By Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/sircuswater17aug05.shtml
August 17, 2005

If we have young children we need to protect them from harm. Part of our ability to protect them is dependent on our knowledge of water. We need to know with absolute clarity what is happening to our water, what is being done to it, how it is being contaminated, and how we are at risk.

We have just entered the age of toxicity but most mainstream doctors have not realized it yet. In the age of toxicity medical paradigms will change simply because there will be no choice. For a few years, perhaps even a decade, medical officials will stonewall public perception that puts chemical poisoning at the top of the cause of death list. But one day the light will shine on the fact that chemical poisoning is a central cause of many major diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and neurological dysfunction.

Sooner or later it will be impossible to hide from the general public that the greatest cause of disease is chemical poisoning. It matters not what poison, chemical or heavy metal for they are all mixing together. And the mixture is changing, it is concentrating, it is becoming ever more deadly. Our first defense against the chemical onslaught is pure water. Nothing will be more important for our survival in the years to come, and nothing more important in medical treatment. If we or our children are ill then it becomes imperative to use pure water because it is a basic medicine.

We are, of course, going to build below a strong case for the use of water purification systems that need to be put in line to the water flowing into our homes and offices. Even here there is great controversy with the public being shortchanged ending up with probably the worst choice next to tap water, and that would be bottled water. The reason for this statement is simple. Besides the outlandish prices people end up paying for such water there is the nightmarish possibility that the plastic in bottled water is itself leaking toxins and that there are toxic residues also from the cleaning of reusable water bottles of large size. And then there are the allegations. In the United States, the Environmental Law Foundation has sued eight bottlers on the basis that they used words like ‘pure’ to market water containing bacteria, arsenic and chlorine breakdown products. What ever the truth one thing is certain. We cannot take our water for granted because ignorance on this one can be life threatening. So really we have to look at the best of the filtering, reverse osmosis and distilling systems and look fairly without trying to sell one or the other. The quality of the water we drink is and will be more and more a reflection of the quality of our health, even the quality of our consciousness.

Part two of Water, which reviews the different options (water ionization, water alkalinity, filter systems, Reverse Osmosis and distilling systems as well as bottled water and its problems) will be made available upon request.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Director International Medical Veritas Association
http://www.detoxchelationclinic.com
http://www.imva.info
http://www.worldpsychology.net
+55-83-3252-2195
www.skype.com ID: marksircus

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Water

When it comes to our water supplies[i] we are trusting the wrong people and that trust will hurt us in ways we will regret.

The waters, the rivers of life are precious to those who value life. To certain others they are just things to throw trash into, to pollute, and to make money off of at the expense of destroying the environment. Life is just unthinkable without water for we cannot be separated from water and live. Water is so important that its pollution and poisoning has a direct impact on our health and even on the quality and effect of our minds and feelings. We are the element water and we have reservoirs, ponds, rivers and seas of fluids within us. The flow of blood, the lymphatic system with its fluid movement, endocrine fluidity, urinary fluidity, the fluidity represented by perspiration, saliva, tears, sexual secretions, and lactation are all influenced by water. Clean water is absolutely essential for healthy living. Adequate supply of fresh and clean drinking water is a basic need for all human beings on the earth, yet hundreds of millions of people worldwide are deprived of this. When you add the fact that most drinking water from public systems are laced with toxic chemicals then we begin to see that its not hundreds of millions who have a problem with water but billions. Even bottled water has its problems.[ii] We thus need to take so much care when it comes to the water we drink.

If the world’s water was contained in 100 liters or 26 gallons, then hat is readily available to us would amount to one-half teaspoon.

Dr Sang Hwang

If there were no water there would be no world as we know it so pollution of our water or the deliberate injection of hazardous chemicals like fluoride and chloramines into it is nothing less than devastating to our biological existence over time. When approaching a topic as big and as important as water we have to have some sense of reverence for there is something sacred, almost sacramental in the very fabric of water. Thus water holds the potential to change our world, to change us. It holds the power of life and death and the most dominant influence over our health. In the Midwest today there is a serious drought that drives farmers and everyone else to think about water more than anything else. Next to our breath there is nothing more important than water.

The connection between water and disease wasn’t established until a scant 100 years ago and the connection between water and human consciousness has still to be discovered. Observant physicians noted early on that not all diseases were transmitted through contact between individuals. The two greatest epidemics of the 19th century—yellow fever and Asiatic cholera showed evidence that some factor other than direct contact with disease victims was necessary to spread the disease. Typhus and waterborne typhoid fever raged through urban areas, proved to be one of history’s most virulent killers. Cholera could wipe out its victims in as little as 12 hours. Cholera is a disease that can take a man suddenly down in good health at daybreak and kill him by nightfall. Water is well capable of being the harbinger of death and disease so it is best to know and understand the water we drink and bathe in. In developing countries four-fifths of all the illnesses are caused by waterborne diseases, with diarrhea being the leading cause of childhood death.

Medically we are still in the Stone Age when it comes to our understanding of water. Public health officials seem to deliberately choose to remain blind to ever present dangers of all the chemicals finding their way into the public water supplies probably because they are deeply associated with an industry and a medical paradigm that uses toxic chemicals in the form of drugs that are, as we shall see below, also polluting our waters. Water pollution is caused by human activities: 1) By point sources i.e., factories, sewage treatment plants, underground mines, oil wells, oil tankers and pesticides from agriculture. 2) Non-point sources include mercury in the air, acid deposition from the air, traffic, pollutants that are spread through rivers. 3) Chemicals deliberately put in the water like fluoride and chloramines.

Water reminds us of the need to live simply and close to the ground but the lesson has been lost on modern man who has not really comprehended his total dependence and vulnerability to water issues. The CIA considers global water scarcity “a significant issue in security,” said John Gannon, a former CIA assistant director and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Even as we continue to take water for granted things are going critical as water levels in many aquifers around the world are dropping, in some places by several meters a year.[iii] In recent measurements, in Waukesha near Chicago for instance, the water level had dropped about 600 feet with the greatest loss being over the last 20 years. Professor Liu Yonggong, of China Agricultural University in Beijing, indicated that the water table beneath much of the North China Plain, a region that produces some 40 percent of China's grain, has fallen an average of 1.5 meters per year over the last five years.

Lack of water means lack of food. “Future competition for water seems likely to take place largely in world grain markets.” Lester R. Brown President of the Earth Policy Institute

An unexpectedly abrupt decline in the supply of water for China's farmers poses a rising threat to world food security. China depends on irrigated land to produce 70 percent of the grain for its huge population of 1.2 billion people, but it is drawing more and more of that water to supply the needs of its fast-growing cities and industries. As rivers run dry[iv] and aquifers are depleted, the emerging water shortages could sharply raise the country's demand for grain imports, pushing the world's total import needs beyond exportable supplies. Since 1950 the population of China has grown by nearly 700 million, a staggering increase. Since 1950, the global renewable freshwater supply per person has fallen 58 percent as world population has swelled from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. With finite and diminishing water supplies the human race is like a fast moving car about to collide with a solid wall of water scarcity, which is not being helped at all by the global warming effect and the weather changes it is bringing throughout much of the world.

The Yellow River water in China is now loaded with heavy metals and other toxins that make it unfit even for irrigation, much less for human consumption, along much of its route.

None of the proposed solutions to the water crisis — importing water, water conservation, expanded use of desalination of seawater or developing genetically modified crops that use less water — will be “sufficient to substantially change the outlook for water shortages in 2015,” according to Global Trends 2015, a report by the intelligence council. Agriculture accounts for two-thirds of water use worldwide and 80 percent to 90 percent in many developing countries. Some of this is already coming home to Californians who as of New Year's Day 2002 have had three of their eight water pumps on the Colorado River shut down by federal order. Now much less water is churning down the 242-mile aqueduct toward coastal Southern California, where 17 million people rely on snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains for washing dishes, flushing toilets and watering lawns. This is a pivotal moment in the contentious history of water in the arid West and in many other places around the world. We are just at the beginning of a problem that has no way of going away.

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.
American Indian Proverb

Every day in the United States more than 240 million people turn on their faucets in order to drink, bathe, and cook, using water from public water systems. But more people are arriving to the point where they will not let a drop of water touch their lips in their own homes unless that water comes from a bottle shipped from a fresh water source. And even then we still have trouble in the home. Researchers at the University of Texas found that showers and dishwashers liberate trace amounts of chemicals from municipal water supplies into the air. [v]

Squirting hot water through a nozzle, to produce a fine spray, increases the surface area of water in contact with the air, liberating dissolved substances in a process known as "stripping." So if we want to avoid those chemicals drinking bottled water is not enough. Chemically sensitive individuals would also have to wear a gas mask in the shower, and when unloading the dishwasher if they want to avoid chemical contamination. And even then the skin will absorb directly in the shower chemicals like fluoride so we cannot assume we are safe from the contaminants even if we are drinking pure water. The majority of people still take the purity of their tap water for granted when they shouldn't.

When we look deeper we can see that even in a rich country like the United States, we all have reason to be concerned about not only drinking, but even bathing in water that comes from public treatment systems. Albuquerque, Fresno, and San Francisco are examples of cities that have water that is sufficiently contaminated so as to pose serious potential health risks to pregnant women, infants, children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems, according to Dr. David Ozonoff.[vi] What we find in these waters are contaminants that occur with surprising regularity, regardless of location, such as chlorination by-products, lead, and coliform bacteria. Other contaminants, such as Teflon and rocket fuel occur less frequently but pose major health concerns. If we include the fact that fluoride is actually poisonous we have water that is slowly killing some Americans and depressing the health of almost everyone who drinks and showers in it.

And the problems with water just do not end. In August 2005 we learned that common household brass plumbing fixtures may release far more lead into drinking water than previously believed. As a result, even new homes built with brass fixtures like ball valves and water meters could end up with potentially unsafe lead levels. In a report trumpeted by the National Science Foundation, Virgina Tech researchers charged that the standards used to certify the brass plumbing supplies found at most hardware stores may be inadequate to predict lead contamination of water. This contradicts years of assumptions that lead contamination primarily comes from old leaden pipes or public water systems with lead contamination problems.[vii] Contrary to popular belief, many plumbing supplies sold today are not lead-free but contain up to 8 percent lead[viii] content in brass fixtures. Lead makes brass and other metals more malleable, helping manufacturers create intricate shapes.

The consequence though is extraordinarily high for exposure to lead in drinking water results in delays in physical and mental development, along with slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities. In adults, it can cause increases in blood pressure. Adults who drink this water over many years could develop kidney problems or high blood pressure according to the American EPA.[ix] The Romans had their engineers turn the populace into neurological cripples when they started using lead in their water systems but they did not have to deal with either fluoride or mercury. The three together, mercury, lead and fluoride become a kind of devils triangle of chemical toxicity that is only made worse by aluminum and a host of other hostile chemicals that are clogging up our bodies.

Water pollution by drugs is an emerging issue that is extremely important. Pharmaceuticals are now attracting attention as a whole new class of water pollutants. At the recent American Chemical Society conference, Chris Metcalfe of Trent University in Ontario reported finding a vast array of drugs leaving Canadian sewage treatment plants. Padma Venkatraman, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins concluded that antidepressants, anti-convulsants, anticancer drugs and antimicrobials are among the pharmaceuticals most likely to be found at “toxicologically significant levels” in the environment.

These drugs and many more[x] are finding their way into public water systems because pharmaceutical industries, hospitals and other medical facilities as well as households dispose of unused medicines and even human excreta can contain incompletely metabolized medicines. Millions of doses of prescription drugs that Americans swallow annually to combat cancer, pain, depression and other ailments do not disappear harmlessly into their digestive systems but instead make their way back into the environment where they may contaminate drinking water and pose a threat to life, according to researchers at John Hopkins medical center.

These drugs pass intact through conventional sewage treatment facilities, into waterways, lakes and even aquifers. Discarded pharmaceuticals often end up at dumps and land fills, posing a threat to underlying groundwater. And farm animals also are a huge source of pharmaceuticals entering the environment because of the massive use of hormones, antibiotics and veterinary medicines used in their care. Along with pharmaceuticals, personal care products also are showing up in water. Generally these chemicals are the active ingredients or preservatives in cosmetics, toiletries or fragrances. For example, nitro musks, used as a fragrance in many cosmetics, detergents, toiletries and other personal care products, have attracted concern because of their persistence and possible adverse environmental impacts. Some countries have taken action to ban nitro musks. Also, sun screen agents have been detected in lakes and fish.

It is hard to tell which is worse, the toxic chemicals and drugs that are leeching into the public water systems or the noxious chemicals deliberately put in the water by public health officials. Standard water treatments result in health threats yet health officials are loath to admit any problem that we should beware of. Chlorination of drinking water supplies virtually eliminates most disease or bacterial contamination, but creates traces of several toxic by-products in drinking water - such as chloroform, trihalomethanes and other chlorinated organic compounds. In recent years municipal water districts across the United States are changing the way they disinfect public water supplies. Many are adding ammonia to chlorinated water to produce chloramines,[xi] or chloraminated water. They are doing that in order to meet standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While chloramination has been used as a way to lower the level of carcinogenic disinfection byproducts (DBPs) created by chlorination, it has led to extreme water toxicity. Chloraminated water kills fish and reptiles and there is no reason to believe it is safe for human consumption.

“I almost died,” Denise Kula Johnson of Menlo Park said the day after chloramines were added to her water supply. “I was in the shower and suddenly I could not breathe. I passed out on the floor. I was terrified.”

“The government is hiding the fact that the drinking water is not usable,” says medical scientist Dr. Winn Parker who tells us that the most at-risk groups from chloraminated water are the fetus in the first trimester, children to age three, people over age 60 and those with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Women in the 35-45 age group are at risk of recurring rashes on the inner thighs and chest, he added. Parker is calling for government funding of alternative disinfection methods, such as ultra-violet and reverse osmosis, which would make harmful chemical disinfection methods obsolete. “We need to amend the Constitution,” Parker said, “to give the people in each state the right to vote on what goes into their water.”[xii] A recently discovered disinfection byproduct iodoacetic acid, found in U.S. drinking water treated with chloramines, is the most toxic ever found according to Dr. Michael J. Plewa, a genetic toxicology expert at the University of Illinois.[xiii]

Individuals who consume chlorinated drinking water have an elevated risk of cancer of the bladder, stomach, pancreas, kidney and rectum as well as Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.[xiv]
Dr. Michael J. Plewa

When Washington DC changed in 2000 to chloramines, this newly treated water reacted with the lead in the pipes to poison the drinking water. Lead levels were found in Washington’s water 3,200 times the EPA’s “action level” and 4,800 times the UN’s acceptable level for the toxic heavy metal. Americans have been conditioned to believe that the problem with lead has mostly disappeared but nothing could be further from the truth. According to the Washington Post, “In New York City, the nation’s largest water provider has for the past three years assured its 9.3 million customers that its water was safe because the lead content fell below federal limits. But the city has withheld from regulators hundreds of test results that would have raised lead levels above the safety standard in two of those years.”[xv] “The drinking water lead crisis in Washington D.C. poses serious public health risks to thousands of residents of the national capital area, and casts a dark shadow of doubt over the ability, resources, or will of federal and local officials to fulfill their duty to protect our health,” said Paul D. Schwartz, National Policy Coordinator, Clean Water Action.[xvi]

After switching to chloraminated water,
children in Washington ingested more than 60 times
the EPA’s maximum level of lead with one glass of water.[xvii]

Jim Elder, who headed the EPA's drinking water program from 1991 to 1995, said he fears that utilities are engaging in "widespread fraud and manipulation. It's time to reconsider whether water utilities can be trusted with this crucial responsibility of protecting the public. I fear for the safety of our nation's drinking water. Apparently, it's a real crapshoot as to what's going to come out of the tap and whether it will be healthy or not."

Cities across the country are manipulating the results of tests used to detect lead in water, violating
federal law and putting millions of Americans at risk. Washington Post[xviii]

Underground aquifers can become contaminated with bacteria and viruses because of insufficient topsoil layers to filter rainwater as it trickles down to recharge the groundwater. Livestock manure, human sewage sludge, fertilizers, weed killers[xix] and pesticides seep down into groundwater supplies. The intensification of agricultural practices--in particular, the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides - has had a huge impact on water quality. The main agricultural water pollutants are nitrates[xx], phosphorus, and pesticides. Rising nitrate concentrations threaten the quality of drinking water, while high pesticide use contributes substantially to the direct poisoning of our water supplies. The Netherlands National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM, 1992) concluded that "groundwater is threatened by pesticides in all European states.” WHO (1993) has established drinking water guidelines for 33 pesticides but an awareness is growing that in all matters water related we are not being protected from serious harm. There really is no limit to the concerns and chemicals that make drinking public water a bad idea.

There really is no end to the serious problems with tap water that are being seriously underestimated. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that arsenic is so dangerous in drinking water that stringent levels set by the Clinton administration and later suspended by the Bush White House were not strict enough. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency set an acceptable arsenic level of 50 parts per billion in drinking water. But recent studies suggested that this level was too high and increased the risk of bladder and lung cancer. A report by the National Academy of Sciences in 1999 said the standard should be made stricter "as promptly as possible." President Bill Clinton ordered the limit to be lowered to 10 parts per billion in 2006 and scientists doubt if even this low level of concentration is safe.[xxi]

A chemical used in munitions, called perchlorate[xxii], is known to inhibit production of thyroid hormone[xxiii], which children need for brain development. The chemical has been detected in drinking water supplies in at least 25 states, as well as in fruits, vegetables and breast milk in mothers across the country.[xxiv] Five years ago, a research team recruited seven people to drink water laced with tiny amounts of a rocket-fuel chemical that has contaminated many drinking-water supplies. Perchlorate is poisonous and can impair thyroid function and result in neurological impairment of fetuses and babies, metabolic disorders and other problems. Yet science descended into the gutter when researchers, backed by a grant from the industries that make and use perchlorate, concluded that the infinitesimal amounts in their test had no effect on the healthy adults who signed on for the two-week study. This research team's findings became the linchpin of a national policy on how much perchlorate can be safely consumed. Federal regulators will use the policy to decide whether to limit perchlorate in drinking water, and what the limit should be even though the research in this area was for only two weeks, a time infinitesimally short for the measurement of the effects of low level toxicities.

Fluoride is also reported to increase the uptake of lead and
lead makes mercury many times more toxic than it already is. [xxv]

Almost each chemical poses a problem and collectively mixed together it is anyone’s guess what the end effect will on human health. And if this was not enough American health officials still insist on adding another poison into the water with the poor excuse that it helps prevent cavities, which it doesn’t. Fluoride has been shown to be mutagenic causing chromosome damage, it is an accumulative poison, it interferes with hydrogen bonding, and forms complexes with a large number of metal ions just to name a few of the fifty reasons Dr. Paul Connett of St. Lawerence University in New York gives us for avoiding fluorinated water like the plague.[xxvi] It’s a mad form of medicine and dentistry that has public health officials not listening to chemists like Connett who along with many others gives us reason to serious doubt the integrity of public health officials. Fluoride displaces iodine from the thyroid (the body's energy control centre) and generally poisons enzyme systems. The list of chemicals pouring into the environment is almost endless and together they are coming on like a blitzkrieg to take humanity down into a dark night of suffering and despair. To find on top of everything companies using public water systems as a waste disposal system is incredible and yet that is exactly what they are doing with fluoride.

Dr. Paul Connett posted on 20 July 2005, “I am really surprised that Medical News Today published the puff piece from the American Dental Association about their celebration of 60 years of fluoridation, but missed the real news from last week. This was the revelation carried by the Washington Post and the Associated Press (July 13, 2005) that a Harvard thesis has shown a connection between water fluoridation and a 700% increase in osteosarcoma in young men if they are exposed to fluoridated water during their 6th to 8th years.” Particularly disturbing is the information that the thesis adviser, Porfessor Cheser Douglass, who is also a consultant to Colgate, has covered up these results in talks to the public and in a report to his funding agency. Both the NIEHS and Harvard University are investigating his conduct.”

Most of Europe and many townships in the United States have completely rejected the fluoridation of water. Why? Because fluoride is a poison and thus you see warnings to keep even toothpaste out of the reach of children. It’s like part of the world believes the world is flat and others have it as round. In this case we have entire governments rejecting the idea and in others they simply get away with deceiving hundreds of millions of people as they continue to use fluoride. There are medical officials that simply do not understand the relatively simple proposition that chemical compounds poison people. These doctors have been hypnotized by their medical professors who themselves have been programmed with an enormous blindness to the negative effects of chemical toxins put in both food and water.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMD
Director International Medical Veritas Association

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[i] Oceans contain 97 per cent of our planet’s water but it is too salty for drinking, irrigation or industrial use. Only 3 per cent of earth's total water is considered fresh water. About 2.997 per cent of this fresh water is trapped in polar ice caps and deep within earth surface which is too costly to extract. Thus only .003 per cent of earth's total available water by volume is available for human use. The global picture of water is not pretty with some 1.1 billion people still lacking access to improved drinking water sources and some 2.4 billion to adequate sanitation.

[ii] In March of 1999, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report called "Bottled Water, Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" NRDC 's report points out that as much as 40% of all bottled water comes from a city water system, just like tap water. Federal regulations that govern bottled water only require it to be as good as tap water, not better. There are no assurances, regulations or requirements that bottled water be any higher in quality than tap water

[iii] Iran. The water table is falling by 2.8 meters annually in the agriculturally rich Chenaran Plain in northeastern Iran. That, coupled with the cumulative effect of a three-year drought, has driven people out of the region, generating a swelling flow of water refugees.
[iv] Egypt. Egypt is entirely dependent for its water on the Nile River, which is now reduced to a trickle as it enters the Mediterranean. Neither Egypt, Ethiopia, nor Sudan can increase its take from the Nile except at the expense of the other two countries. Populations in these three countries is projected to climb to 264 million in 2025 from 167 million today. A quarter-century ago, with more and more of its water being pumped out for the country's multiplying needs, the Yellow River began to falter. In 1972, the water level fell so low that for the first time in China's long history it dried up before reaching the sea. It failed on 15 days
that year, and intermittently over the next decade or so. Since 1985, it has run dry each year, with the dry period becoming progressively longer. In 1996, it was dry for 133 days. In 1997, a year exacerbated by drought, it failed to reach the sea for 226 days. For long stretches, it
did not even reach Shandong Province, the last province it flows through en route to the sea. Shandong, the source of one-fifth of China's corn and one-seventh of its wheat, depends on the Yellow River for half of its irrigation water.
[v] http://www.agonist.org/story/2005/8/4/44118/79781
[vi] National Resources Defence Council. Ozonoff is chair of the Environmental Health Program at Boston University School of Public Health and a nationally known expert on drinking water and health issues http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/uscities/execsum.asp
[vii] http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C29130.html
[viii] Drinking Water Act in 1996 banned plumbing devices with pure lead pipe but still allow low levels of lead. Homes built before 1986 are more likely to have lead pipes, fixtures and solder. However, new homes are also at risk: even legally “lead-free” plumbing may contain up to 8 percent lead. The most common problem is with brass or chrome-plated brass faucets and fixtures which can leach significant amounts of lead into the water, especially hot water. http://www.epa.gov/safewater/lead/index.htmlAmendments made to the federal Safe
[ix] http://www.epa.gov/safewater/lead/index.htmlAmendments made to the federal Safe
[x] Detected contaminants include caffeine, which was the highest-volume pollutant, codeine, cholesterol-lowering agents, anti-depressants, and Premarin, an estrogen replacement drug taken by about 9 million women. Also chemotherapy agents were found downstream from hospitals treating cancer patients. Final results from the study are expected to be released in the fall. For additional information about the U.S.G.S. study check the website: toxics.usgs.gov/regional/emc.html
[xi] Chloramine is a disinfectant put into many municipal water supplies. In recent years it has often replaced chlorine for two main reasons. The first is that it is much longer lasting, so it continues to provide a disinfectant action in supply pipes, where chlorine typically loses its capacity to disinfect. The second is that it does not react with organics nearly as readily as does chlorine. The reaction products of chlorine and organics (chlorinated organics) are very toxic to people, and water supply operators elect to use chloramine to reduce this toxicity.
[xii] Bollyn, Christopher. The Unhealthy Consequences of Chloraminated Water.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/chloraminated_water.html
[xiii] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040915111128.htm
[xiv] Sep 2004 http://www.watertechonline.com/News.asp?mode=4&N_ID=50190
[xv] http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/chloraminated_water.html
[xvi] US House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform
Hearing on the District of Columbia’s Lead Contamination Experience
Statement of Paul D. Schwartz, National Policy Coordinator, Clean Water Action
May 21, 2004. http://www.dcwatch.com/wasa/040521i.htm
[xvii] From April 2 to May 8 of 2004, utility officials switched back to chlorine, a yearly change intended to rinse bacteria from the pipes before summer. During that time, officials said yesterday, lead level test results in homes with lead service lines were 25 percent to 30 percent lower than they would have predicted. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43649-2004May20.html
[xviii] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7094-2004Oct4.html
[xix] The weed killer atrazine affects the levels of a number of hormones needed for normal development and function of the reproductive system, including estrogen, prolactin, luteinizing hormone, and follicle stimulating hormone. Atrazine has been linked to sexual malformations in frogs that were exposed to water containing just 1/30th as much atrazine
as the EPA regards as safe in human drinking water. Sanders, Robert. Popular weed killer atrazine feminizes native frogs across Midwest, could be impacting amphibian populations worldwide 30 October 2002. University of Berkely. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/10/30_frogs.html
[xx] Nitrate in drinking water is also associated with increased risk for bladder cancer, according to a University of Iowa (UI) study that looked at cancer incidence among nearly 22,000 Iowa women. The study results suggest that even low-level exposure to nitrates over many years could cause increases in certain types of cancer, said Peter Weyer, Ph.D., associate director of the UI Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination (CHEEC) and one of the study’s lead authors. The study was published in the May 2001 issue of the journal Epidemiology. “From a public health perspective, source water protection is a main concern. Sources of nitrate which can impact water supplies include fertilizers, human waste, and animal waste,” Weyer said. “All of us, rural and urban residents alike, need to be more aware of how what we do as individuals can impact our water sources and, potentially, our health.”
http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/articles/OT/FA03/News_Notes.html
[xxi] New York Times September 11, 2001
[xxii] Perchlorate is an oxidizing agent used in rocket fuel, fireworks, munitions and other explosives. Leaks and spills at manufacturing plants over the past 50 years have contaminated water supplies in at least 35 states, the lower Colorado River and several groundwater basins in the Inland area.
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccl/perchlorate/perchlorate.html
[xxiii] Environmental Working Group: Perchlorate, the explosive main ingredient of rocket and missile fuel, contaminates drinking water supplies, groundwater or soil in hundreds of locations in at least 43 states Well over 20 million people drink water from public and private sources known to be polluted with perchlorate. This estimate includes millions of customers of 81 contaminated public water systems in California and aproximately 20 million customers in the three states who get at least part of their drinking water from the perchlorate-tainted Colorado River.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/rocketwater/
[xxiv] http://www.gilroydispatch.com/news/contentview.asp?c=146576
[xxv] Masters RD, Coplan MJ, Hone BT, Dykes JE. Association of silicofluoride treated water with elevated blood lead. Neurotoxicology. 2000 Dec;21(6):1091-100.
[xxvi] Connett, Paul. Fifty Reasons to oppose Fluoridation. Medical Veritas Journal of Medicine. Doi: 10.1588/medver.2004.01.00014