Water, water everywhere (in WA anyway), but is there a drop that's safe to drink? Everywhere you turn it seems like there is a news story about a new way that your water might try to kill you. Dioxins, Bisphenol A, and a wide array of pharmaceuticals have recently entered a field of possible dangers that already included such a wide variety of old standbys. It's enough to make a sane person want to run screaming from the tap/Britta pitcher/Nalgene/BPA-and-led-free hip-n-cool metal drinking canister.
A big part of this dilemma is that I'm just not sure who to believe. I do not have a reliable source for clear and trustworthy water safety information. In fact, when you go looking for this kind info on the internet, you end up buried under such a huge pile of often conflicting information that you feel worse off than before. Should we or should we not be drinking out of plastic bottles? If we do drink out of plastic, are the hard Nalgene-type plastics better or worse for us? Will we grow weird bacteria by re-using either of these types of bottles? Will we drink dangerous levels of pharmaceuticals if we drink tap water? Should we care at all about any of this, or is it all a bunch of hype?
Okay science people, this is your chance to be the expert. Should the average person:
A. Hide under the bed until death by thirst?
B. Drink only filtered or bottled water from glass or metal containers?
C. Trust that the tap water is safe and use it in our Nalgenes?
D. Ignore the whole business and do whatever seems easiest?
1 comment:
I don't know that I qualify as a science-person, but I go for whatever helps me actually drink a significant amount of water in a day while avoiding non-reusable bottles or cups as much as possible so I don't kill the planet. In my case that's filtered (at work) or unfiltered (at home) water out of a plastic Nalgene. I guess I just assume that the bad things that might happen to me from the chemicals in the water or in the bottle are still better than the ramifications of drinking very little water at all. Also C says we have better water here because we get it straight from the source as opposed to people in London who get it after it's been through 5 people. And she's a science-person.
T
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