Turn on the tap and there it is — water for all our needs. Unfortunately, many Americans take the presence of water in their lives for granted. Think about this — many other countries in the world have no access to safe, pure, clean, and healthy drinking water.
We’re pretty lucky in the U.S. to awake every morning and turn on the kitchen tap to make tea or coffee. We don’t think twice about where the water came from, and we are confident that it is safe to drink, not contaminated, and won’t do us any harm. What if you didn’t have that luxury or certainty?
If you had to drink contaminated water from places you didn’t know existed, would you drink it? Chances are the answer is no. The fact that you do have decent drinking water is largely due to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its laws. Even with those laws in place, you need to remember that all water contains trace elements of various kinds.
This is the downfall of the bottled water industry. Sure the water is purified by some method (and there are a lot of them), but you should know that does not remove many of the contaminants.
You may find it interesting to know there’s a regulation – the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation – that is part of the Safe Drinking Water Act that embodies laws ensuring you have safe drinking water. This regulation actually has some teeth to it as well, as it’s not just an “on paper” regulation. Anyone who ignores these regulations is faced with stiff fines and jail time.
The unbelievable part is that the second section of the Safe Drinking Water Act is NOT enforceable. So that means as long as the water looks good, it doesn’t matter how it tastes or smells. This isn’t to say there aren’t recommendations about quality, or that most people don’t take it as seriously as the first part, BUT, you have to ask yourself why it’s not enforceable. This is something, perhaps, to address with your local state representative.
Larry Wardell is with H2olabs.com, a provider of water distillers and water distillation systems. To learn more about Water distillers, water distillation systems and water purification systems, visit H2olabs.com.
