Reclaimed, Municipal Water

Reclaimed, Municipal Water

This post was originally posted in Nutricula Magazine on June 27th, 2013

Is it hurting us?

-by Al Plechner, DVM, and Bob Berger, MS, MVSc, PhD.

Water conservation and reclaimed water is vital for our survival. However, it may be time to realize that reclaimed water may contain many contaminants which your local municipal water district is not testing for.

It may be fine to check for human-waste bacteria in order to avoid these contaminants, and to add chlorine and fluorides to render the water safer from these human contaminants, but what about the “head waters” for many of these that come from your toilet?

Does your municipal water district check for products that might occur in their reclaimed water like hormones, such as when birth control products are flushed down the toilet?

Plastics have become of great concern based upon their content of specific chemical estrogens called xenoestrogens. These are harmful “estrogen-mimicking” compounds may leach into many water and liquid products including baby bottles, canned food linings, and other plastic goods.

Did you ever wonder about the harm that could come from your plastic pipes? These pipes not only supply you with water, but are also used for drainage. This drainage can (and does), bring further estrogenic impurities back into the reclaimed water that you and your family drink, including the water you are giving to your pet.

What about antibiotics, damaging heavy metals, and drugs? They all may be present in reclaimed water and will most definitely affect overall health in a negative way.

Dr. Plechner: A prime example of this happened with a lovely family back East, where the husband, wife, and three young girls, all suffered from a hormone-antibody imbalance, which is unusual for one family to demonstrate. I did ask the wife to have her local municipal water district check their water for (possible) other toxic products which their water district would not do. The wife, because she really cared about her family, had a water analysis done for $90.00 of her own money, (with a private company). This private company found high levels of arsenic and vanadium in the water. These poisons were definitely involved with causing her family many of their hormone-antibody problems.

It then became apparent that their municipal water came from a well that had been drilled close to an old mine that carried these contaminants to 3,600 other homes in their subdivision. Although this was accidently done by the water district, it still happened! This type of occurrence happens more than we think, and could be a reason for many accidental poisonings.

Unfortunately, many of us have taken for granted that the water we drink and provide for our family and our pets is safe. However, without actually having the water tested, it may contain “other” hazardous materials that we need to know about that are usually not checked for. This is particularly important if your water supply comes from a private well.

If you believe that further analysis of the municipal or well water you are drinking, (and your family and pets are drinking), needs to be checked, you should request your local municipal water district to provide you with additional information that is not inclusive in their yearly report. Of course, this can only be done if they are properly equipped and have the ability to do this…otherwise you should also consider hiring a private company to do this. Although you would be responsible for the costs of the testing from a private company, keep in mind that this is your, your family’s, and your pet’s health at risk here.

Once again, if the water district “refuses” to do so and says that testing is unnecessary, please spend the your own money to do this, if at all possible, as this may be the best investment you could ever make in keeping you, your family, and your family pet (s) from unnecessary, not checked for, damaging contaminants.

Dr. Berger: Another important point, (going back to the estrogen-like compounds and the numerous xenoestrogens that may be found in reclaimed water), is that these fore-mentioned compounds are exactly the types of contaminants that are most probably causing many auto-immune conditions, cancers, (such as breast cancer), and other serious health conditions that plague our society today.

It must be remembered that these estrogens, xenoestrogens, organo-chemical pesticides, toxins, and heavy metals, etc., when we take them into our bodies, our bodies try their best to convert them to benign substances and make them water-soluble in order to excrete them. This takes a lot of energy to do this and puts a great (and many times, excessive), strain on our liver, kidneys, and many other organs, including the heart and lungs.

Our enzymatic microsomal-P450 system takes a beating as is…andthe last thing we need is a problem with our drinking water on top of all the other toxins we get from foods and the environment, etc. Also, we need to note that the fat-soluble chemicals, estrogens, xenoestrogens, toxins, etc., cause us to hold onto a lot of fat, and this adds to the obesity problem. Imagine our drinking water, which we normally think should help to reduce obesity by drinking a lot of it, could actually be one of the causes of obesity and it’s increased incidence itself.

For further information about how we have allowed our environment to cause us health care problems, please go to: 50 Years of Healing, Contaminated Water, p. 147 to 148, Plechner, 2012.