Drink from the Sink (Without the Worry)

March 2022

By Clare Broderick, Founder of Greener Cleaner LIVING, LLC

 

March 22nd is World Water Day. And since none of us can live without clean, safe water, it’s worth a few minutes to consider how fundamental a right this is.

World Water Day is an international observance spearheaded by the United Nations and provides an opportunity to focus on the importance of water, be inspired to tell others, and take action to make a difference. Each year, UN-Water — the entity that coordinates the UN’s work on water and sanitation — leads the charge. This year’s theme is “groundwater,” drawing attention to the hidden water resource that has always been critically important but not fully recognized. Learn more about the World Water Day 2022 campaign here.

When clean water is made available, the entire community benefits. When water quality and availability are compromised, the physical, economic and mental health of the entire community is at great risk; whatever the country, wherever the region.

Water sources everywhere are becoming more and more at risk of pollution from contaminated run-off from development density, industry, roadways, agriculture, and even our own lawns. Groundwater is crucially important to our drinkable water supply and is intrinsic to safe sanitation, agriculture, industry, ecosystems, and climate change adaptation.

Is Your Drinking Water Safe?

As per Clean Water Action, New Jersey has been a leader in researching and documenting threats to drinking water. Unfortunately, there are still hundreds of unregulated chemicals found in our tap water with safe standards having been created for less than 100 of these. This is a problem faced by our entire nation. There are over 80,000 chemicals produced around the world with 10,000 new ones being created every year. Yet, virtually no testing is being done before incorporating these chemicals into consumer products or introducing them into the environment.

To answer the question, let’s turn to Aly Cohen, MD, FACR, the co-author of Non-Toxic, a Guide to Living Healthy in a Chemical World and Founder/Medical Director of The Smart Human. Dr. Cohen is a board-certified rheumatologist and integrative medicine physician, as well as an environmental health specialist. Her medical practice is located in Princeton, NJ. She focuses on the western medical and integrative approaches to a variety of health conditions in both adults and children, including rheumatologic disorders, arthritis, chronic pain, immune system dysfunction, environmental health, and nutrition consultation.

In this video, Dr. Aly Cohen discusses how to make our drinking water safer. Since so many water contaminants are not removed from water treatment cleaning processes, Dr. Cohen recommends that we always filter our water at the point of use, which is our faucet. She also discusses several other clean water techniques. Here is a transcript:

Every night in the evening news, there’s yet another story about another contamination in our drinking water across the country somewhere. Under the 1976 Safe Drinking Water Act, only 91 contaminants are mandated to be regulated. That means that the 87,000 chemicals that are on the market and floating in our air and landing in our surface water bodies that become our drinking water, could certainly have many contaminants that we want to avoid.

Sometimes water can travel 50 miles from a treatment plant and have breaks along the way, so we really don’t know what happens after water leaves a water treatment plant. There are fertilizers and pesticides which are very pervasive in our country and near our water bodies. There are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which are products and chemicals that come from cleaning materials and cleaning products, like Triclosan, which is an antimicrobial.

There are also chemicals from fracking. There are metals that come from old pipes, lead pipes from broken infrastructure. Then there are also persistent organic chemicals like C8 or the Scotch Guard materials that end up getting into our water system and in our environment and are very difficult to break down for many years.

My recommendation is to always filter your clean drinking water at the tap, which is your point of use. There are simple carbon filters that can be used in a pitcher or in a refrigerator filter as well as attached to the sink faucet. Then there are more complicated filters like reverse osmotic water filters and distillers.

Choosing the right filter is very important. The best resource is really Environmental Working Groups’ guide to choosing a filter; ewg.org. You can also carry your safe drinking water in a glass bottle instead of plastic. You can also use stainless steel, but make sure that you drink out of the stainless steel portion and not hot plastic, because again, avoiding plastic is key when drinking safe water and one should avoid plastic drinking bottles as well.

Remember, when it comes to our environment and our health, you too can be The Smart Human. ~ Dr. Aly Cohen, Founder, The Smart Human

Be mindful about how you use the precious water you have access to today. 

 


 

Clare Broderick is the Director of Partnership Development at the WEforum Group and is the founder of Greener Cleaner LIVING, LLC, a sustainable home and lifestyle consultancy.

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