posted October 07, 2008 11:30 AM         

It is very difficult to find pure water in this day and age. Most bottled water companies are now leaving in the fluoride or adding even more to their "purification process". I drink distilled water, but not only is that quite costly but also I am concerned with all the plastic dangers (poison seeping through into the water, and nevertheless, the amount of plastic bottles I go through is sickening and wasteful.)

posted October 07, 2008 08:04 PM         

At the moment I can't afford a reverse-osmosis system for my home, but I started buying reverse-osmosis filtered water at Whole Foods a few months ago. I was astounded at what this process can do to nasty city tap water -- it tastes WONDERFUL!! We drink/cook about a gallon and a half per day at our house, at a cost of about 49 cents per gallon. I have noticed a subtle change in the way I feel when I drink this water consistently -- and I think it's the heavy metals and fluoride etc being filtered out that has improved my vitality, and even my skin!!

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a separation process that uses pressure to force a solution through a membrane that retains the solute on one side and allows the pure solvent to pass to the other side. More formally, it is the process of forcing a solvent from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. This is the reverse of the normal osmosis process, which is the natural movement of solvent from an area of low solute concentration, through a membrane, to an area of high solute concentration when no external pressure is applied. The membrane here is semipermeable, meaning it allows the passage of solvent but not of solute. This phenomenon is commonly noticed in case of the water falling from the leaves of a tree.

The membranes used for reverse osmosis have a dense barrier layer in the polymer matrix where most separation occurs. In most cases the membrane is designed to allow only water to pass through this dense layer while preventing the passage of solutes (such as salt ions). This process requires that a high pressure be exerted on the high concentration side of the membrane, usually 2–17 bar (30–250 psi) for fresh and brackish water, and 40–70 bar (600–1000 psi) for seawater, which has around 24 bar (350 psi) natural osmotic pressure which must be overcome.

This process is best known for its use in desalination (removing the salt from sea water to get fresh water), but it has also been used to purify fresh water for medical, industrial and domestic applications since the early 1970s.

When two solutions with different concentrations of a solute are mixed, the total amount of solutes in the two solutions will be equally distributed in the total amount of solvent from the two solutions.

Instead of mixing the two solutions together, they can be put in two compartments where they are separated from each other by a semipermeable membrane. The semipermeable membrane does not allow the solutes to move from one compartment to the other, but allows the solvent to move. Since equilibrium cannot be achieved by the movement of solutes from the compartment with high solute concentration to the one with low solute concentration, it is instead achieved by the movement of the solvent from areas of low solute concentration to areas of high solute concentration. When the solvent moves away from low concentration areas, it causes these areas to become more concentrated. On the other side, when the solvent moves into areas of high concentration, solute concentration will decrease. This process is termed osmosis. The tendency for solvent to flow through the membrane can be expressed as "osmotic pressure", since it is analogous to flow caused by a pressure differential.

In reverse osmosis, in a similar setup as that in osmosis, pressure is applied to the compartment with high concentration. In this case, there are two forces influencing the movement of water: the pressure caused by the difference in solute concentration between the two compartments (the osmotic pressure) and the externally applied pressure.

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Top Five Reasons to Give Up Bottled Water:

5. Disposable plastic water bottles are not meant for multiple uses. The #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is fine for a single use, but reuse can lead to chemical leaching of toxins such as DEHA, a known carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disrupter.

4. Bottled water is full of oil. Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 cars for a year. (NY Times) To put it another way, the entire energy costs of the lifecycle of a bottle of water is equivalent, on average, to filling up a quarter of each bottle with oil. (Pacific Institute)

3. Bottled water is expensive! Drinking the recommended daily amount of water using bottled water can cost an average of $1,400 per year; drinking the same amount from the tap costs around 49 cents for the year. (NY Times)

2. Your tap water is fine to drink. Ninety percent of tap water in the U.S. meets or exceeds EPA standards for drinking water. (If the taste or color is a little off from your tap, your pipes are probably at fault—a simple filtration system should do the trick to take both aesthetic problems away.)

1. At least 40 percent of bottled water is tap water anyway. That’s right: you are paying a huge premium on water that you could have just gotten from your tap in the first place. (Natural Resources Defense Council) You probably like tap water more than bottled water, too! Want to test that out? Try the Tap Water Challenge!

I don't agree with their "tap water is fine to drink" claim, especially where I live -- the 'plume' from some horrible things dumped into the groundwater at the TCAAP plant a couple miles north of me is getting closer by the day.....

Take the pledge to break the bottled water habit:
http://water.newdream.org/

Due to the recently released report on some polycarbonate plastic #7 bottles (Nalgene) leaching the chemical BPA, people are urgently looking for a safe alternative to plastic. There are some beautiful non-leaching reusable bottles out there now (granted some are pretty expensive) --
http://www.onlinefitness.com/productlist.cfm

posted October 11, 2008 02:40 PM         

I do the Whole Foods water thing every now and then, but I'm kind of a brat and I don't really like the taste. (But) I may end up buying the massive water jug/dispenser and start using the Whole Foods method, anyways. It is much cheaper and obviously not wasteful. So, I'm open to that.

posted October 11, 2008 07:23 PM         

quote:

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Have you tried reverse osmosis installed into residental houses and units?

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posted October 20, 2008 05:43 PM         

Trace amounts of fluoride *are* found in water all over the world. But the dumping of chemical waste products (ie, fluoride) into the municipal water supplies as a cheap way to get rid of it is unconscionable.

There are those who blame fluoride (along with things like vaccinations) for the explosion of ADD/ADHD in the USA.

Why are we allowing our governments to poison our brains and bodies??

http://www.safbaby.com/are-we-poisoning-our-babies-and-children-with-fluoride

http://tuberose.com/Fluoride.html

I could insert dozens more links in here, but here's the text of just one:

Fluoridation? World expert says 'It’s an American crackpot idea from the ’50s'
11:03am Monday 22nd September 2008

One of the world’s leading experts on fluoride paid a flying visit to Southampton to join in the Great Fluoride Debate.

Dr Paul Connett is vehemently opposed to fluoridation and has jetted into the city all the way from his home in New York to add his powerful voice to the consultation on plans to add fluoride to the city’s tap water.

Southampton City Primary Care Trust wants to see the city’s water supplies fluoridated to improve dental health.

Dr Connett, director of Fluoride Action Network and a retired professor of chemistry at St Lawrence University in New York State, has spoken at conferences worldwide on fluoride since he began researching its health impact 12 years ago.

Most of the United States’ water supplies are fluoridated in a medical practice designed to improve children’s dental health.

Dr Connett told the Daily Echo: “Fluoridation is a clumsy form of medication. It’s attractive because you do not have to take any trouble to educate parents.

“But you are giving it to people who are sensitive to it and people who don’t want it. That’s very arrogant.

“There is a far stronger relationship between tooth decay and standard of living than you will ever find between tooth decay and fluoride.

Fluoride lowers IQ “The answer should be to target the kids that are most vulnerable, in low income families, and make sure the pregnant women in these areas are getting a good diet.”

Dr Connett is keen to see in-depth studies into fluoridation’s side effects.

“Fluoridation is an American crackpot idea from the 1950s,” he said. “It was a huge gamble. They knew one thing in 1950 and that was that if they put fluoride in the water, it would increase the number of children with dental fluorosis, which they thought was an acceptable trade off. The gamble was whether fluoride could do that to the growing teeth cells without damaging any other tissue.

“Countries that have had fluoridation since 1950 have never done the basic studies to check this hypothesis out.

“The other half of the scandal is that countries that have not done studies are ignoring studies from countries that do not fluoridate their water but have naturally high levels of fluoride.

“Fluoride causes health problems, damaging the bones and the brain. There have also been 23 studies done in China, India, Iran and Mexico showing fluoride lowers IQ levels in children.

“The health experts say they have been fluoridating for 50 years and if there were any problems we would know about them by now. But if you don’t study it properly, you don’t notice the subtle changes.

“No British authorities are studying the link between fluoride and lower IQ levels, and they are ignoring all the studies from the other countries.”

Dr Connett called for an open debate: “Now is the time to challenge the strategic health authority to demonstrate objectivity by having a balanced debate. I am prepared to do it.”

posted November 29, 2008 11:47 AM         

quote:

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I'm fortunate to live in the Great Lakes area where we have the best water on earth,

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posted December 08, 2008 06:05 PM         

I do not drink tap water as I know that is far from safe. However, I don't know what is. When I get a more permanent housing situation sorted out I will be sure to investigate.

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"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service."

posted December 08, 2008 09:22 PM         

"This is mass medication without consent."
~ Jane Jones, Campaign for Pure Water

posted December 11, 2008 01:33 PM         

My comment was referring to water making people instantly ill and the need for boiling? I thought that was a rare occurance in the Western world?