How much do you know about your drinking water?

I haven't read all the thread and don't know if someone has mentioned it or not. but we must know the TDS value of water and what it should be according to our region and recommendation.
It's important for our bones and if the TDS value is not good it will hamper you in the old age.
I am telling this because all these filters and everything take away natural nutrients too no matter what percentage. and to add some fragrance like MJ says. just get yourself a basic filter is all I want to tell. going with the complex or highly advanced might just be making things difficult for you or young ones in your family.
I have a manual filter in my home which has three layer cleaning while preserving the nutrients and maintaining the TDS value. it doesn't taste as good as I would like it to be but it still is better than the unfiltered one.

 

I am in an apartment building.
I will probably move, but not until my lease runs out which is in October.
That will probably not make a difference because where I intend to move to is also on city water. (same city)
On the plus side where I intend on moving to is nearly 200 years younger than this place, so they may already have decent filters installed there.

 

The propur filter is a ceramic filter, I see no references to charcoal on their website regarding this ceramic filter.
http://www.propurusa.com/ProOne-G20-M-Filter-Element_p_151.html#tab-3

The filter in the Keurig however IS activated charcoal.

 

Distilled water shouldn't be any issue because you'll get plenty of minerals/vitamin supplements that is put into our everyday food. Now if you were from another country with different supplement provisions for your food then that would have to be checked out.

 

FWIW, Also from http://www.propurusa.com/ProOne-G20-M-Filter-Element_p_151.html#tab-3

 

seems like anything you eat or drink these days has some kind of additive that isn't good for human beings cooking oils meats breads even vitamins have additives' in the fine print
so I'm old and I do take vitamins but I take some one day and some the next , I don't take them every day , as far as the water go's I'm now drinking purified water , when I first moved here about 50 years ago in this town we had our own well and the water was good then they started adding crap for our own good now the water doesn't taste right the only thing I do with it is shower with it when you stand in the mist you can smell the chorine so its 5 gal water jugs of purified water we cook with and drink any more , its sad when every thing has bad things added to make food look pretty some times we are better off eating the labels off the box then the crap in it !

 

Eating the labels will provide you with 35% of the FDA's U.S. recommended daily fiber!
Our Parmesan Cheese has an allowance of 4% cellulose fiber as per the govt. Cellulose Fiber = Saw dust. About a year ago several companies got caught adding more than 10% cellulose fiber in our Parmesan cheese

 

Then it turns into blue cheese.

 

That's o.k. cuz I like blu cheese too

 

I rambled so much I don't know what opinion I brought up that you are talking about.
Energy as in how we use nonrenewable for it? The energy that's spent on fuel/trucks/infrastructure to actually get and bottle the water?
Or the energy that runs the distiller I mentioned?
(That one runs on solar)
As for the 70%, 97% of that is in the oceans. Do you know what's in the oceans these days? It's not good.

Spoiler

http://www.livescience.com/29673-how-much-water-on-earth.html

@CHEF-KOCH: Thank you for mentioning whats going on with plastics. I think about it all the time. We're in trouble.
Also the post about the pipe situation. I've thought of that countless times thinking that the infrastructure and pipes in buildings
have to be in rough shape by now. You confirmed that for me. Ugh.. Out of sight out of mind? Then we can mix the two, pvc pipe!


@JFKI: You mentioned still water and what happens after hydrants are used. Hydrants are flushed on a schedule to get the rust etc
out, or to drop into a storm drain/sewage line to unblock/get it moving again.

 

Plastics from water can be filtered out.

Israel these days desalinates a helluvalot of water for its use and is even turning desert into arable land...

These areas - so many areas around the world - have plenty of sunshine to do it with. Today, we already have the tech to do it with! Imagine "tomorrow"...

Btw, that Slovenian kid's project (not Melania's kid ), as an attempt to rid our oceans of plastic debris, is about to begin - they have ambitious targets, so let's see how far we have managed with this...

 

Uh, so long as you don't eat the poor sods living... well, especially in some places...

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...c-pollution-found-in-10km-deep-mariana-trench

'Extraordinary' levels of pollutants found in 10km deep Mariana trench

Presence of manmade chemicals in most remote place on planet shows nowhere is safe from human impact, say scientists

A container of Spam rests at 4,947 meters on the slopes of a canyon leading to the Sirena Deep in the Mariana trench.Photograph: Noaa Office of Ocean Exploration

Damian Carrington

Monday 13 February 2017 23.33 GMTFirst published on Monday 13 February 2017 16.00 GMT

Scientists have discovered “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution in the most remote and inaccessible place on the planet – the 10km deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.

Small crustaceans that live in the pitch-black waters of the trench, captured by a robotic submarine, were contaminated with 50 times more toxic chemicals than crabs that survive in heavily polluted rivers in China.

“We still think of the deep ocean as being this remote and pristine realm, safe from human impact, but our research shows that, sadly, this could not be further from the truth,” said Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in the UK, who led the research.

“The fact that we found such extraordinary levels of these pollutants reallybrings home the long-term, devastating impact that mankind is having on the planet,” he said.

Jamieson’s team identified two key types of severely toxic industrial chemicals that were banned in the late 1970s, but do not break down in the environment, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). These chemicals have previously been found at high levels in Inuit people in the Canadian Arctic and in killer whales and dolphins in western Europe.

The research, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, suggests that the POPs infiltrate the deepest parts of the oceans as dead animals and particles of plastic fall downwards. POPs accumulate in fat and are therefore concentrated in creatures up the food chain. They are also water-repellent and so stick to plastic waste.

“The very bottom of the deep trenches like the Mariana are inhabited by incredibly efficient scavenging animals, like the 2cm-long amphipods we sampled, so any little bit of organic material that falls down, these guys turn up in huge numbers and devour it,” said Jamieson.

He said it was not unexpected that some POPs would be found in the deepest parts of the oceans: “When it gets down into the trenches, there is nowhere else for it to go. The surprise was just how high the levels were – the contamination in the animals was sky high.”

The level of one type of POP, called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), was only equalled anywhere in the northwest Pacific in Suruga Bay in Japan, an infamous pollution blackspot. The researchers also found severe contamination in amphipods collected in the Kermadec trench, which is 7,000km from the Mariana trench. The pollution was ubiquitous, found “in all samples across all species at all depths in both trenches”, the scientists said.

PCBs were manufactured from the 1930s to the 1970s, when their appalling impact on people and wildlife was realised. About a third of the 1.3m tonnes produced has already leaked into coastal sediments and the open oceans, with a steady stream still thought to be coming from poorly protected landfill sites.

An expedition conducted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year also found various manmade items on the slopes leading to the Sirena Deep, part of the Mariana trench, and the nearby Enigma Seamount. They included a tin of Spam, a can of Budweiser beer and several plastic bags.

The results are both significant and disturbing, said the marine ecologist Katherine Dafforn at the University of New South Wales in Australia and not part of the research team: “The trenches are many miles away from any industrial source and suggests that the delivery of these pollutants occurs over long distances despite regulation since the 1970s.

“We still know more about the surface of the moon than that of the ocean floor,” Dafforn said. She said the new research showed that the deep ocean trenches are not as isolated as people imagine. “Jamieson’s team has provided clear evidence that the deep ocean, rather than being remote, is highly connected to surface waters. Their findings are crucial for future monitoring and management of these unique environments.”

POPs cause a wide range of damage to life, particularly harming reproductive success. Jamieson is now assessing the impact on the hardy trench creatures, which survive water pressures equivalent to balancing a tonne weight on a fingertip and temperatures of just 1C.

He is also examining the deep sea animals for evidence of plastic pollution, feared to be widespread in the oceans, which has been the focus of much recent attention, leading to bans on plastic microbeads in cosmetics in the UK and US. “I reckon it will be there,” he said.

Jamieson said it had been positive that the dangers of POPs had been identified and their use ended but that plastic pollution presented a new concern for contamination of the oceans. “We’ve just done it again,” he said.

 

I knew about the larger pellets/resin out in the ocean. Now that you brought up the microbeads I think there was some sort group against them due
to the fact they can pass through water treatment plants back into drinking water. I didn't even think of them being in the ocean.
The small fish eat them, then on up through the food chain eventually to us. Fantastic.

 

Seriously worrying, since our "chemical friends" esp. in the "industry" have been extremely arrogant regarding proper scrutiny of their "glorious (read profitable) inventions".

Remember the stuff used in fridges etc.? When it was finally understood as seriously dangerous for life on Earth, we banned it. However, what they invented instead was even more persistent, stable and could trigger many more chains of reactions than the previous compound used.

Similarly with the phthalates etc. as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od3NE0y3LkQ

We have a continuation of the story: http://www.hogarsintoxicos.org/es/node/501

When shall we learn that neo-liberal deregulation BS does not work for ANYONE HUMAN, including any living species other than us?!?

 

I've learned that since around 15 years ago. No doubts, we are human but we still animals driven by instincts merged with intelligence which create our emotions. We are driven by emotions.

 

I've worked with refrigerants most of my working life, they are not nearly as dangerous as you think they are. The only danger I've experienced was heating up refrigerants with an open flame which then will create phosgene gas. They banned chlorine based refrigerants because they thought it was affecting the ozone hole in the atmosphere at the south pole, but the hole closed up again before the ban was fully enforced, This made it very questionable whether banning the old refrigerants made any difference in the ozone layer. All that ban did was to outrageously increase the price of refrigerants to the point that made it cheaper just to buy a new a/c or refrigerator. The new refrigerants do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, and they are said to be better for the ecology, Don't know if they are better for the ecology than the old stuff, they could be worse