Tap-water safety shouldn’t stop with chlorine treatment
Canadian municipal tap water is very cheap in some ways, but probably very expensive in others. Cheap to pay for up front, but expensive in terms of the health issues it may cause years down the line. Sure, almost no one gets obvious and immediate illness from drinking tap water in Canada, but real health should go way beyond freedom from getting sick a few hours or days after drinking tap water.
“Should” is the operative word for me because I’ve lost faith in the long-term safety of what comes out of Canadian taps. Let me present a few facts then you can decide for yourself.
Contrary to popular opinion, water in its natural state is rarely safe to drink. Even seemingly pristine lakes and rivers can, and often do, contain microbes that can make you sick. Water gets significantly less pristine when it comes from sources near communities, too. Take a look at the lake or river where your municipality draws water and you’ll immediately see the challenges faced by the water treatment professionals where you live. Bacteria, viruses and chemical contaminations must all be removed, and it has to happen on a vast scale and at minimal cost. The main problem with municipal water is that the legally required process of making it safe in the short term may also be making it dangerous in the long run.
Chlorine treatment of water is legislated in Canada to kill microbes that might hurt us, and chlorine does a decent job at this. Chlorine was first used to disinfect water in Europe in the 1800s. Jersey City, N.J., was the first North American community to have permanent chlorine water treatment across the municipality back in 1908. Chlorine was a major advance in public health at the time because it stopped people from getting obviously and immediately sick from drinking infected water. That is definitely a good thing. What we didn’t know back then was that water treated with chlorine triggers the formation of something called disinfection by-products (DBS).
When chlorine reacts with organic matter in water, it creates hundreds of different chemical by-products that we’re now realizing cause long-term harm. These are DBSs. One of these is a family of chemicals called trihalomethanes. You can’t taste or smell them, but trihalomethanes are present in Canadian municipal tap water. And though maximum levels of these chemical by-products are legislated, trihalomethanes are just one of many DBSs of concern, many of which are not monitored nor legislated. All this is why 75 per cent of European cities use oxygen-based ozone and hydrogen peroxide systems for disinfecting municipal water, with chlorine strictly outlawed. Most people in Canada actually ingest more DBSs by breathing in the steam from chlorinated showering than they take in by drinking unfiltered, chlorinated tap water. That filter jug in your fridge isn’t protecting you like you think it is.
If Canada was building water treatments systems from scratch today I doubt they’d base it on chlorine. A combination of ozone and hydrogen peroxide as used in Europe makes much more sense. The disinfection process is faster and more thorough than chlorine, the natural waterways are not contaminated with chlorine residue in treated sewage water, and the ultimate breakdown by-products of ozone and hydrogen peroxide is nothing more than harmless oxygen.
So, what can you do about the fact that municipalities across Canada are locked into chlorine-based treatment plants for the foreseeable future?
Whole home chlorine filters remove most of the chlorine, eliminating the risk of inhaled disinfection by-products. For the ultimate in safe drinking water, a reverse osmosis (RO) system or a distillation system applied to water from the whole home filter makes the most sense. To learn more than I can fit into this article about home water filtration, visit baileylineroad.com/ home-water-filtration-systems. Steve Maxwell thinks a nice cold glass of 100 per cent pure water is the best thing on a hot day. Visit him online at BaileyLineRoad.com and join 29,000 people who get his Saturday morning newsletter each week.