Is there a danger in the water we drink?


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Taiwan's bottled water has run into trouble, removed from the shelf of supermarket.

I used to drink table water, because I dislike the odor of boiled tap water. Even if I don't care about the odor, the question remains: is the tap water safe?

I don't know how a city's waste water treatment system works. There are many labs run molecular biology experiments. The researchers dump PCR gel electrophoresis liquid into water tanks after their experiments. How the water treatment system gets rid of the poisonous micromolecules contained in the dumped liquid?

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Don't know how the situation is where you are from, but in the Western world, drinking tap water is very safe (I dare say it is even safer than drinking bottled water). It is being tested for just about everything you can think of; parasites, bacteria, pollutants, ...

Toxins and heavy metals are also removed using different kinds of systems (osmosis, membranes, bacteria, activated carbon, ...)

Not only is bottled water ridiculously expensive, bacterial contamination of bottled water is a very common thing.

Pseudomonas, Legionella and Salmonella are quite frequently found in bottled water that has been bottled for too long...

So if your tap water is supposed to be drinkable, I'd go for the tap ;)

Cheers,

Shock Doc

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If the tap water tastes alright, drink it. If it doesn't, filter the crap out of it and still drink it.

In most Western countries it's fine

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Don't know how the situation is where you are from, but in the Western world, drinking tap water is very safe (I dare say it is even safer than drinking bottled water). It is being tested for just about everything you can think of; parasites, bacteria, pollutants, ...

Toxins and heavy metals are also removed using different kinds of systems (osmosis, membranes, bacteria, activated carbon, ...)

Not only is bottled water ridiculously expensive, bacterial contamination of bottled water is a very common thing.

Pseudomonas, Legionella and Salmonella are quite frequently found in bottled water that has been bottled for too long...

So if your tap water is supposed to be drinkable, I'd go for the tap ;)

Cheers,

Shock Doc

Cool!

Would you like to introduce, in particular, the process of removing the poisonous micromolecules in the water treatment?

The researchers dump PCR gel electrophoresis liquid into water tanks after their experiments. How the water treatment system gets rid of the poisonous micromolecules contained in the dumped liquid?

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Bottled water contains more bacteria than tap water, with some brands found to harbour levels 100 times above permitted limits, according to new research.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7763038/Bottled-water-contains-more-bacteria-than-tap-water.html

That doesn't apply everywhere though, in Northern and western europe it mostly does.

but as you get eastward and south, especially in the vacation areas such as Grand Canary and such, you don't wanna be drinking the tap water. though part of this is because your body isn't used to the bacterial culture down there, but a lot of it is because their water isn't nearly as clean as ours. As for China and Taiwan (or rather China and China :)) I wouldn't know, but if I went there on vacation I would probably be drinking bottled.

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If the tap water tastes alright, drink it. If it doesn't, filter the crap out of it and still drink it.

In most Western countries it's fine

Tasteless doesn't mean safe! You can still have microorganisms in it.

Tap water is engineered water, and to make sure it 100% drinkable you must know various attributes such as pH level, Nitrate, turbidity, BOD5....

But since most people aren't engineers or technicians, drinking tap water depends, like many other things, on your level of "trust" in your government or municipalities and their quality control.

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Cool!

Would you like to introduce, in particular, the process of removing the poisonous micromolecules in the water treatment?

If PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction, then I am not aware of any poisonous molecules involved in that process (only DNA, nucleic acids, and some proteins, which are harmless).

I do know that molecules (especially toxic ones) get filtered by activated charcoal. This is basically very very finely grounded carbon, which has a HUGE area (around the molecules themselves) that is capable of filtering chemicals with aromatic rings and others (those are the bad ones ;)).

They can also push the water through a membrane that only allows for water (H2O) and small ionic molecules (salts like Na+, Cl-, K+, nothing wrong with those) to pass through so that the nasty chemicals which are too large stay behind.

They can also separate certain molecules by neutralizing their molecular charge (charged molecules are in most cases polar, and will therefore dissolve in water since water is also a polar liquid). By neutralizing the charge those molecules cannot stay dissolved in water anymore and will drift to the bottom or to the top of the water depending on their density, which can then be easily separated by scooping off the layers you don't want.

Edit: They also use certain bacteria and algae to remove stuff that doesn't belong in tap water. The bacteria help get rid of nitrates while the algae help oxygenate the water.

That's about all I know, hope I helped ;)

Cheers!

Shock Doc

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Tasteless doesn't mean safe! You can still have microorganisms in it.

Tap water is engineered water, and to make sure it 100% drinkable you must know various attributes such as pH level, Nitrate, turbidity, BOD5....

But since most people aren't engineers or technicians, drinking tap water depends, like many other things, on your level of "trust" in your government or municipalities and their quality control.

Depends entirely on where you live.

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Depends entirely on where you live.

True...But I live in the Arabian Gulf so I tend to forget that there's 'life' in the world :p

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the myth that tap water is always safe to drink in developed places is just that, a myth. the water may be safe to drink when it leaves the treatment facilities, but by the time it gets to your mouth it's traveled possibly hundreds of miles in various pipes, the quality of which you can never fully guarantee as it's nigh on impossible until we develop nanobots that crawl along and inspect every inch to verify the condition of said pipes. i've lived in some buildings in the US where the water tasted like rusted lead, and in places where it was sweet and tasty. the main thing is that you can't really worry about this too much, as drinking is one thing you really do have to do, so why spend time worrying about it? luckily, in pretty much every location i've been to both central and bottled water are regularly tested, so you should be OK.

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I agree most places where Water Sanitation is done correctly its quite safe to drink Tap water.

My Friend works for the Water treatment Company. I've been quite lucky to get some Private tour's

Around the Water treatment systems in Most parts of Auckland City.

And funny thing is in most parts of the Plant. there are Live Fish,

They don't remove the fish because its a sign of Safe conditions and they can tell if there is something wrong if the Fish Die ;-)

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In the warmer parts of the US some treatment plants are starting to use a marshland, natural or constructed, as the final stage of treatment and for gray-water (non-sewage) treatment. The plants, microbes and other lifeforms improve the quality significantly.

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If PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction, then I am not aware of any poisonous molecules involved in that process (only DNA, nucleic acids, and some proteins, which are harmless).

Thank you.

Yes, PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction here.

One of the fluorescent colouring agents used to observe the DNA in agarose and polyacrylamide gel, ethidium bromide (C21H20BrN3) is a powerful mutagen with strong carcinogenicity.

EB belongs to chemicals with aromatic rings, so hopefully it can be filtered by activated charcoal?

I wonder what membrane they use to only allow H2O run through.

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Tasteless doesn't mean safe! You can still have microorganisms in it.

Tap water is engineered water, and to make sure it 100% drinkable you must know various attributes such as pH level, Nitrate, turbidity, BOD5....

But since most people aren't engineers or technicians, drinking tap water depends, like many other things, on your level of "trust" in your government or municipalities and their quality control.

Even then, In Honduras (third world country hell) water AT the plant is 100%, but the distribution system (piping) has so many leaks and loose couplings, it ends up being dirty again... Wasted money IMO... what they do here, is add chlorine to it like hell, so when it gets to houses and whatnot there's some residual chlorine left to "disinfect". ( Though mind you residual chlorine is a lot more dangerous...)

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I've drank tap water my whole life and I'm still alive :)

Really though, there are places in the world where I wish I could take some of my own home bottled water from the tap, I don't trust any of it!

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piping is piping everywhere, there's no accounting for every inch of pipe in even the most developed and well-regulated places. boiling isn't necessarily needed, the main problem are heavy metals and such. boiling won't do anything for that.

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IIRC there was a documentary about this and the upshot was that tap water had many many more restrictions, checks and regulation placed on it then bottled water. Also with bottled water there are loopholes which means that at times it can even be tap water!

But this is only in certain places, USA and UK if I recall, and possibly some European countries as well.

As far as testing goes they don't just test the water at the time it leaves the plant, it is also tested at the end users as well.

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Well in the UK different areas have different types. Like down south is the "Hard water" which if I can add tastes HORRIBLE.

Whereas up north in yorkshire where I am, water tastes fine and never heard of it being harmful to anyone :p

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Thank you.

Yes, PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction here.

One of the fluorescent colouring agents used to observe the DNA in agarose and polyacrylamide gel, ethidium bromide (C21H20BrN3) is a powerful mutagen with strong carcinogenicity.

EB belongs to chemicals with aromatic rings, so hopefully it can be filtered by activated charcoal?

I wonder what membrane they use to only allow H2O run through.

The fun thing about mutagens is that they mostly contain aromatic rings. These aromatic rings contain p-orbitals, as so does the activated carbon. Overlapping p-orbitals form a weak bond, so it should be filtered by the activated carbon.

As for the membrane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipermeable_membrane

Cheers,

Shock Doc

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Facts;

In the US 25-30 percent of bottled water is repackaged tap watef. Some has gone through extra filtration, and some not.

In blind taste trials 75 percent of those surveyed preferred NYC's tap water to bottled water.

For the record; NYC has very tough standards and does a near obsessive amount of testing at various points along the distribution network. Ditto for many other US cities.

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I'm in the US and I tend to use Dasani for plain drinking water, if I am not cooking with it or otherwise heating it (as in making tea or coffee). It is the only brand I have found here that filters its water via reverse osmosis, which gets rid of everything including the fluoride. Then they add the minerals back to it (distilled water is actually not so great for you if you have a choice, as its purity means it is likely to leach minerals from your body) that are naturally found in water. It tastes better than the water in most places here--often I feel that the water tastes disgustingly of dirt!!--and I somehow feel more hydrated when I drink it than when I drink some other kinds.

I need to find out what brands are available in other countries that also use reverse osmosis.

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