Health : Are You Drinking Contaminated Tap Water?

If you are concerned about contaminated tap water, you are certainly not
alone. It is an issue that everyone should be concerned about.Are you
drinking contaminated water?

There are a couple of ways to found what types of contaminants are
present in your supply and in your home. If you are serviced by a public
treatment facility in the US, they are required to publish a quality
report, sometimes referred to as a Customer Confidence Report, on an
annual basis. The reports do not always inspire confidence.

If you have a private well or have older pipes, it is sometimes a good
idea to have a sample tested. In homes with older pipes, there are
sometimes traces of lead that would not show up on the quality report,
because they are not present at the facility.

*Many Kinds of Contaminants*

There are hundreds of different contaminants that could be present in a
private well. Testing for all of them is expensive. Sometimes, you can
get information from your local government offices concerning which
contaminants to test for. That can reduce the cost of testing.

A simple litmus paper test will reveal one type of contaminated tap
water. If chlorine is present, the paper will change colors. The test
strips are very inexpensive, used primarily for testing the amount of
chlorine in pools. They are available at any hardware store. So, if you
are curious, you could buy some.

There are some contaminants that can only be tested for by an
independent laboratory. Facilities do not test for them on a regular
basis, if at all. Cysts are one example.

*Waterborne Illnesses*

Cryptosporidium and giardia cysts are a cause of waterborne illnesses,
with symptoms similar to those of any kind of intestinal virus;
vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, etc. Treatment facilities do not
normally test for cryptosporidium contaminated tap water, unless they
suspect there is a problem.

Independent laboratories can test a sample, but this is one type of
contamination that can change greatly, in a very short period of time.
There might be no cysts today, but thousands tomorrow. They are
basically the egg-form of parasites.

*Parasites*

When the parasites release the cysts, they float around until they find
a host. They are very hardy, immune to chemicals such as chlorine. The
only practical protection from them is a sub-micron filtration system.
Many of the better home purifiers include this step.

*Perchlorate*

Facilities never test for perchlorate contaminated tap water, unless
they are required to do so. Independent testing has found high levels of
the chemical in hundreds of different supplies around the US.

It takes a good dual stage home purification system to effectively
remove perchlorate. The risk of exposure varies, depending on a person's
age. But, it can increase a person's risk of cancer, as can many of the
other chemicals found in publicly treated supplies.

*What Should You Do?*

It is safe to assume that there is some degree of contaminants present
in all of the homes in the US and probably throughout the world. Buying
a good home purifier is actually less expensive than testing for
contaminated tap water. The logical step is to buy one.

And now please visit the CleanWaterPure website listed below for updated
information on how to remove contaminated water from your home.