E4 What about water filters?
Some people buy filters to further process their tap water before drinking it. Some refrigerators include water filters in door units. Depending on the manufacturer and design, these filters remove contaminants that may — or may not — be found in tap water.
AVERAGE COST: Because there is tremendous variety in filters, from faucet attachments to complete home treatment systems, no single range of costs can be provided. The cost of countertop filters often ranges from 10 to 75 cents per gallon. Sophisticated home purification systems can be far more costly, ranging from hundreds of dollars per unit into the thousands.
ADVANTAGES: Filters can improve the taste of tap water and remove contaminants that may be
present. Most countertop filters remove chlorine and, if it’s present, lead. Some remove other contaminants. Before purchasing filters, consumers should read product guidelines carefully and find out whether particular contaminants are in their tap water.
DISADVANTAGES: Filter users rarely know whether contaminants are actually present in their tap water or whether filters will do what they are advertised as doing: Many models make undocumented or exaggerated claims. Filters must be changed regularly to prevent recontamination of water. They have a high
cost per gallon compared with properly treated tap water but are cheaper than using bottled water.
CONSUMPTION: No comprehensive information is available on how many people use home water filters.
— Peter H. Gleick
KLMNO WHAT’S INSIDE OUR WATER
We mustn’t let our excellent water system dribble away
Better enforcement and smart investment can keep its quality high
by Peter H. Gleick
Panel finds possible lead risk in some D.C. children’s water
How safe is the tap water in the
District? In 2004, there was a ma- jor scare when lead levels spiked, but the Centers for Disease Con- trol and Prevention reassured residents that its tests found the water safe to drink. End of story? Not quite. Last month a congressional subcommittee looking into the CDC’s actions reported that the agency had knowingly used faulty data in 2004. The report by a House science and technology subcommittee also concluded that the CDC has not publicized more-thorough internal research from 2007 showing that lead was still an issue — with elevated lev- els showing up in children’s blood
— and that even today it contin- ues to endanger thousands. District water authorities say the 2004 concerns are long gone: They made a chemical change in the city’s tap water to reduce lead leaching, and the drinking water has been fine since 2006. But the subcommittee said that children living in 9,100 residences where only partial replacement of lead pipes has occurred were still po- tentially at risk. High levels of lead in drinking
water can harm children and ba- bies in utero whose mothers are drinking the water; these health effects include brain damage and developmental delays.
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In 1908, Jersey City, N.J., be- came the first city in the United States to chlorinate its munici- pal tap water. Other munici- palities rapidly followed suit with water filtration and purifi- cation systems, and the United States witnessed what were ar- guably the most dramatic and rapid improvements in public health ever achieved. Over the next couple of decades, cholera and dysentery effectively dis- appeared. Health experts esti- mate that half of the entire de- cline in urban death rates and three-quarters of the drop in in- fant mortality from 1900 to 1940 resulted from the improvement in water quality. The dramatic drop in illness contributed to the increase in la- bor productivity, industrial out- put and school attendance that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century and helped the United States become the domi- nant industrial power of the time. The country’s remarkable drinking water system sets it apart from the rest of the world. Even today, there are relatively few countries where inexpen- sive, high-quality, safe drinking water is widely available from the faucet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and where the population trusts it enough to drink it. That trust is slowly being eroded by the failure to ad- equately maintain and upgrade our drinking water systems, and by efforts on the part of some in the private sector to disparage tap water in order to encourage consumers to spend money on filters, home water purification systems, bottled water or other commercial products. The infra- structure that delivers water to our homes also contributes to problems that further erode our trust, notably in older cities such as Washington, where lev- els of lead and chlorine spikes threaten some neighborhoods or where breaks in water mains temporarily cut off supplies. A recent water-main failure in Boston cut off water for 2 mil- lion people for several days.
An alarming change
In the past 25 years, American consumption of tap water has dropped by more than 35 gal- lons per person per year, re- placed largely by bottled water and carbonated soft drinks. We now drink more bottled water than milk or juice — nearly 9 bil- lion gallons last year, at a high
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inevitably arise, and when they happen and are discovered, we hear about them. Trust in our tap water system erodes even further and more people buy more bottled water.
Not any safer Ironically, there is no reason
ALAMY
Some private interests disparage tap water to get consumers to buy filters, purification systems, bottled water and other products.
cost to consumers and the envi- ronment. As a scientist who has worked on local and global water issues for three decades, I have watched the tidal wave of bot- tled water with alarm. How does a salesman per- suade consumers to buy some- thing that is essentially the same as a far cheaper and more easily accessible alternative? He promotes the perceived advan- tages of his product and empha- sizes the flaws in his competi- tor’s product. For water bottlers this means selling safety, style and convenience, and playing on consumers’ fears. Fear is an effective tool — especially fear of invisible contamination. If we can be made to fear our tap wa- ter, the market for bottled water and private water systems sky- rockets. “Tap water is poison” blared an advertisement for home de- livery of bottled water that re- cently appeared in my neigh- bor’s mailbox. “When we’re done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes,” the president of the Quaker Oats’ beverage division, Susan Wellington, told a group of in- dustry analysts in 2000. Is it any surprise that bottled water sales have exploded? In some ways, Americans are
victims of our own success. The rules to protect tap water qual- ity put in place in the 1970s with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act require systematic testing of our drinking water — and, sig- nificantly, rapid reporting of any serious problems to the public. As a result, every time a munici- pal system discovers such a problem, the reaction of the average citizen is far more likely to be to go buy bottled water or expensive filters than to be thankful that public employees are keeping an eye on their wa- ter.
And there are valid reasons for concern. There is plenty of evidence that tap water in some places isn’t as safe as it could and should be. Investments in maintaining and improving wa- ter systems, their pipes and treatment plants are falling be- hind the need. Regulatory agen- cies have fallen far behind tech- nology: Today, monitors are not only capable of detecting very low concentrations of contami- nants, but they can identify traces of chemical compounds such as painkillers, antibiotics, endocrine disruptors such as progesterone, and even caffeine — but these pollutants are un- regulated and have unknown public health implications. Thus, water-quality problems
to believe that expensive bottled water is any safer than our tap water. The federal regulations, monitoring and enforcement for bottled water quality are no bet- ter, and often are weaker, than those for municipal systems. Similarly, people who rely on well water are drinking untreat- ed water from sources that are unregulated, unmonitored and vulnerable to contamination. As for home water filters, they of- ten filter out things that aren’t even found in our tap water, or fail to filter out things that are. If local water agencies priced their water properly — remem- ber, Americans pay fractions of a penny per gallon of tap water, compared with $4 or more for a gallon of bottled water — they could reinvest those revenues in community water systems to up- grade, expand and operate the best water purification and treatment systems that technol- ogy and money can buy. Old dis- tribution systems can be up- graded and replaced, including old connections that leach lead and other contaminants into otherwise safe water. People like to complain about their utility rates. But most of us pay far, far less for our water than we do for electricity, cellphones, Internet service or cable television, and experience shows that when customers have confidence in the services they are getting, they are willing to pay for them. I’ve studied water systems for years. I drink unfiltered tap wa- ter in my home and almost ev- erywhere else in the United States. I’m proud that my water agencies do such a good job at providing safe water and that the federal government has set standards for water quality that are the envy of much of the rest of the world. But in places where our water systems and agencies are falling short of their responsibilities, we should complain and force officials to respond. In the end, the answer must not be to abandon our tap water systems and let the rich buy bottled water or personal filters while the poor drink con- taminated water.
America pioneered some- thing unique: high-quality, reli- able, affordable tap water for all. The technologies and institu- tions we put in place are aging, and they need help. We can abandon them and let private industry sell us bottled water at a far higher cost, or we can fix our community water systems and remain the envy of much of the rest of the world. I’d drink to that.
health-science@washpost.com
Gleick is president of the nonprofit Pacific Institute, an environmental research institute based in Oakland, Calif. This article is adapted from his book “Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water.”
TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 2010
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