheaper models have like a 1-2 gallon storage tank)
- not sure about this one but more expensive membranes might have a better removal rating - mine said 95% I think
If you have around 45 psi of water pressure on your tap, it's good enough, but don't expect to be bathing in the stuff, it takes quite a long time to get usable quantities and I think you get 1L RO water to 4-5 L 'waste' water. Higher pressure - higher efficiency and speed but check the pressures the membrane is rated for. Also if your water is chlorinated you need some activated charcoal pre-filters because chlorine harms the membrane.
Maintenance should also be done regularly to change prefilters once every 3 months and the membrane once every 9-12 months. And it can get slightly messy on cheaper models.
As long as the companies providing the water a) make more than enough profits and b) are not held accountable, why should they do anything about it?