Are you cleaning your water?

[minthaka]

Hi, I just want to know what is the situation with the drinking water in your country. I've built-in recently a water cleaner based on reverted osmosis, because the level of arsenic in public "drinking" water was 22 times higher than the medically permitted value. Are you using some kind of cleaner too?

[oz]

A news article came out just yesterday here in the the USA where they are finding drugs (pharmaceuticals) in our drinking water. People consume various drugs, they go to the bathroom and expel any drugs that weren't fully absorbed by their bodies, the water is then treated at the wastewater plant, but the process doesn't remove the drugs, and the water is then recycled back into drinking water.

Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Cities rarely release water test results - USATODAY.com

[Dapper Dan]

We have a whole house filter. I've read where they are really rethinking fluoridated water and are considering taking it out...

[carlosponti]

no where else am i going to get my antidepressants for free!

[techieMoe]

Meh. Until I start tripping from the amount of random drug traces in the tap water, I'm not going to worry about it. Penn and Teller did a show on the things that you can find in tap water (and bottled water) and mentioned things like Arsenic, heavy metals, etc. They're very rarely anything more than trace amounts, well within our bodies' tolerances to break down or expel.

[carlosponti]

i was making a joke about it but a nice trip from drinking water would be interesting...until the government outlaws water lol


and really i do filter my water only because the calcium in our water makes it taste a little funny.

[techieMoe]

and really i do filter my water only because the calcium in our water makes it taste a little funny.

When I was in college (in the Texas Hill Country) the main thing in the water was limestone. Left lots of deposits on faucets, showerheads, you name it. Hard to get up a lather as well so you ended up paying twice as much on soap.

In Houston it's mostly chlorine. Run some water from a tap and you can smell it. Hasn't killed me yet though.

[carlosponti]

yeah our faucets are always getting clogged. shower heads spray all catywhompis. its time to break out the CLR when you get one stream of water is hitting you and the rest is spraying the rest of the shower.

[smolloy]

Yeah, I read that /. article on the drugs in our drinking water, but I find it hard to get excited about. A typical dose of paracetamol/acetaminophen is 1 gram. They measured the prevalence of these drugs at ~1 part in a billion to 1 part in a trillion.

If they mean that ratio by weight (and not volume), then I'd have to consume 1 million -> 1 billion litres of water (~500 million pints) to get one dose.

Not really enough to worry about, is it?

[Jonathan183]

Hi, I just want to know what is the situation with the drinking water in your country. I've built-in recently a water cleaner based on reverted osmosis, because the level of arsenic in public "drinking" water was 22 times higher than the medically permitted value. Are you using some kind of cleaner too?

Water quality not too bad in the UK. I'd be careful about purified water ... drinking purified water only is not likely to be good for you either. Purified water will strip minerals out of pipework ... soon creates holes in some pipework for example, so is not likely to be that good for you (stripping minerals from everything it comes into contact with).
Ed:22 times the limit does sound a bit high ... but communities do build up resistance/tolerance to high levels.