Whenever we are at home and we are feeling a little thirsty, one of the quickest and simplest things to do is to grab a glass and drink some tap water. After all, the tap water in our homes is clean, and it’s one of the healthiest things we could ever drink, right?
Without wanting to sound like a prophet of doom or cause you to panic about the amount of tap water you have ever drunk in your life, the water that you drink from your tap isn’t always the cleanest or even the safest in some cases.
What’s really in my water?
You might assume that the liquid that comes out of your tap is just pure water, but most of the time it isn’t.
Even if the water comes from a completely pure source, it will almost always end up arriving to you with a few extra ‘ingredients’. You are likely to find the following additions to your drinking water:
- Fluoride - a naturally-occurring mineral which is found in many of the world’s water supplies, as it is used to help prevent tooth decay;
- Chlorine - used as a disinfectant to remove bacteria and other organisms that live in water;
- Aluminium - an agent that is used to ‘clarify’ the water. In other words, it helps to remove any suspended solids from the water.
As you can see the water that is piped to your home isn’t exactly pure, and whilst some of those key ‘extras’ were included to help us stay healthy, they can sometimes do the opposite.
For example, excessive levels of fluoride can cause bone and neurological damage, chlorine added to water can create toxins called trihalomethanes that can cause asthma and eczema, and excess aluminium caused in part by the addition of this metal to water can cause neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Your home could also be partly to blame
Even if the water that was piped to your home were completely pure and free of any extra chemicals or metals, you could still suffer from health problems related to water but caused by your home rather than anything your water company has introduced to your water supply.
Homes with lead water pipes can potentially cause you to have lead poisoning. Although the amounts of lead you might ingest over time will be small, it is still a significant enough risk to human health.
Lead poisoning can cause a number of symptoms and illnesses in children and adults, and in extreme cases could even cause death. If your home has lead piping, it is recommended that you contact your local water authority for help and advice.
How to purify your water
Assuming you don’t have lead pipes supplying water to your home, one of the most-effective ways of purifying your water is to have some built-in water purifiers installed. This means that you don’t need to use a jug and water filter, because the water that will come out of your tap will be immediately purified.
The great thing about such systems is that it can be used for your entire home, not just for the kitchen, for example.
Photo via Flickr (credit: Joe Cheng).
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