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?
What do you do about it? Find the best drinking water filter that money can buy and use it.

And believe it or not, the best drinking water filter isn’t the most expensive water filter either.

There’s some $150 million to be spent in Singapore on developing a new water research center. The intention is to research clean pure drinking water technologies.

It’s a joint project between the National University of Singapore and GE Water and it’s to explore new technologies for producing large quantities of clean water from such technologies as desalination and the use of alternative energy sources like solar to provide energy to water provision.

New desalination methods like reverse osmosis and electrodialysis.

The American Water Works Association has held a water competition to find the best tasting water, and it’s been won by Macon, who have just squeezed out Silverdale.

There were 18 finalists from the US, Canada and Puerto Rico.

However the result was extremely close. There was in fact a tie for first place between Macon water and Silverdale water, and the judges had to hold a taste off to determine the final winner. Macon came up trumps eventually.

It was close though. In a blind tasting with 3  judges 2 picked Macon water and one picked Silverdale.

The competition was held during the annual conference of the Association held in San Diego.

The Macon water comes from the Ocmulgee River and is drunk by around 54000 customers. They must be feeling good that their water is the tastiest water in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico.

We do wonder though what would happen if the competition were for the cleanest water. We bet they don’t hold that competition any time soon.Macon, your water tastes good.

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?We don’t, and we think it’s likely the people of India don’t either.

Read more about that story about filtering bacteria and cysts from water in India here.

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 more about it here.

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.