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 Poor water quality can contribute to poor indoor air quality. Health concerns with city water focus on chlorine, fluoride, trace chemicals, heavy metals and micro-organisms.
- Of the over 2,000 contaminants found in potable water, Health Canada and the EPA has established standards for only 82 of them.
- Municipal water treatment plants are primarily set up for disinfection rather than water purification.
The problems associated with polluted water is not only concerned with drinking. Polluted water can also enter your body through:
- Bath - when an adult takes a 15 minute bath toxins are absorbed through the skin. For children the absorption rate is much faster.
- Shower - showering at normal temperatures can cause chloroform to escape into the air where it is breathed into the lungs.
- Brushing Teeth - same as drinking non-filtered water.
- Cooking - same as drinking non-filtered water.
One of the biggest problems with municipal water is that testing is often done only at the source or treatment plant. From there the water will travel through hundreds of kilometers of underground pipes that may contain asbestos, lead, as well as biological contaminants. The chlorine used to treat the water may react with naturally occurring organic compounds creating potentially harmful organ chlorides and trihaliomethanes. Increasingly, industrial and hazardous wastes are not filtered out of the municipal water supply.
Every home should have a whole house water filter to remove chlorine, iron, rust, sediment, chemicals, and particulate. Additional water filters are needed for drinking water such as reverse osmosis or distillation to further remove lead, trace chemicals and extra fine particles. |
