From the Corner
-by Kelly Gunter
Water and It's Effects
Water is essential not only for the beginnings of life (ie. the primordial sea from whence we came), but also for the continuation of life. Without the unique trait of water becoming most dense, not at it's freezing point, but a couple degrees above, the life on this planet would have been severely limited. All forms of life on this planet are not only carbon based, but water based as well ("Ugly bags of mostly water...".
Okay the spiel is over, you all know it is important, now I'm going to tell you just what is in that life giving water that is now slowly turning towards life taking water. According to a study done by the EPA, 77 billion pounds of hazardous waste are generated each year in the US alone, ninety percent of this material will be and has been improperly disposed of. That material that has not been directly dumped into water will eventually leach into it. This amount of material is equivalent to 19,192 pounds of hazardous waste per square mile of the entire US, over land and water, including every state of the union. There are at least 181,000 man made lagoons in industrial and municipal locations around the country, many of which are placed within a mile of other water supplies or wells, seventy five percent of which remain unlined. Around forty trillion pounds of waste, industrial and postconsumer, make their way into the sea each year. And every year, over one hundred billion gallons of liquid hazardous waste become absorbed by the already diminishing ground water supplies. |
As for the water we expose ourselves to every day, the water that has first been run through treatment plants for our own protection, the hazard seems to be about the same. According to research conducted at Ralph Nader's Center for Study of Responsive Law, drinking water in the US contains more than 2100 toxic chemicals. Some of these contaminants are known to cause cancer or inflict other types of damage to internal organs such as the kidneys, liver, brain, and the cardiovascular system. Further studies produced by the EPA in 1988 came to the conclusion that many of the ingredients added to the water, such as chlorine and fluoride, to help reduce the growth of harmful bacteria are actually causes of certain types of cancers as well. When chlorine is mixed with any type of decaying vegetation or algae, toxic organic materials can be formed which have been linked to cancer, high blood pressure, and anemia. This mixture can produce chloroform and bromo-dichloromethane.
People become exposed to pollutants, not primarily via digestion of said water, but mainly as it becomes absorbed through the skin. One source cited that a fifty pound child can absorb up to ten times the amount of contamination by swimming in a pool for one hour that that same child would incur from drinking a quart of liquid. Another common method of contamination come from vapors emanate from streams of running water. Some common symptoms of water contamination can include headache, rash, or fatigue. However more serious contamination can become evident usually years after the fact by higher cancer rates, birth defects, growth abnormalities, infertility, and nerve and organ damage. |
Because of water and other similar contaminations we receive on a daily basis, the human body is steadily rising in toxicity. Several studies I have become privy to during senior seminar have show a disturbing trend. Much of the breast milk being fed to infants today has a higher toxicity than milk drawn from cows imbibed with bovine growth hormone. The male sperm count is now half of what it was in the early nineteen hundreds and there is a greater propensity for those sperm that do exist to be malformed. Probably most disturbing is the fact that upon the time of death the human body has become so saturated with toxins it can be considered hazardous waste material.
If you wish to curb the tide of contaminates you are taking into your system, you are provided with some alternatives, although none of these can remove all hazards. There are many different types of water purification equipment that can be sold. It might be a good idea to do a little research before buying a water purification system to be sure you are getting what you desire. If you can not manage much and would still prefer to drink cleaner water, don't buy pure spring water from a plastic bottle; the plastic will contaminate the water with plastic vapor, as can be expected from all plastic containers, and which can be quite harmful.
My sources for this information came from: Nontoxic, Natural, and Earthwise by Debra Lynn Dadd and Alternative Energy Sourcebook edited and published by John Schaeffer (this is mostly a compilation of advertisements for earthwise products)
I suggest you look around, there are many good source books to peruse through for the information you need.
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