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Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

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Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#81

Post by rsync »

kodablah wrote: post #69
resters wrote: post #51

It's nice to see the local officials concerned and doing something about the problem, but in many municipalities the local officials are part of the problem. I think that the mayor of every city should be required to eat a fish caught in the most polluted stream that runs through the city, and state governors should be required to eat a fish caught from the most polluted stream in the state. To wash it down, each sho…

Although surely not serious, lots of naivete here. This assumes everyone values personal health over financial health. This prevents anyone from wanting to get elected to fix an existing problem. This places guilt even on the innocent if they are subjected to upstream or state-level pollution. On and on and on. You either have a problem with existing laws not being enforced or there not being laws to enforce concerni…

"Although surely not serious ..."

Not your parent but I took it seriously and I think "skin in the game" structures like this should be taken very seriously - they are likely the best mechanisms for aligning interests.

"This assumes everyone values personal health over financial health."

Very easy to solve this one - the elected official doesn't eat the fish and drink the water, their children do.

"This prevents anyone from wanting to get elected to fix an existing problem."

This is a good and important point - you would scare away potential candidates for office if existing systems are already broken/unsafe. I don't know how to arrange a neat solution to this.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#82

Post by zzzcpan »

ksec wrote: post #61

What are the current best Home Water Filter we could get? Are the Brita MAXTRA+ any good? And which one is the most affordable? ( We now need to paid extra money to get drinking water, in many ways I think this is backward as a society )

Reverse-osmosis based systems are the current best, cheap and, well, pretty much the only ones available on the market, since it's the cheapest way to purify water. But they have a learning curve, require quite a bit of maintenance and waste some water. Although I believe you can trade wear out of the membrane for less water waste, if water is too expensive in your region. The most basic system costs like $100, has at least five filtering stages with three different cartridge replacement rates and likely needs periodic chlorine disinfection. You can add other stages afterwards: mineralization, UV, etc.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#83

Post by ptero »

kodablah wrote: post #74
okmokmz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong "Allaire found the amount of violations varied by year, affecting as many as 45 million people in some years, representing about 28% of the U.S. population." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2018/02/12/tens-m... "Tainted tap water isn’t just a problem in Flint, Michigan. In any given year from 1982 to 2015, somewhere between 9 million and 45 million Americans got their drinking water from a source tha…

>> most places > Wrong [...] 45 million [...] 28% of the U.S. population I don't think it's fair to call the comment "Wrong". If anything, this supposed refutation is saying "Right".

I might be taking words out of context, but 45 million is nowhere near 28% of the US population; this is a little under 15%. I am not arguing for or against the problem of water pollution, but this is just seriously suspect math.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#84

Post by bobbygoodlatte »

kodablah wrote: post #69
resters wrote: post #51

It's nice to see the local officials concerned and doing something about the problem, but in many municipalities the local officials are part of the problem. I think that the mayor of every city should be required to eat a fish caught in the most polluted stream that runs through the city, and state governors should be required to eat a fish caught from the most polluted stream in the state. To wash it down, each sho…

Although surely not serious, lots of naivete here. This assumes everyone values personal health over financial health. This prevents anyone from wanting to get elected to fix an existing problem. This places guilt even on the innocent if they are subjected to upstream or state-level pollution. On and on and on. You either have a problem with existing laws not being enforced or there not being laws to enforce concerni…

More people value personal health over financial health than would admit in a survey. They just often don't realize it until they've lost their health.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#85

Post by rsync »

amelius wrote: post #52
BitterSweets wrote: post #2

Is there anywhere in the US that you can live without fear or worry of having contaminated water or air?

What kind of equipment would you need to check your drinking water for any kind of contamination? What would it cost? Just curious.

"What kind of equipment would you need to check your drinking water for any kind of contamination? What would it cost?"

You need to send it away for testing - it would be impractical to home test for all of the things you'd want to test for.

It's likely that your local municipality has a testing service that you can send water into for $50 or $100 and have rough testing done for lead and e-coli and crypto and so on.

A more extensive (and expensive) test will test for essentially everything, including VOCs and chemicals and all manner of manufacturing byproducts, plastics, phthalates, etc.

That would cost you $600 or $800 ...

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#86

Post by hammock »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #20

"Last November, she announced that areas around the Cottage Grove plant had elevated levels of some cancers including childhood cancers , and lower fertility. And, she said in court filings, 3M was to blame." - I wonder if chemicals are the cause of the 50% drop in male sperm count in developed countries [over the last 30 years].

The answer is almost definitely yes, at least in great part. Furthermore, the top two killers in America are heart disease and cancer. 80% of heart disease is preventable by diet - avoiding foods that cause insulin resistance (sugar) and gut dysfunction (chemicals). The top cancer and many others are triggered by environmental variables (chemicals).

And I know I am going to be downvoted for not citing, maybe someone who agrees can help back me up, and also for saying "chemicals" and there are people here who cringe because everything is chemicals and most chemicals are good, I want to be clear I'm talking about the bad chemicals here- PFCs like the ones in the article, heavy metals, other petroleum-derived baddies, and some others.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#87

Post by andlier »

cronix wrote: post #7
empath75 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everywhere. Tap water in the us is perfectly safe in most places.

More and more microplastics are showing up in drinking water because the particles are so small. They seem to be mostly coming from our clothing released during washing, which is increasingly made of synthetic materials. "The US had the highest contamination rate, at 94%, with plastic fibres found in tap water sampled at sites including Congress buildings, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters, and Tr…

Microplastics from car tyres seems to be a big source as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#88

Post by hammock »

ksec wrote: post #61

What are the current best Home Water Filter we could get? Are the Brita MAXTRA+ any good? And which one is the most affordable? ( We now need to paid extra money to get drinking water, in many ways I think this is backward as a society )

RO system is the best as many have mentioned.

However, of the pitcher filters, ZEROWATER is the only one certified to remove lead. It's what I use.

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#89

Post by hammock »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
BitterSweets wrote: post #2

Is there anywhere in the US that you can live without fear or worry of having contaminated water or air?

Yes, you need to be aware of things though, especially if you aren’t using municipal water. Look for superfund sites, former dumps, former military facilities, etc and avoid them. Even things like army depots and train depots. If you’re in an area with well water, understand what’s upstream. In an old city, test the soil if you grow vegetables in the yard, you may have coal ash or other nasties.

>Look for superfund sites, former dumps, former military facilities, etc and avoid them

Sorry Bay Area....

Re: Cancer-Linked Chemicals Manufactured by 3M Are Turning Up in Drinking Water

#90

Post by hokkos »

armitron wrote: post #79
ksec wrote: post #61

What are the current best Home Water Filter we could get? Are the Brita MAXTRA+ any good? And which one is the most affordable? ( We now need to paid extra money to get drinking water, in many ways I think this is backward as a society )

Reverse osmosis only for peace of mind. Nothing else is worth it in my opinion.

But then there is not enough minerals in the water. How do you deal with that ?
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