W. C. Fields, the booze-loving comic actor, quipped that one time his plane went down in an isolated mountain area and he was forced to resort to food and water. While alcohol is not a particularly healthy drink, the water that is coming out of American taps may be far from safe.
In the U.S., chlorine is used to disinfect municipal water supplies, but researchers have been concerned for some time that the breakdown products of chlorine may be toxic. Recent evidence of chlorine's toxicity comes from a recent study of 28,237 Iowa women published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study revealed that women drinking chlorinated municipal drinking water had a significantly higher risk of developing colon cancer than women who drank water from other sources. There was a clear dose-response relationship between chloroform, a chlorine by-product, and colon cancer.
Cloudiness in water, called turbidity, can be an indicator of microbial contamination. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health studied the rates of turbidity in Philadelphia tap water over five years, and they discovered that small increases in turbidity were associated with increased hospitalizations of children for gastrointestinal infections. Surprisingly, during the five-year study, Philadelphia's water never exceeded Federal safety limits for turbidity. Researchers concluded that millions of cases of unexplained illness, which people now attribute to food poisoning or other causes, may be due to their drinking water. The symptoms of gastrointestinal infection are diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to tighten its standards for turbidity so that the maximum turbidity level allowed will be only 20% of what is permitted today.
U.S. water supplies are not regularly tested for bacteria, viruses or parasites. Instead, most water treatment facilities filter or chlorinate their water, and then assume their treatments have been effective.
