Comparison of water purifications techniques including chlorination, reverse osmosis, and ozonation
Water Awareness Consumer Report: Do YOU Really KNOW What You’re Drinking?
Attention Ontario Homeowners!
Don’t Drink Another Glass of Water Until You Have Read This!
FREE Consumer Awareness Report Reveals That…
Just Because the Water LOOKS Clean Doesn’t Mean It IS Clean!
Recent news items have revealed that there is much to be concerned about with your drinking water. Headlines and content warn of several dangers to your tap water, a commodity you assume will be safe. Note the following:
- Water, Water Everywhere, Dare We Drink It? (Alive, April, 2001)
- What’s On Tap? Drinking Canada’s Treated Water Could Be Dangerous To Your Health (Cambridge Now, Feb./06)
- Church Leaders Make Appeal For Water Rights (B.C. Catholic, April/06)
- Bottled-water safety rules are inadequate, Ottawa told (Globe and Mail, Oct. 23/06)
- Antarctica ozone hole sets size record. The size of the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic is the largest ever seen, U.S. scientists reported on Friday and chlorine is a factor (CBC News, Oct 20/06)
What those headlines are implying is that all is not well with our most important natural resource, WATER. Individually and globally, water is becoming an issue. For instance:
- Individually: In 2005, the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) reported 149 watershed spills in 22 months and 35% involved raw sewage which causes eutrophication or oxygen depletion. Six Nations reserve downriver was put on a boil-water advisory. On Oct. 24/06, 179 Cambridge homes were told not to use tap water for anything because of an oil-like substance detected in the tap water
- Globally: At an international water forum in Mexico in March, 2006, the World Council of Churches to the United Nations argued that safe drinking water should be a human right. However local governments are facing huge financial difficulties to provide that right. Hamilton’s 100 year sustainable safe water maintenance plan is estimated to have a current $500,000 deficit EACH YEAR. Ontario estimates it needs over 12 BILLLION dollars for water infrastructure maintenance.
- Individually: Protection of water sources, although politicians promise it, is proving more difficult. On Sept. 26/06, cyanobacteria, a highly toxic blue - green algae bacterium was found in Lake Massawippi, 130 km. east of Montreal. Caused by phosphorous run-off and immune to boiling, residents were cautioned to not even touch the water. In Ontario 23% rely on ground water sources for their drinking water (90% of the rural population) and 66% rely on municipal systems dependent on the Great Lakes basin.
- Individually and Globally: Increasingly, researchers are finding that chlorine, a long-time disinfectant in water treatment, is connected to cancers. Chlorine combines to form chloramines and 13% of bladder and colon cancers in Ontario were attributable to chloramines. On Oct. 23/06, the Cancer Research Society announced that it was going to spend more money on environment-cancer connections. Cities such as Burlington, Ontario switched from chlorine to ozonation in 2001 for its water treatment after Boston Mass. studies found it superior to chlorine for disinfecting water of cryptosporidium and reducing neo-natal problems. Globally, the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays is being reduced by the release of chlorine and bromine gas-related pollutants produced through human activity, which react with ozone.
- Individually: Many people when polled do not trust tap water and drink bottled water as a substitute, almost 2/3 of all Americans in 2001. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund in British Columbia cites that young people spending money on bottled water have improved sales by almost 20% while un-recycled bottles increased by 10% at the dump. Canadian federal government figures estimate that 90 people die every year from unsafe drinking water and 90,000 are sickened annually by poor-quality drinking water.
Surely news of this nature is alarming to families. How can they reduce the possible risks to their drinking water?
Water Treatment Alternatives:
- Bottled Water: by 1997, bottled water production was worth over $350 million according to Agriculture Canada. In the last eight years there has been a 400% increase. In 2005, over 1.3 billion litres of bottled water were sold in Canada at a value of $ 1.4 billion. Canadians are double spending too, since their tax dollars are also going into new enactments like the Clean Water Act, 2006 to upgrade safe public tap water. The siphoning of money into bottled water when Ontario needs $34 billion over the next 15 years to sustain safe drinking water, according to the Ontario government’s research panel on the issue in 2004, is a terrible irony. Moreover, the polyethylene terephthalate or PET bottles the water comes in leach a toxin, antimony, into the water. More antimony leaches in the longer the water is in the bottle. Dr. Shotyk “took water from near Elmvale, tested at two ppt, (parts per trillion) and put it in a PET bottle. Six months later, the water had 630 ppt of antimony, he said… Shotyk said he has stopped drinking water bottled in PET plastic, preferring tap water or water in glass bottles.” 1 The Earth Policy Institute in Washington estimates that the process of extracting water, purifying and adding minerals, bottling it, marketing and dealing with slow biodegradable plastic bottles costs 10,000 times more than producing tap water.
- Tap Water: Tap water can reach our tables from municipal systems or from rural wells.
- Municipal: In Ontario approximately 8.9 million people receive their drinking water from municipal water works, 82% of the total population.
- Rural Wells: The remaining population or 18% is serviced by individual wells or other private water sources. However the Ontario Farm Environment Coalition claims that 34% of rural wells have elevated counts of coli form bacteria and 14% have high levels of nitrates. Chlorine, used since the early 1900s, is the most common additive to kill microscopic living bacteria and microbes in water. But over time, research has linked drinking and bathing in chlorinated water to several cancers and heart disease. It also leaves a bad taste and odour in the water and if pipes accumulate biofilm, then chlorine is less effective.
Currently, in the Procedure for Disinfection of Drinking Water in Ontario as part of the Safe Drinking Water Act, revised on June 4, 2006, the Ontario Provincial Government recommends both primary and secondary methods of treatment. Chlorine, chlorine dioxide, ozone and ultra-violet rays are mentioned presently as well as various filtration systems, although in a 2002 publication, Ontario only recommended chlorine and ultra-violet treatment options.2 A synopsis of the methods is given below:
- Chlorination is the oldest and widest used method but new studies show that it is not always efficient at removing all organisms and can create byproducts that affect water’s taste and smell, not to mention growing concerns that chlorine is connected to cancers, heart disease, and ozone depletion. Also chlorine is not effective in combating cryptosporidium and giardia.
- Ultra-violet light systems inactivate micro-organisms flowing along the ultra-violet tubes. UV does not produce toxic by-products but it doesn’t always kill bacterial organisms, especially if water is turbid; nor does it eliminate smells and tastes.
- Reverse Osmosis is used to purify water and remove ions and dissolved organic molecules. The larger the charge and the larger the particle, the more likely it will be rejected by the semi-permeable membrane in the process. It will take a minimum of 3 gallons of water to get 1 gallon of treated reverse osmosis water. However de-ionized water is similar to distilled water in that most of its minerals are removed. In practice, a fraction of the living bacteria can and do pass through RO membranes through minor imperfections, or bypass the membrane entirely through tiny leaks in surrounding seals. Thus, complete RO systems may include additional water treatment stages that use ultraviolet light or ozone to prevent microbiological contamination.
- Distillation: Water that has had virtually all of its impurities as well as electrolytes removed through distillation (that is, boiling the water and re-condensing the steam into a clean container, thus leaving contaminants behind). It is widely used in chemical and biological laboratories. However it has no minerals left and those must be added. For instance, if you water plants with distilled water from a de-humidifier, the plants will not thrive. There are no minerals or nutrients to sustain them.
- Ozonation, besides removing micro-organisms, improves overall water quality. It makes water taste and smell better, and can reduce the concentration of unwanted and possibly toxic organic compounds such as pesticides. It’s a good disinfectant for removing bacteria and protozoa, and is better for virus inactivation than UV light. However organic buildup can occur especially if bromide is in the water and filtration with ozonation is recommended.3 Ozone also improves human cell immunization. Officials with the Canadian federal Ministry of Health have endorsed ozone saying, “My department recognizes that OZONE is an effective disinfection technology, and encourages you to pursue the development of this important technology.”
On an individual note, a dairy farmer, who had been interviewed for an article on milk quality, admitted using hydrogen peroxide as the water disinfectant system and source for oxygen for their household and 95 cows. However no regulatory agency in North America recommended hydrogen peroxide as a disinfectant for drinking water. Concerns for the cows, the milk, and their family prompted them to move to a different technology, reasoning that health is a least as important as the cost of a good furnace. This farm has since switched to ozonation and a filtration birm system. They don’t have “scientific” proof but noticed the iron brown in the water and the green mold on the water troughs is disappearing, and testing shows clean and odor-free water.
Health and Water:
In 1998, the Washington Post reported that the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed one out of fifteen hospital patients or approximately 2 million people suffer from prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Pain medications are based on anti-histamines which block histamine, a brain chemical also responsible for water intake. Drinking 8 glasses of water per day or 2 glasses every 3 hours has real medical benefit.
Oxygen is by far the most important necessity of human life and ingestion of substances that increase oxygen levels in the body are most beneficial to optimum health. Ozone treatment dissolves bacteria and viruses because they do not have enzyme coatings that healthy cells have. Therefore ozonated water revitalizes your body. Health spas know this too.
Health and leisure facilities or spas have increased dramatically worldwide because fitness and exercise benefits have been demonstrated as integral for improved health-style. But because of the relatively small water volume and increased water temperatures in spas and hydrotherapy, they are susceptible to water-borne bacteria, including giardia and cryptosporidium. One extremely effective type of treatment easily adapted to commercial spas is an advanced oxidation process, combining ozonation followed by UV irradiation.
Surely it is essential for everyone to become more aware of the importance and use of pure and safe and life-giving water. You have started your own responsible journey by attending this seminar.
Now it is time to answer some very key questions about your own sources of water!
What are you doing to ensure safe drinking water for you and your family?
Is it wise to rely solely on government’s regulations and municipal water?
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