Water Quality Association Press Release  -  May 9, 2008  –  Lisle, Illinois

Fifty percent of Americans believe federal laws governing drinking water are not strict enough, according to a scientific opinion poll conducted for the Water Quality Association.

The release of these results follows a survey in March that showed more than two-thirds of Americans expressing concern over pharmaceuticals in their water. The U.S. Senate has begun public hearings to look into the issue, holding its latest session yesterday.

“This is National Drinking Water Week, so there is no better time to respond to the concerns of the American people,” said Peter J. Censky, Executive Director of WQA.

Only 34 percent of respondents stated that they believed federal drinking water quality laws are “fair.” Additionally, 38 percent said they do not believe their municipality is doing everything it should to make sure water reaching their home is safe to drink.

Taken together, the two polls show that concern about water quality has increased. The first poll, taken in January, was completed before news reports emerged about pharmaceuticals in water. The March survey was conducted in the immediate aftermath of those reports.

Overall, just over two-thirds of Americans – 67 percent – are generally concerned about the quality of their household water supply. In the January poll, 55 expressed such concern. Similarly, in January 48 percent of Americans believed that their drinking water is “as safe as it should be.” In the March poll only 39 percent believed this.

Americans seem to increasingly believe that responsibility for safe drinking water is a public/private partnership. Seventy percent said they believe that home filtration plays a role, along with their municipality, in ensuring safe drinking water.

Many communities have begun responding to concerns about pharmaceuticals in water. In March, a study by the Chicago Tribune found trace concentrations in water collected at City Hall, an elementary school on Chicago’s South Side and a suburban public library.

The random sample surveys were conducted by Applied Research-West, Inc.

About WQA: The Water Quality Association is a non-profit international trade association representing the residential, commercial, industrial and small community water treatment industry. Its membership consists of both manufacturers as well as dealers/distributors of equipment. WQA is a resource and information source, a voice for the industry, an educator of professionals, a laboratory for product testing, and a communicator with the public. WQA has more than 2,500 members nationwide.

Have you ever been in a situation where the water supply to your home has been interrupted? Many people have experienced such a problem when a major storm disrupted their local water utility. Generally, the news services provide a warning that a potentially disruptive weather event is coming your way, but sometimes there is no warning. What will you do if this happens to you?

Such an event occurred in Maryland on December 23, 2008 with no apparent warning. A massive 66-inch water pipe broke in the affluent Bethesda area, creating an overwhelming torrent of water that immediately endangered the lives of anyone who happened to be nearby. The outside temperature was in the 20’s and the local rescue teams had to work quickly to extract people from their cars using boats and helicopters. It appears that everyone involved made it out safely. But what about the water supply to all the affected homes and businesses?

In this instance, residents were fortunate that the local water authority was able to redirect the water supply and restore service the same day. However, in many instances, an emergency like this one results in a disruption to water delivery that lasts for days. If you have ever been in this situation, you know that even a day without water seems like a lifetime, being unable to flush a toilet or find safe water to drink.

Once water service is restored, life can return to normal – almost. Sometimes the disruption creates a breach in the water line that allows contaminants to enter the water supply. Even after the authorities declare the water “safe,” prudent people may want to take extra precautions, like boiling their tap water before consuming it. The Environmental Protection Agency has published guidelines on its public web site that you may find useful regarding how to handle “Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water” (see http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/faq/emerg.html).

Taking the EPA’s recommendations one big step further, you may want to ensure the quality of your disinfected water by pushing it through a compressed carbon block water filter before drinking it. Multi-Pure Corporation manufacturers excellent filters for this purpose that have a lifetime warranty (see http://www.water2drink.com/products/multipure_products.asp), and they also offer an emergency hand pump to make the job easier (Model D600 Emergency Hand Pump retails for $35.00). You can disconnect the input line on your water filter and attach it to the hand pump. Putting the water pump input line into the disinfected water and then applying a bit of elbow grease will produce gallons of drinking water that you will be quite pleased with.

Please be prepared – it’s an “emergency” because you never know when it may happen to you!

The answer is both yes and no. There is little doubt that adding chlorine to public drinking water supplies to serve as an affordable disinfectant has had the very positive health effect of eliminating a host of water-borne diseases such as cholera. Many people who have become accustomed to drinking tap water even associate the smell of chlorine in their water with it being “safe” to drink. The fact is that chlorine offers health benefits right up to the point where you ingest it. But what then?

The chlorine in treated water essentially is bleach, and it’s unlikely that most people would consider drinking bleach to be good for their health. Medical studies have linked chlorine consumption and associated chlorine byproducts to cancer, heart trouble, premature senility, hardening of the arteries, and a host of other ills. And while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established “safe” levels of chlorine in drinking water supplies, most rational people would prefer to consume none of it. So, what’s the answer

Rather than expect any governmental agency to intervene and change your water treatment process in the near term, individuals can take matters into their own hands and simply begin filtering their drinking water at the point of use. Chlorine is fairly easy to filter out, while at the same time a variety of other potential contaminants that may be present (e.g., cryptosporidium, giardia, MTBE, lead, mercury, arsenic, asbestos, etc.) will be eliminated or significantly reduced as well. The simplest and most cost-effective solution is to filter water through a high quality compressed carbon block filter.

Would you like to see a demonstration of how such a filter effectively strips chlorine out of tap water?

Then click on the link below to see a short 1-minute video on YouTube.com. Most swimming pool owners are familiar with a chemical solution called OTO that is used to test the concentration of chlorine in pool water – the darker the water color after adding OTO, the more chlorine is present. The video shows a simple OTO test of tap water and a comparison to water drawn from the same source but pushed through a compressed carbon block drinking water filter.

You can try this test yourself at home or work. Even if you don’t own a drinking water filter yet, you can use OTO solution (obtainable from any pool supply store) to measure how much chlorine is in your tap water. Be warned, however, that once you begin filtering your tap water, you will be amazed at how quickly you and your family become “water snobs” and refuse to drink or cook with unfiltered water!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rJzPQ6D-vY

A Liquid Investment

Many people think about managing their household finances as if the household were a small business. That is to say, they know that household income minus living expenses equals profit or savings. But most purchases for the home are not evaluated the same way a small business would evaluate them. Businesses think of equipment purchases in terms of “Payback Analysis” and “Return On Investment.” Business leaders demand to know how quickly the business will obtain through operating cost savings the full return of the initial purchase price, and they want to know the expected percentage rate of return from the investment of precious capital.

The purchase of a point-of-use drinking water filtration system for the home readily lends itself to just this kind of hard-nosed business investment evaluation process.

Payback Analysis

If you are buying bottled water for home use, there is a steady stream of your cash being expended to buy drinking water. A family of four, consuming the minimum recommended quantity of drinking water each day (i.e., 64 ounces per person), drinks 60 gallons of water each month. At an average price per gallon of 79¢ (not including sales tax and delivery costs) for bottled water, the household spends more than:

• $47 each month, or
• $564 each year for bottled water.

A Multi-Pure® point-of-use drinking water filtration system will deliver a gallon of fresh, clean water to your home for about 8¢ per gallon (based upon the $59.95 cost of a Multi-Pure® Model CB6 replacement filter divided by its rated capacity of 750 gallons). In a direct comparison to the bottled water costs outlined above, the savings from using a Multi-Pure® point-of-use water filtration system is:

• $42 each month, or
• $504 each year.

Using the $399.95 list purchase price of the Multi-Pure® Model MP 750 SB Stainless Steel Unit for the payback analysis, the initial purchase price of a point-of-use drinking water filtration system is paid back to you in full in less than 10 months! ($399.95 / $42 monthly savings for a family of 4) After the initial 10-month payback period, your family is saving the full $42 each and every month.

Return On Investment

Using the numbers outlined above in the Payback Analysis, an initial cash expenditure of $399.95 produces a savings of $504 the very first year for a family of 4. This represents a return on your initial investment of 126%! ($504 / $399.95) Compared to the annual rate of return that you currently receive on your personal savings or investment accounts, or even the yearly growth you are realizing from the appreciation of your home, the purchase of a Multi-Pure® point-of-use drinking water system is a very attractive investment. And the savings you realize in future years is 100% yours because the full purchase price was completely recovered in the first year! You simply have a 8¢ per gallon operating expense for a household appliance with a lifetime warranty.

Did You Know that Two Thirds of Your Body is Water?

Water helps keep your muscles and skin toned, assists in weight loss, transports oxygen and nutrients to cells, eliminates toxins and wastes from the body, and regulates body temperature. Drinking refreshing, clean water plays a major role in reducing the risk of certain diseases.

For better health, drink at least 8 glasses of clean water a day!

Human survival is dependent on water. The average adult body is 55 to 75 percent water. Because our bodies are mostly water, water figures heavily in how our bodies function. Aside from helping digestion and absorption of food, water regulates body temperature, carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, and removes toxins and other wastes.

Water also cushions joints and protects tissues and organs, including the spinal cord, from shock and damage. Conversely, lack of water (dehydration) can be the cause of many ailments.

Hard Water vs. Soft Water

According to Whitney and Hamilton’s Nutrition, soft water (water with the minerals removed) appears to contribute to a higher incidence of hypertension and heart disease in areas where it is used. Hard water (water with the minerals left in) may oppose these conditions.

According to an article in Good Housekeeping, nutritionists have determined that the amount of minerals in your tap water can make a significant difference to your health. The article cited a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association that found that drinking “hard” water may actually reduce your risk of heart disease.

Water and Weight Loss

Water plays a major part in weight loss. Because water contains no calories, it can serve as an appetite suppressant and helps the body metabolize stored fat. It may possibly be one of the most significant factors in losing weight.

Also, drinking more water helps to reduce water retention by stimulating the kidneys. Studies recommend that if you are overweight, you should add one glass of water to your daily requirement for every 25 pounds over your recommended weight.

Are you drinking enough?

Consumer Reports on Health (8/01) says:

Most people don’t drink enough water. Resulting problems can include everything from muscle cramps, headaches and fatigue (especially at the end of the day) to constipation, kidney stones and urinary-tract infections.

What’s the minimum amount of water you need each day?

Do the math:

1. Record your weight
2. Multiply line one by 0.04. This equals pounds of water lost
3. Multiply line two by 2. This is the number of cups of water needed from all sources – food and drink.

At least half should come from water itself… and remember, more is better.

Hello, and welcome to the Water2Drink.com Blog!

To start things off, I wanted to share an interesting article from our web site that explains in pretty good detail, why you need a water filtration system.

Inexpensive Clean Water, When and Where You Need It

You can live without many, many things in your life. You even can endure for more than a week without any food. But you cannot live without daily access to safe drinking water. Your life literally depends upon it. The key question is, what’s your source?

It’s true that water, like the air you breathe, is for the most part free. With water, what you pay for is the quality of the water and its delivery to the point of use. So, why do you need a drinking water filtration system?

Most people take it on faith that the water coming from the tap in their home is safe to drink. And, generally speaking, it is. Well, at least it passes minimum government standards for quality and safety. But how comfortable are you that the government standards applied to your drinking water really are stringent enough, and enforced well enough, to protect your family’s health 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? While treating water by adding chlorine to the water supply to kill water-borne diseases has been a tremendous boon to the health of the general population in developed countries, it is a proven fact that chlorine is not good for your body. Chlorine is a good thing right up to the point where you swallow it, and then it’s a bad thing.

The simple solution is to filter your drinking water at the point of use in your home. And if you filter your water to remove chlorine and anything else that makes the water taste bad, why not use a truly effective filtration system that eliminates as many other unhealthy contaminants as possible? While there are many, many water filtering alternatives you can consider to remove chlorine and improve the taste of drinking water, there are surprisingly few that are up to the challenging task of eliminating invisible, hard-to-remove contaminants such as Arsenic V. Not all water filtration systems are created equal, and the devil is deep in the details.

The Problems with Bottled Water

OK, so you agree that drinking tap water is not good and you already have switched to drinking bottled water. So, why is installing and using an effective point-of-use drinking water system for in-home use a better approach? Please consider the following:

• Bottled water is very expensive. A gallon of water purchased from the local grocery store typically costs about ten times as much or more compared to filtered water (79¢ per gallon vs. 8¢). If a family of four drank just the minimum recommended daily amount of water per person (64 ounces), the cost would be about $11 plus sales tax per week. The comparative cost for filtered water is closer to $1. Switching to filtered water will save well over $500 every year!
  
• Bottled water is not as clean and safe as you might think. Studies of the bottled water industry indicate that the quality level varies significantly from one source to the next. You may not be getting what you are paying for.
  
• Bottled water is heavy to lift and transport, and it’s bulky to store. A family of four that drinks the minimum recommended amount of water per person would handle 112 pounds of water each and every week, or nearly 3 tons in a year! Alternately, a point-of-use filtration system would dispense water as needed, a glass or pitcher at a time without the need to store anything. Nothing to transport, nothing to store.
  
• Bottled water is inconvenient. Buying bottled water typically requires a trip to the store. When you are about to run out, you must curtail your usage of water or stop what you are doing and make another trip to the store. Alternately, a point-of-use water filtration system provides an unlimited supply of drinking water that is available whenever you want it. Why ration something that is so vital to your good health?
  
• Bottled water has a negative environmental impact. Bottled water usually is packaged and sold in a plastic container of some kind. While some of the plastic that’s discarded after the water has been consumed gets recycled by environmentally-conscious consumers, most of it just ends up in a landfill.

Find Out for Yourself!

The U.S. Government’s Environmental Protection Agency provides an interesting experiment that demonstrates the procedures used by municipal water treatment centers to purify water. Visit their web site at: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/kids/flash/flash_filtration.html to find out for yourself! Once you have completed this experiment for yourself, we’re sure that you will be convinced of the soundness of our approach to water filtration.