Justin and I went to Sooper Wal-Mart yesterday evening to get stocked for the coming week. One thing we needed was to refill our five-gallon bottled water jugs. I usually put Justin in charge of that while I go around and acquire other groceries. That place was a madhouse. 15-20 minute lines worse than any I've seen since Xmas, and it wasn't for a lack of employees.
I don't trust the tap water around here. You just never know what kind of stuff is in there that doesn't get filtered out, especially gasoline additives (MTBE's), nasty Chlorine related complex organics (THM's), lead and bacteria like cryptosporidium. And even if the stuff leaves the plant fairly clean, the pipes it travels through make me stop and think. The bottled water also tastes a little better, especially in the Fall and Spring when the reservoirs here begin to "turn" (convection which apparently promotes the growth of nasties or digs them up from the bottom or something).
Of course, it's not that drinking bottled water will make us safe from anything in the tap water. If you eat much fish, a lot of the nasty stuff gets concentrated there. And from what little I've learned, taking a hot shower is a lot worse than drinking the water, because your pores open up and a lot of the water just goes directly into your skin and so forth. They sell filtration systems that go on the main pipe leading into your house, but I've never priced them. It's so much trouble, and I guess I'm just not that paranoid yet.
Of course, one possible drawback of using bottled water is that we're missing out on flouridated water, but some people think that sticking flouride in water is a very bad thing. I don't know enough about it to say one way or another, but I imagine if the kids brush twice a day with a good toothpaste (here's an argument that Colgate Total is the hands-down best), they should be fine.
Posted by Observer at March 3, 2003 05:17 PMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
Heh, we don't even let the dogs drink tap water.
Posted by: Felicity on March 3, 2003 05:32 PMYeah it is not like flouride is a poison or anything.. Oh wait yes it is....
Posted by: Chuck on March 4, 2003 06:13 AMSure flouride is a poison. Water is a solvent, too.
I'm glad I trust my municipal water supply, at least mostly. All the pipes in my house were replaced 11 years ago, so I'm not worried about lead, and we don't have petrochemicals oozing out of the ground like Texas does.
My problem with jugged water is you don't know what's leeching out of those plastic jugs, I hate the smell of plastic jugs, and how do you keep them clean?
Posted by: Humbaba on March 4, 2003 09:52 AMAt some places where you can get your water refilled, they have a mild cleaner they will spray in there and then rinse out for you. They don't do that at Sooper Wal-Mart, though. I'm not really worried about the pipes in my house (although maybe I should be ... I read that for the first five years after you put in new pipes, lead levels are elevated in your water but not unsafe) but rather the rusty old pipes under our city streets carrying water around.
Posted by: Observer on March 4, 2003 11:09 AMRust doesn't bother me, my wife needs more iron anyway.
One of my friends does the water quality testing for the water district. He drinks the tap water here.
Posted by: Humbaba on March 4, 2003 12:18 PMyer on city water, right?
You could take it to an environmental chem lab and ask for bacterial counts... you can also have it tested for a variety of things you might be concerned about. (I'd be really suprised to see MTBE in the water supply of a municipality, incidentally. Stranger things have happened though...) The chlorine byproducts might be worth checking out tho.
Posted by: justmary on March 5, 2003 02:44 AM