What do we know about tap water? Lessons from the U.S.

City Brights blogger Peter Gleick, recently wrote a highly informative post about tap water in the U.S. Both in the U.S. and Canada we are very fortunate to access our drinking water from our taps, something many people in the developing world cannot do. With the possibility of contracting cholera, typhoid, dysentery, the risks are simply too high.

Interestingly, the U.S. has a federal act titled the "Safe Drinking Water Act", but it is outdated and in need for reform. The Safe Drinking Water Act regulates 91 chemicals. Yet there are tens of thousands of chemicals that can contaminate our waters and that haven't been assessed for their risks.

Gleick writes that "We have also known for a long time that research into the health effects of many contaminants has been underfunded, slow, and piecemeal. Such research is extremely hard to do because of the vast numbers of possible chemical contaminants and the difficulty of identifying health effects of exposures to low concentrations or complex mixes of different chemicals."

Last year, people in the U.S. purchased 33 billion litres of bottled water- an average of 110 litres per person. As enviroboys has explained before, people buy bottled water for all sorts of reasons; one of those reasons is fear of tap water because of the ostensible contaminants. There is always reason to fear this but we should know that our water is being treated with filtration, chlorination, and other modern water-treatment systems.

It is way too difficult for Environment Canada and the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate every single chemical in our water supply (because there are hundreds). Gleick calls for an upgrading in our municipal water systems with the latest, sophisticated technologies for treating water. Out of precautionary principle, we should be installing the sophisticated membrane and disinfection technologies capable of taking things out of our water.

A good way to pay for these system upgrades would be through water bills and imposing a fee on industries that release these chemicals. Water is fundamental to life and our existence, surely we can cut down on satellite tv or cable channels to pay for better treated water. The fee imposed on industry can as Gleick writes "support all the necessary research needed to evaluate the health risks they pose, to pay for remediating contaminated sites, and to help pay for sophisticated water-treatment systems to remove the contaminants they've released. In other words, the polluters must pay for their pollution as a cost of doing business".

Key message: Tap water is important and significantly cheaper than bottled water. Whether in the U.S. or Canada there should be strict legislation and funding in place to upgrade water systems to ensure a safe and adequate supply.