PURE WATER ON TAP   

From www.ewg.org/tapwater/national/unregcontams.php

The first ever nationwide compilation of tap water testing results from drinking water utilities shows widespread contamination of drinking water with scores of contaminants for which there are no enforceable health standards. Examples include the gasoline additive MTBE, the rocket fuel component perchlorate, and a variety of industrial solvents. The pollution affects more than one hundred million people in 42 states.

Three of the 142 contaminants found in the water tested

MTBE is a fuel additive used as an octane enhancer in unleaded gasoline; its ban or phaseout is in progress in 16 states as of December 2005.

Perchlorate is an oxygen additive in solid fuel propellant for rockets, missiles, and fireworks.

Ammonia enters water from fertilizer runoff, leaching septic tanks, and erosion of natural deposits; it is also used as disinfectant and in numerous industrial processes.

The quality of the water you drink matters! Trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics and sex hormones, can be present in drinking water.  Most treatment plants can't remove all drug residue. The following information is taken from the WebMD article many-tap-water-filters-work-well  

Where do I start?

1. Check the water quality of your area online 

National Tapwater Quality Database

Community water systems are required to provide information about the quality of their water to their customers every July, in the Consumer Confidence Report (CCR). The report includes details about where your water comes from along with detected levels of dozens of regulated contaminants with the corresponding federal and state limits. ConsumerReports deputy editor Celia Kuperszmid Lehrman wrote the report on commercially available water filters. Lehrman recommends going straight to the data tables of the report, which must highlight levels of some, but not all, potential contaminants in drinking water.

2. Have your tap water tested.

The EPA's Safe Drinking Water Hotline (800-426-4791) can provide the names of state-certified testing labs in your area. Or you can do it yourself for under $20 with a commercially available kit sold at most hardware stores.

If it is fine, great!  If not 

3. Buy a water purifier.

water filter guide

If you decide you need a water filter, the one you buy should match your lifestyle and water problems, Lehrman adds.

Some things to consider:

• • Whole-house filters ($34 to $80) remove sediment, rust, and other large particles from water, but they are not designd to remove other contaminants.  so, even if you have a whole-house unit, you may need another filter to purify drinking water.

  • Carafes ($15 to $60), like the Brita and Pur systems, are inexpensive and useful for filtering small quantities of drinking water. One problem was that the better they were at removing contaminates in the Consumer Reports test, the quicker their filters clogged, Lehrman says. 

  • Faucet-mounted units ($20 to $60) required less installation than most other installed filters, but they tended to slow the flow of water and can't be used on all faucets. 

  • Countertop units ($50 to $300) filtered large amounts of water without plumbing modifications, and were less likely to clog than carafes or faucet-mounted units. 

  • Undersink filters ($55 to $350) filtered lots of water but required plumbing modifications, including a hole drilled through the sink and/or countertop for the dispenser. 

  • Reverse-Osmosis filters ($160 to $450) removed a wide range of contaminants. These are the only filters certified for the removal of arsenic, but they tend to be slow and create 3 gallons to 5 gallons of waste water for every gallon of water filtered.

The analysis appears in the May issue of Consumer Reports, which is published by the nonprofit consumer watchdog group Consumers Union.

4. Why not bottled water?

Roughly 45% of the water sold in single-serve bottles comes from a municipal water source.  By law, bottled water that comes from a municipal water supply has to disclose this on its label unless the bottler takes steps to further purify the water, which most do. In this case, the label will say "purified water" or "purified drinking water," but the original source is probably tap water. 

The Environmental Working Group tested 10 best-selling brands of bottled water for 170 contaminants and found different mixtures of 38 contaminants, including bacteria, fertilizer, and industrial chemicals at levels similar to those allowed in tap water. 

"The bottled water industry really presents this image of purity, but our investigation demonstrated that it is really hit or miss," Environmental Working Group senior scientist Olga Naidenko, PhD, tells WebMD.  Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires yearly public reports identifying the contaminants found in local water sources. But bottled water is regulated by the FDA, which has no such requirement. 

The Environmental Working Group and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which released its own report critical of bottled water purity in 1999, want the FDA to require bottlers to list contaminants on water bottle labels. The report noted that the FDA does not require bottled water to be tested for parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia; the EPA does require this testing for tap water.

Assuming that both the municipal tap water source and the bottler are in compliance with regulations, the experts contacted by WebMD say bottled water is no safer than tap water and tap is no safer than bottled.

Yes, it is hard to believe.

One of the best Purifiers

5. Being a Good Citizen

PS. Instead of pouring an expired bottle of cough syrup down the drain or flushing unused pills, as was once advised, the FDA now asks people to mix drugs in a sealable bag with coffee grounds or kitty litter and then throw them out. EWG