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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 11565
[Health]
Date Posted:
11/19/2004
3:09:05 pm EST
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Views: 12,382
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Comments: 15
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Chlorinated Water A Lesser Of Two Evils, Scientist's Research Shows
Author: Campbell River Mirror Source: Mytelus.com
Title: CHLORINATED WATER A LESSER OF TWO EVILS, SCIENTIST'S RESEARCH SHOWS
  There was no lineup for the water fountain once Phyllida Drummond was through speaking.
Drummond, a scientist at North Island College, made a presentation at a scientific forum in Campbell River two weeks ago about the effects of chlorinated water on cell health.
She spoke softly but her words carried a lot of weight, especially once she started describing tests she had done subjecting flatworms to chlorinated tap water similar to tap water found in most Vancouver Island communities. That's when the audience really started paying attention.
"It would appear that hydrochloric acid, as a byproduct of chlorinated water, has a multi-faceted, detrimental effect on cell health," she said, describing in detail how her test flatworms disintegrated after prolonged exposure to chlorinated water.
They literally fell apart, she said, right down to their eyeballs, which rolled off the animals like "little black marbles," she said.
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Community Thoughts: There are 15 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Radiation Treatment | Nov 21st. at 8:02:02 am EST |
by Antistoicus (Chicago, Illinois) - wc_xemail - Web
Some concerns were expressed about "mutated bugs getting through" and drinking water that had been "exposed to radiation". Neither would be a realistic concern.
The "radiation" proposed for use was ultraviolet light (UV) . UV is from the part of the electromagnetic spectrum next to the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, just beyond violet. It's what you get a sunburn from, when you get it in excess, and that's what the treatment would do to the germs - sunburn them to death.
The energy of a photon (light quanta) is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the light it comes from. UV photons are not appreciably more energetic than visible light photons, and so UV is not "ionizing radiation", and it won't work very effectively as a mutagen. One won't get the Andromeda strain that way; if one could, one would have to stay away from all natural bodies of water, where microorganisms on the surface are exposed to this kind of "radiation" constantly during the daylight hours.
The energy carried by a UV photon is orders of magnitude short of anything needed to have a noticable impact on an atomic nucleus. One could bombard water with far UV to one's heart's content, and while one might break some molecular bonds and get some free oxygen and free hydrogen, one couldn't get anything radioactive out of the bargain.
In fact, even if the city in question were to use the far more energetic gamma radiation - (which IS energetic enough on a photon by photon basis) to be an effective mutagen, one probably still couldn't transmute the nuclei in the water that way. For that, one generally needs neutrons, and those are not going to be produced by a UV lamp. Again, there is nothing energetic enough happening in that lamp, to lift a neutron out of the deep potential well it finds itself in, in a nucleus. One might as well try to trigger nuclear fusion by rubbing two sticks together.
Note that farmer's markets have been treating their cider this way in the last year or two, without incident. A lot of us are unhappy about this, because it kills the natural flora in the cider, which then doesn't ferment right. (I miss the semi-sweet, slightly peppery flavor we used to get) . But none of us are keeling over, glowing in the dark, or anything like that. :)
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| Chlorine, Chlorine, Everywhere... | Nov 21st. at 7:13:23 am EST |
by WhisperAudient (London, England) - wc_xemail
I'm not sure how widely-used this technique is, but here in the UK companies preserve salad leaves by simply saturating them in chlorine water. They are then packaged into plastic bags for our convenience: no preparation needed when you can just open up a bag for dinner. Handy, but the nutritional value these greens carry is negligible.
But when it is packed with yummy chlorine goodness, how can we complain?
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| She Should Have Tried Coca-cola | Nov 20th. at 12:47:49 pm EST |
by Lora (Massachusetts) - wc_xemail
Coke contains phosphoric acid and can strip the paint off your car. Flatworms don't last ten seconds in it.
Your gut is able to withstand incredible amounts of lots of types of acids. Hydrochloric and hypochlorous are, by far, the safest because you can metabolize them--hydrofluoric and some organic acids like butyric and formic are considered the worst because you can't, or rather because the by-products of your body attempting to metabolize it are so nasty that they often kill you in great pain.
In fact, your own body makes hypochlorous acid as part of your immune response. It's part of how your white blood cells digest cooties. You deal with hypochlorites quite successfully every day, and here you never even noticed it!
However...Lots of waterborne pathogens are already resistant to chlorine disinfection. It's definitely not the best technology out there: cryptosporidium, Pseudomonas, and E. coli are already quite happy to live in chlorinated water. Pseudomonas, due to hospital iodine use, can even eat halogen-based disinfectant as a food source. Some municipalities and swimming-pool owners have switched to bromine for this reason.
There are other options: ozone works GREAT and it makes the water taste pretty decent, too; there are high-intensity pulsed light technologies that also work well; UV disinfection is not the best but seems to work OK (it's hard to get the UV to penetrate through the water, bugs can survive on the bottom of a water tank if it's deep) . If I was stuck with well water, I think I personally would invest in a microfiltration system with ozone bubbled through after filtration, since they are the easiest to install and maintain. But, as someone else noted, most of these systems are far to expensive for most municipalities. Ironically, large cities (e.g. New York--I'm not talking about East St. Louis here) who can afford the state-of-the-art water treatment plants often have cleaner, tastier water than the rural areas, who frequently have coliform bacteria issues.
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| Coming Up With A Headline Is Too Much Work | Nov 20th. at 8:49:15 am EST |
by Lecia (Texas) - wc_xemail
Eh, it's 8 a.m. on a Saturday and I'm without coffee....
Anyway, just outside Canton, Texas, there is an artesian spring that is open to the public. One place in the U.S. that they refuse to sell the water to some bottling company and make a profit from it. You drive up, wait in line and you can fill as many bottles as you like. I've seen people with the giant water cooler bottles filling up here. My Granny goes at least every 2 weeks because her well water is polluted by a nearby sulfur plant.
And the water is purified by UV. And it's clean and wonderful.
Lecia
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| Personal Experience | Nov 20th. at 7:17:41 am EST |
by D. J. (Boonies USA) - wc_xemail - Web
When I moved from the city years ago, one of the things I sought most was freedom from water that smelled more like Clorox than a bottle of the stuff did. I'd stopped drinking the chemical brew years before, but there was no way to avoid it altogether.
I was fortunate enough to find a piece of land with about twenty-five natural springs coming out of a hill, and my contractor tapped about eight of them for my water supply. I have a 2000 gallon holding tank and have withstood droughts that lasted up to five months without running out of water (unlike most people in the area) .
Furthermore, I have salamandars and frogs all around the place. Any farmer around here will tell you that salamandars mean your water is of high quality.
When I lived in the overcrowded city, breathed air that only now am I aware stinks badly and drank that stuff they call water, my husband and I were sick almost all the time. He, in fact had developed three "autoimmune" illnesses that had done enough damage that it persists to this day.
Now that we've been out of that environment for so long, we hardly ever get colds, flu, or allergies, my headaches and "chronic" eye infection cleared up within months of moving here. The only problems I have in fact are when I walk into a couple of buildings that have gone up in the last few years. If I'm in the new mega-department store whose name shall not be mentioned, for more than twenty minutes for instance, I'm sneezing uncontrollably and water is pouring from my eyes
I've long known that something is weakening the world's lifeforms and having a detrimental effect on health in general. I've long maintained that the gunk they breathe, eat and drink on a daily basis is the prime culprit. Personal experience has verified that theory.
Oddly enough, I have such an abundance of water, I'd like to make a little money selling jugs of it to the city folks who come here to vacation. But it's not an "approved" water supply and I have no doubt some agency or other would land on me like an eagle on a hare if I did. In fact I understand I may have a hard time selling this place because banks likely won't finance it unless I dug a well and got it approved by the EPA. This in an area whose municipal water has failed EPA testing consistantly for two decades.
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| Chlorine-beating Techniques | Nov 19th. at 10:47:51 pm EST |
by Kate (Brisbane, Australia) - wc_xemail
From my understanding, chlorine is about the cheapest and one of the safest water treatments available for large volumes of water.
If you are worried about the effects of drinking the small amount of chlorine in the water (or just its taste) it is easy to de-chlorinate the water before drinking. Chlorine itself evaporates out of water quite readily if you leave it sitting open to the air for a while and Even quicker if you boil it then allow it to cool before drinking (or make a cup of tea :) ) .
If the taste of the other impurities in the water are a problem, an activated charcoal and ceramic bead filter will remove all the chlorine as well as heavy metals and other molecules and particles that may make the water unpalatable. Just remember to change the filter regularly and wash the supporting components to keep the algae/mould growth under control.
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| Hmm... | Nov 19th. at 10:30:46 pm EST |
by Wild Witch (Michigan, USA) - wc_xemail
Why not use UV sterilization to "clean" our water supply? Apparently, there would be no negative side effects. Also, the *worst* way you absorb chlorine and related chemicals from water is through *steam* in your shower! There are actually shower heads you can get to remedy this...
Just a helpful little FYI from your local tree loving dirt-worshipper...
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| Thanks... | Nov 19th. at 8:55:29 pm EST |
by Red Maeve (The Wilds of New mexico) - wc_xemail
For the clarification.
Being that I'm chemically sensitive and cannot use any of these products in my water or my home, I'm a little biased. That was the information I was given.
As for the evidence of harm to us, let me tell you something.
More people in the US become chemically sensitive every year. We are considered the pariahs of the Medical world, because they cannot come up with a drug to make us better. We can't take any drugs! So you never hear about us; besides the fact that many of us are shut-ins who cannot even go to the grocery store to buy our own food because of all the chemicals they use there. WE are the evidence of the harm that these products cause.
However, the AMA and the pharmaceutical industries refuse to even do any studies on us. Anyone who does is automatically despised and their work is labeled as not valid. I haven't even been able to get the ACLU interested in the fact that the disability programs most of us are on violate our rights constantly.
We might as well not even exist.
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| A Question | Nov 19th. at 7:57:53 pm EST |
by Chris (Manteca, CA) - wc_xemail
My town adamantly denies they chlorinate the water supply (probably for fear of mass suburban hysteria) , which is a moot point when the scent of chlorine is detectible, if minute. That said, my wife and I bottle water from the tap to drink. Doesn't chlorine dissipate over time in that manner?
Thanks and blessings,
Chris
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| Just To Clarify..... | Nov 19th. at 6:30:12 pm EST |
by Ronin (Calgary AB, Canada) - wc_xemail
...a few things.
1) Chlorine was not invented in WW I. Chlorine is an element found on the periodic table (#17) and natural to the environment.
However you are correct on some scale. Many of the disinfectants and cleaners you use today were the results of weapons research during the first and second world wars. The toxicity levels have just been drastically reduced.
2) Ozone may be 99.99% effective but it is also expensive and not to practical on a municipal level considering some of the contamination problems reside within the pipes used to transport the water from the treatment plant to your home. Unless every household is willing to install such a system ( and I doubt that everyone could ) at this point and time Ozone does not seem practical.
3) As for radiation..NO THANK YOU...all it will take is for one or two of those micro bugs to mutate and slip through the system and radiation will be useless. Besides I don't particularly feel comfortable with putting anything that has been exposed to radiation in my body, especially something that I consume on a cosiderable and consistent basis every day.
As for the article I think this persons study may have some merit but not much. The response of exposure from a worm is vastly different that of a human. We have been using Chlorine as a disinfectant for decades in both drinking water and swimming pools. If it was really that dangerous wouldn't there have been more evidence by now?
As for the claim on colon cancer my question is this: considering the amount of chemicals added to processed foods now a days (flavorings, preservatives, fillers etc) don't you think that may be a better place to start looking for a link?
I would be interested to see what further research on this topic brings but I doubt it is going to convince me to support a ban on this type of disinfectant.
Ronin
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| Oh Please!!! | Nov 19th. at 6:23:43 pm EST |
by Lady Pink (Northern California) - wc_xemail
Water is pH neutral, 7.0 or around there. Our skin has a pH of 5.5 slightly acidic. Hypochlorous Acid, HOCl is formed by the action of water on Chlorine. And it occures naturally in your body as well. It is a very good disinfectant to kill all the germs in the water.
Hydrogen Chloride, HCl, according to the Merck Index, is formed by the interaction of NaCl (salt) and H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) . Hydrochlorous Acid is Hydrogen Chloride gas in water.
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| Stomach Acid | Nov 19th. at 6:04:33 pm EST |
by Thorn (Paganistan) - wc_xemail
Unless I completely misremember high school biology class, gastric juices (stomach acid) contain a good percentage of hydrochloric acid. I think that basing a blanket statement of risk for humans on the effects chlorinated water has on flatworms is poor science.
If you put a flatworm in a jar of human gastric juices, you'd likely see the same or faster disintegration of the worm. Does this mean that we need to worry about the risks of having gastric juices in our stomachs? (I am aware of the negative effects of having gastric juices in places other than the stomach.)
Thorn.
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| Chlorine | Nov 19th. at 5:13:15 pm EST |
by Red Maeve (The Wilds of New Mexico) - wc_xemail
Chlorine was invented during WWI as a biochemical warfare agent.
Yup, that's right, it was invented to kill people!
And now we put it in our water.....
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| Go To Ozone | Nov 19th. at 5:07:35 pm EST |
by Nadine (Nebraska) - wc_xemail
there are Ozone water purifiers now. for systems from homes & pools to aircraft carriers and cities.
My brother has used one for 3 years in home & pool. no chemicals in the pool for 3 years and the purity tests consistantly at 99.99%
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| The Real Problem | Nov 19th. at 3:24:51 pm EST |
by Rowan Foxfyre (Indianapolis, In) - wc_xemail
Unless Radiation is effectively used to purify a water supply there will be problems with the toxic effects of clorine. Unfortunately there are already algae and other poisons within our water pipes within our home that could also grow out of control without the clorine so radiation is only the beginning of the solution.
No answers, but lots more questions...........
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