Water purification in India is a serious issue. Contaminated water there can kill.

We never drink unpurified, or unfiltered water. After all as we have said over and over there is nasty contaminants in our water, and wo don’t want to be drinking them.

However in India those contaminants can kill. Bacteria and cysts can be found in the ground water, paricularly when there are events that stress the water supply like monsoons. You don’t want to be drinking water contaminated with bacteria or cysts, they could make you sick. Really sick.

But for the people, and particularly the poor people, of India this is a real issue. They normally don’t have access to modern water filtration technology that filters out these contaminants, and the results can be deadly.

No more though for the people of Punjab. A new water filter has been launched there that is affordable for the locals to buy. It filters out nasties like bacteria and cysts, and so is a huge improvement for the local people and their health.

We bet they sell like hot cakes, after all, who wants to drink bacteria or cysts? Read the rest of this entry

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Rather than calling for a reduction in flouridation, today there are calls for more!

You may have heard of the chaos in the UK government, resignations galore and so on. Well they have a new Health Secretary there called Andy Burnham, appointed by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

And Andy Burnham, as the new Health Secretary, is calling for more flouridation of the UKs drinking water.

Now we have recently featured some of the studies and the calls for LESS flouridation in our water,  so what gives in the UK so that in June of 09 they want MORE flouride in the water.

Well it just happens that Mr Burnham is a recent Vice President of the British Flouridation Society.

You’d think that someone with his power and influence would do what is best for the public health, however despite evidence to the contrary he’s trying to add more contaminants to the drinking water rather than remove them.

What do you think will happen to sales of water filters in the UK? I suspect they’ll go up.

After all, apart from  filtering out the flouride, have you ever tasted London water? Yuk. Read the rest of this entry

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Did you realize how many eminent scientists oppose flouridation of water?

Everyone assumes that because we have flouride in our water it must be good. After all don’t all those dentists keep telling us that if there’s flouride in our water our teeth are protected from cavities?

Not everyone, though, agrees that flouride in water is a good idea, or safe.

In 2006 there was a report issued by a panel appointed by the National Research Council of the National Academies. That report found that around 1 in 3 children are negatively affected by excess flouride, and that this negative affect is found in both the health of their teeth, and also more general health complaints.

The report also suggested that the EPAs drinking water standard for flouride (4 ppm) should be lowered.

The panel included some very eminent scientists, including a nobel prize laureate in medicine and a previous EPA scientist, and a total of around 2000 scientists.

Here’s a short video about it.

However despite that report we still have flouride in our water.

Further Health Canada has also suggested lowering the incidence of flouride in the water. Other recommendations include that infant formula should not be mixed with flouridated water to protect the health of babies.

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Does the chlorine put in our water expose us to the risk of cancer?

Interesting question and one which, unfortunately, there is no one authoritative answer. Chlorine in drinking water is the subject of much debate.

Because like all these things it’s pretty hard to prove one way or the other. But it seems that there is a definite link between drinking chlorinated water and getting cancer, and there are studies suggesting that drinking chlorinated water can indeed cause cancer. It seems the risks of chlorine in our water are there.

How do we know? Well take this quote from the Medical College of Wisconsin, Senior Research Team.

“We are quite convinced, based on this study, that there is an association between cancer and chlorinated water.”

Now that’s a little scary isn’t it? They seem quite convinced that there is a clear link between chlorine in our drinking water and cancer.

How about this. “The Australian”, an Australian newspaper, reported on January 20th 2007 that “swimming or showering in or drinking chlorinated water may all be linked with an increased risk of bladder cancer” based on a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology by Spanish researchers.

And even back in the 1960s there was a book published by a doctor linking chlorine in water to the development of atheroschlerosis. Atheroschlerosis is a major disease leading to heart attacks and death.

Here’s a quote from the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality: “Cancer risk among people using chlorinated water is as much as 93% higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine.”

You’d be surprised at how much chlorine there can be in your drinking water. It is quite possible to test your chlorine levels, there is a simple test kit that you can buy commercially, it’s not expensive. You’d be surprised to know that often the chlorine levels in your tap  water are higher than that of swimming pool water. That’s why it tastes so bad.

The health risks of chlorine aren’t necessarily from the chlorine itself. The problems come from the chemicals formed as a byproduct of having the chlorine in the water.  Chlorine in water mixes with other substances to form chemicals called trihalomethanes and it is suspected that it is the action of these trihalomethanes that does damage to our body, damaging cells and initiating cancer.

So it seems that there are clear links between having chlorine in our drinking water and disease. Though not fully proven these links are strong enough to convince us, at least, that we don’t want to be drinking chlorine.

How? The worlds best water filters remove chlorine from drinking water. When you consider the risk of cancer, the cost of removing chlorine from our water is tiny indeed. It is even possible to get high quality filters to enable whole house water filtering so that you can remove chlorine from you shower water and all other water you consume in the house.

There’s no doubt that we  are all taking a risk drinking chorinated water. It’s simple to remove, and filtering chlorine out of your water may well be the best thing you could ever do for your health. Read the rest of this entry

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What is there in our water? How about drugs? Here’s a story to get you thinking.

We’ve talked about some of the things that you find in our water. Heavy metals, chlorine, lead, pesticides, herbicides, and thousands of other chemicals. It’s enough to scare you.

In fact that’s the idea, we’re here to point these sorts of things out to you if you weren’t already aware of the sorts of toxins that may be in your water, and to suggest strongly that you may want to consider using a high quality water filter.

Here’s some more scary news. It drugs in water. Now this story doesn’t relate to drinking water in the US. However it shows you some of the potential problems you can find with your drinking water.

It’s a story about drugs in drinking water in India.

A river in India, (the Iska Vagu) is so contaminated with drugs that it smells. In one day there was enough of a particular antibiotic released into the river to treat 90000 people.

Tests showed 21 different pharmaceuticals in the water, including drugs to treat hypertension, liver diseases, heart disease, depression, ulcers and lots more.

And of course anyone who drinks that water, like the locals who use it for drinking water, are drinking this cocktail of drugs in their contaminated water supply. The drugs come from a Pharmaceutical factory upstream.

Imagine what drinking contaminated water like that would do to you?

Think it can’t happen in the US? Think we’re drinking clean water here, that this sort of thing only happens in India? Get real.

You’ll read in the full story that last year Associated Press found trace levels of drugs in the drinking water of up to 46 million Americans. Trace levels aren’t nearly as high as what was found in the Indian river, but it’s still there, and it’s still scary.

And in 1999 a high school student from West Virginia did a school science project on drugs in rivers. She took water samples over 10 weeks along the Ohio River and had them tested for 3 common antibiotics, penicillin, tetracycline and vancomycin. The tests found them in all samples, and she then did the same with tap water. Same result. Antibiotics are in the water that came out of the tap.

You simply must protect the health of you and your family by drinking clean uncontaminated water that has been filtered through the worlds best drinking water filter.

There is simply no other way to ensure that you’re drinking clean water. And if you think drinking bottled water is better then read our story about bottled water.

Read the rest of this entry

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There’s lead in our drinking water.

Lead is just one of the estimated thousands of toxic chemicals that can be found in our drinking water. The Ralph Nader Research Institute, after a prolonged study, has estimated that up to 2100 toxic chemicals, some known to cause cancer, can be in our municipal drinking water supplies.

Did you know that the rate of cancer in our society has risen from 1 in 50 in the early 1900s to 1 in 3 today?

Do you think that toxic chemicals, including lead, in our drinking water could have anything to do with it?

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s a short video about lead in kids drinking water.

And if the video scares you then check out the worlds best water filters.

Scary isn’t it? Read the rest of this entry

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