Like the ancient mariner of long ago, we are surrounded by water but it’s simply not potable. Every day the news is full of stories regarding our water supply, and the news is not good. Both organic and inorganic contaminates have made our fresh water to be, well, not so fresh. Agricultural and urban runoff as well as the toxic waste being “accidentally” dumped into our waterways have made it more and more difficult to clean the water without side effects often as bad as the contaminate itself. What kind of affects could the chlorine we add have on our bodies? And what about Fluoride?
We complain about the cost of gas going up, but have you seen the price of water lately? We often buy a water bottle while we are out, rather than soda, and we pay $.99 for that 16 oz. bottle. It takes eight of those bottles to make a gallon, which means that we have just paid $7.92 a gallon, not including tax, for drinkable water. I remember when I was a child there was a free spring where we could go and fill as many jugs as we wished and it didn’t cost a thing. That spring was shut down years ago when a new home was built just above it and the spring became contaminated.
Water gives life. Without water we would die. We don’t drink enough water. Actually, most of us are dehydrated and we don’t even know it. “But I’m not thirsty,” we might say, thinking that thirst is the first sign of dehydration. It is not. “I drink plenty of fluids during the day.” Fluids contain water, but they also contain other ingredients that prevent us from absorbing the water from the fluid. Sugar is a good example. Sugar slows down the rate at which water is absorbed by our bodies. Since many of us equate fluids with soda, we have to understand that none of the water in our soda is being absorbed into our body… but our body is absorbing the sugar!
Early signs of dehydration include sleepiness, muscle weakness, headache, dizziness, sunken eyes, dry skin, low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and respiration, loss of appetite, fatigue and chills. These signs occur when our bodies are only 5% dehydrated. The color of our urine is a good indicator of our body’s water level; the darker the urine, the more dehydrated we are. When our body becomes 10% dehydrated we may experience one or more of the following symptoms: muscle spasms, vomiting, dim vision, confusion, difficulty breathing, seizures, chest and abdominal pain, followed by unconsciousness.
If there is a “magic elixir” that will take away all of our ills, water is that potion. Have a headache? Drink some water. That mid-afternoon slump just hit? Get up and get yourself a glass of water. This is not some new scientific breakthrough… why do you think they put water coolers in the office buildings to begin with? If you are contemplating the purchase of real estate, might I suggest you spend some time investigating the water supply? There is nothing more important than a clean water supply, nothing.
My mother was visiting us while we were living in Oregon and we took her up to Mt. Hood so that she could see the snow in July. While we were touring Timberline lodge my mother wandered off. It took us a little while to find her. All of a sudden my daughter points up the mountain and exclaims, “There she is!” Sure enough, here comes my mother back down the mountain. She just had to hike up and touch the snow herself and take a drink from the water running off the melting snow. We later filled a mason jar with water from the mountain stream and headed home.
When we got home we discovered that the water wasn’t quite as clear as we thought it would be. It became obvious that there was more in the water than just water. After my mother got back home she began to feel weak and her doctor diagnosed her with parasites, apparently from her little drink from a mountain stream. What other pollutants might be found in that jar of water? Remember, it was snowmelt from a mountaintop; there were no outside contaminates besides the pollutants found in the air up there.
Most of our public water sources include water that ran off the streets during the last storm. That oil that spilled in your driveway last week? It’s in there. You neighbor’s fertilizer? It’s there too. These chemicals are added to the organic compounds naturally found in lakes and rivers, creating a veritable soup of contaminates. No municipal water supplier could, in good consciousness, sell this water directly to the customer. They must treat it somehow to reduce or eliminate as many of these contaminates as possible.
Most municipalities chose to chlorinate the water because chlorine kills bacteria. The only problem with this is the fact that not all bacteria are bad for us. Some bacteria are not only good for us, but are actually necessary in the proper functioning of our bodies. Chlorine kills both friendly and unfriendly bacteria and, if taking in large amounts, can kill us. Remember, chlorine gas was used quite heavily in World War I. Chlorine has been linked to birth defects, cancers of the bladder, kidney, liver, pancreas, urinary tract and colon as well as brain damage. Swimmers, whose blood was sampled immediately after leaving the pool, have shown elevated levels of chloroform in their blood. This is apparently because the chlorine is absorbed directly through the skin without going through the liver for detoxification.
There is also a by-product of this process: total Trihalomethanes, or tTHMs. They are a natural result of chlorinated water and are considered safe at low levels. At high levels they can cause liver, kidney and central nervous system damage and have been linked with bladder cancer. If you drink water with high levels of tTHMs our liver and kidneys will be able to detoxify the water, but will be damaged in the process. If you bathe in the water, they are absorbed directly through the skin.
There has been an upsurge recently in the reports of odd creatures being born. Frogs with multiple legs seem to be an early indicator as we are now seeing more and more larger animals being born with extra appendages. Recently scientists have discovered that we have many more female fish than male and the number of those who have both sexual organs is increasing as well. It is believed that the culprit is; now get this, birth control pills.
The theory is this: when a woman takes the pill, not all of the estrogen is absorbed by her body and quite a bit comes back out through her urine. So many women are on the pill now that the estrogen levels in the rivers are now up as a result. This is the only explanation they can find because it is not an isolated event; it’s happening everywhere.
We have not been very careful about what we build near our water sources. Remember Love Canal? Contaminated water has caused more deaths world wide, throughout history, than any single other toxin. Yes, water gives life, but it can also kill. We expect the government to protect us from these activities, but what do we do when one of the worst offenders is our government itself? The federal government has identified 168 different sites that are highly contaminated and must be cleaned up as soon as possible. Of these sites, 130 are on military bases.
An example is Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. The government has finally admitted that the water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated from 1968 until 1985, when the wells were closed. There are those who, on their deathbed, confessed to having been a part of the dumping of toxic waste at the camp as far back as the 1950’s. The trenches where this waste was dumped were right beside the water source. How much better off could the new wells be, with so much contamination so close by? To make matters worse, the surrounding area also draws from the wells at Camp Lejeune. The number of children in the camp who have been diagnosed with childhood leukemia is far above the national average.
The only things that have prevented more contamination are the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Without these measures, more industries would allow more pollutants into our already over-burdened eco-system. The Pentagon would really like Congress to declare that the military is exempt from these laws, citing National Security (their favorite flag to wave). “Environmental regulations are a threat to National Security since they restricted the military.” Yeah, they restricted the toxic waste dumping that is poisoning our whole world.
All over the world we find “leukemia clusters”, which are groups of people who have more cases of leukemia amongst them than the national average. In many of these areas, the leukemia rate is three and four times the national average. Each one of these clusters can be traced back to contaminated water. Often the local government refuses to admit that there is a problem, compounding it as people continue to use the water and more and more people are diagnosed with cancer and other illnesses.
Most municipal water suppliers also add fluoride to their drinking water. I personally never understood why the fluoride in your toothpaste was unfit for consumption but the fluoride in the water was supposed to be good for you. What’s the difference? The difference is a good PR (Public Relations) campaign.
Alcoa manufactures fluoride. It is a by-product of their main industry: aluminum. The man who came up with this brilliant idea might be called a genius in some circles and a murderer in others. Here in America we have doctors handing out prescriptions for fluoride drops to families on well water, while in Europe 98% of countries there have banned fluoride from drinking water. What do they know that we do not?
When I say that fluoride is a by-product of the aluminum industry, what I really mean is that it is toxic waste. If Alcoa were not selling it to municipal water suppliers all over the country, they would have to find a toxic dump to ship to. Fluoride is known to cause cancer, specifically bone cancer, and has been linked with brain damage, lower IQ and infertility. In lab tests on rats, fluoride is shown to cause hyperactivity. I wonder if hyperactivity rates are increased in communities that fluoridate their water.
“Fluoride helps build strong teeth and gums!” we were told. The truth is that fluoride actually makes dental enamel more porous. In other words, it breaks down the protective coating of our teeth. The fluoride myth is just that, a myth. There is no proof to support any of the claims made regarding the benefits of fluoride in our water. There is evidence that consumption of fluoride can make bones brittle. So why do we add this poison to our water?
There are many who believe that there is a sinister reason behind this activity: mind control. During the Second World War, German doctors took advantage of the concentration camps and used some of these prisoners for experiments. One of the things discovered is that those prisoners who were given water with fluoride in it tended to be less likely to rise up against their German captors. They were actually more likely to simply obey orders than try anything daring like sabotage or escape. Coupled with the fact that IQ levels seem to drop as a result of taking fluoride, is it any wonder that many claim that fluoride is an important part of the Dumming Down of America.
Could this be why we seem to be moving away from fresh water and towards the desert? The population centers around the Great Lakes, the largest fresh water source in the world, are rapidly declining, meanwhile Arizona is seeing such an incredible building boom that Phoenix and Tucson are expected to literally grow together in the next decade. Why? There is no sustainable water there… it’s the desert folks! It just doesn’t make sense.
We’ve heard the threats for years… “Our water supply is not safe!” “Terrorists could easily slip chemicals into our lakes and rivers and kill us all!” How about this: maybe we’re already doing that to ourselves. How about our governmental agencies are so over worked, understaffed, and, occasionally, corrupt that they “don’t see” polluters fouling the waterways. Corporate greed has gotten out of control in this country and the health of our families, animals, and our entire world are paying the price.
When I say the entire world, I mean it. The Inuit of Greenland still consume the traditional diet of their ancestors. According to the research of Dr. Weston Price, they should be among the healthiest people in the world, yet scientists have recently discovered that they have severe mercury poisoning. How could this be?
All coal-burning plants release mercury into the environment. This is why the environmental activists were up in arms about the emissions from these plants and why they worked so hard to have them reduced. But what has happened to all of that mercury? Well, it has gotten into our water (even sea water) through the evaporation process and has contaminated the animals that live in the water. These smaller animals have been eaten by larger animals, which in turn have been eaten by us. These larger animals have increased mercury levels. It is now to the point where the Inuit’s breast milk has such massive levels of mercury that it is no longer considered safe for their babies.
“Safe levels” is one of those terms that are quite vague. What exactly are “safe levels” of toxic material? Is there any such thing? The FDA states that pregnant and nursing women should limit their intake of albacore (white) tuna to one can per week. But, if you ask University of Arizona toxicologist Vas Aposhian, that recommendation could put up to 99% of pregnant and nursing women at risk of mercury poisoning. According to Michael Bender of the Mercury Project, “One out of every 20 cans of white (albacore) tuna should be recalled as unsafe for human consumption.”
It has also been discovered that babies actually have stronger concentrations of mercury in their blood as their mothers, even during pregnancy. Methyl mercury has been shown to paralyze migrating fetal brain cells and halt their cell division, leading to learning disabilities, delayed mental development and shortened attention span. Our bodies cannot process mercury, so it simply stores up all the mercury that it takes in. It sounds to me like mercury poisoning might just be a big part of the reason for the increase in ADD/ADHD diagnosis.
There is nothing more important to our overall health than clean, pure water, but it is getting increasingly harder to find clean water. There are many people who are working hard to find ways to purify our water, but it is getting more difficult due to the increase in toxic substances in nature. We can’t expect our government to do anything to make this better as they are one of the worst polluters out there. Since it costs a lot of money to clean up the mess left behind by our fathers, no one is willing to take the blame and clean the mess. They continue to bury as much of it as they can… and then these chemicals leek into our ground water, our soil, our plants, animals, and food.
Our bodies are made up of 55 – 75% water. It is the very basis of our lives. Without water we die. With bad water we live, but we can’t enjoy life due to illness. With the right water, we can thrive. We need to consume as much good, clean water as possible. If you’ve never tasted good, cold spring water, you’ve never really tasted water. The water we cook with must be clean as well, so as to not contaminate our foods. Unfortunately, most of our faucets don’t produce clean water.
As bottled water sales continue to increase we must face the fact that water has become more valuable than gold… liquid gold, that is. In any emergency, water is always the first thing to go. When properly hydrated, our bodies are performing at top levels and we are able to handle stress better, digest our foods better, and feel better about ourselves. We were created this way.
"Be appalled, O heavens, at this, and shudder, be very desolate," declares the LORD. "For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:12-13)