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U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#141

Post by goda90 »

intopieces wrote: post #133
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #117

A reminder that you can remove these and many other contaminants from your water with a simple undersink RO filter. They are quite inexpensive and start at about $160 on Amazon for a lifetime of clean drinking and cooking water. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...

How many gallons of water do you have to throw away to get 1 gallon of pure water with this system?

Looks like 4 to 1. Not great, but probably not a huge hit if you hook it up only for drinking water. I wonder how hard it would be to pump that waste water to your toilet tanks instead.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#142

Post by thfuran »

lubujackson wrote: post #105
nck4222 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Democracy is mostly a facade in the US anyway. But I agree, the US government isn't functioning 1) as originally intended or 2) for the benefit of the majority of the people it 'represents.' Although it's worth noting that 'as the forefathers intended' carries more weight than it typically should. Their intentions were mostly based on philosophical guess work, as they didn't have a whole lot of empirical data or exi…

I am not so sure it is far from its intentions. The founders knew and expected most politicians operating as fronts for various groups and making bad faith arguments and backroom deals. That is nothing new! Most of what they did was try to prevent the government from being wholly brigaded by one minority perspective, and if so it would be moved along after a short time. So far, so good, despite warning signs to the c…

I don't think they ever intended political parties to be even close to as influential as they are now.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#143

Post by vasilipupkin »

molteanu wrote: post #115
matthewdgreen wrote: post #48

It is constantly amazing to me that "cover up the existence of poisonous chemicals in your drinking water" is a viable position for a democratically-elected officeholder to have. What a world we live in.

I agree with your comment, but just for the sake of the argument, let's look at it like this. The elected officials are also responsible for the functioning of the society in general. Sometimes you need quite the acrobatics to achieve that, I suppose. In this very case, what would happen if this report would circulate widely and become common knowledge among the population in a short time? One outcome would be that s…

More importantly, based on this article, we literally do not know anything. How bad is this really? Is the draft report accurate ? Etc etc. let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s just be comfortable admitting we don’t know what’s going on.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#144

Post by sparker72678 »

goda90 wrote: post #141
intopieces wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many gallons of water do you have to throw away to get 1 gallon of pure water with this system?

Looks like 4 to 1. Not great, but probably not a huge hit if you hook it up only for drinking water. I wonder how hard it would be to pump that waste water to your toilet tanks instead.

Some people just let it gravity drain to another container (inside or out) and then use it for outdoor watering.

The flow rate & pressure is typically very low for the drain water with these systems, so you'd need another setup to handle pumping it to your toilet, etc.

Sending it outside is probably the easiest way to immediately use it.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#145

Post by stamps »

ryanmercer wrote: post #59
Liquix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a reverse osmosis filter hooked up in the basement / under the sink compare to distillation? The good ones spit out water that is close to 0 PPM (in most municipal water systems tap water is closer to 60-200). Is PPM a good way of measuring the types of chemicals you mentioned?

RO will still have some chemicals it can't remove. Per the CDC: >Reverse Osmosis Systems will remove common chemical contaminants (metal ions, aqueous salts), including sodium, chloride, copper, chromium, and lead; may reduce arsenic, fluoride, radium, sulfate, calcium, magnesium, potassium, nitrate, and phosphorous. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/home-water-treatme...

A lot of RO systems come with a sediment filter, carbon filter, and UV as part of the package.

Seems about as close as you can get to completely clean water.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#146

Post by pinkfoot »

nck4222 wrote: post #140
lubujackson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure it is far from its intentions. The founders knew and expected most politicians operating as fronts for various groups and making bad faith arguments and backroom deals. That is nothing new! Most of what they did was try to prevent the government from being wholly brigaded by one minority perspective, and if so it would be moved along after a short time. So far, so good, despite warning signs to the c…

Well they didn't foresee the formation of political parties. That alone upended a great deal of how the different bodies were supposed to interact. Half of congress is now lead by the executive branch, which completely undermines the checks/balances between them, which is the basis on how the government is supposed to be function. Never mind the judicial branch, which also frequently votes on partisan lines.

Is it a fact that they didn't foresee political parties?

After all, the Whigs were founded in the UK in 1678.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#147

Post by Accujack »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #92
Frost1x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is mostly a facade anymore, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone completely south to a dictatorship--there are many protections in place to keep things from falling apart but nonetheless I feel as though we're in the decline in the respect of being democratic. The underlying failed assumption in our representative democracy was that representatives would represent their constituents' interests…

Democracy can only work when the voters are interested in making life better for _everyone_ and not just themselves. The "fuck you, got mine" mentality that has developed is what will cause democracy to fail.

Lots of hyperbole there.

That mentality is more or less unique to one large generation in the US, it's not universal and not perpetual.

Also, there have been democracies for more than a thousand years that have withstood this sort of thing.

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#148

Post by logfromblammo »

Today I learned that California has at least one business that can be called a "water store".

Obviously, the chemical that's in the water that must promote such enterprises has to be reintroduced after any purification processes that may occur in the aforementioned store.

Someone please explain to me how such a business is viable in 5 gallon quantities, when the rest of the world either digs a well, buys the outflow from a metered pipe, or fills up a cistern from a tanker truck with at least 3000 gallons per delivery.

Do they not sell reverse osmosis filters or distillery pots there?

Also, if one person filters out the stable perfluorocarbons like PFOA and PFOS, and then dumps them back down the drain again, is that really helping to solve the problem?

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#149

Post by stamps »

intopieces wrote: post #133
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #117

A reminder that you can remove these and many other contaminants from your water with a simple undersink RO filter. They are quite inexpensive and start at about $160 on Amazon for a lifetime of clean drinking and cooking water. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/list-of-household-filters-appr...

How many gallons of water do you have to throw away to get 1 gallon of pure water with this system?

Some companies have 1:1, gallon of clean to gallon of waste.

Here's one that's quite popular: https://www.theperfectwater.com/Home-Master-hydroperfection-...

Re: U.S. drinking water widely contaminated with 'forever chemicals': report

#150

Post by quotemstr »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #121
quotemstr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"linked to" is a weasel phrase. It means nothing. How big is the effect size? How robust is the evidence? What's the dose-response curve?

If you're really curious, these answers can be found by Googling.

The burden of proof rests on the party making the positive claim.
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