Doug's Dynamic Drivel

And the safest water to drink is that which comes out of your municipal taps. Municipalities in North America must provide to the public the results of stringent analysis of their water supply. The same does not hold true for bottled water providers, in their case there is no requirement whatsoever to provide any analysis. A result of this is that you simply have no idea what you are drinking. About the only thing you are guaranteed, despite the adjectives on the bottle, is that it is any thing but pure.

The Examining Room of Dr. Charles is back and that’s a very good thing. He leads off his return with a post on the potential dangers of using bottled water. One startling factoid he published is this quote from a study done by the Environmental Group

The study also included assays for breast cancer cell proliferation, conducted at the University of Missouri. One bottled water brand spurred a 78% increase in the growth of the breast cancer cells compared to the control sample, with 1,200 initial breast cancer cells multiplying to 32,000 in 4 days, versus only 18,000 for the control sample, indicating that chemical contaminants in the bottled water sample stimulated accelerated division of cancer cells. When estrogen-blocking chemicals were added, the effect was inhibited, showing that the cancer-spurring chemicals mimic estrogen, a hormone linked to breast cancer. Though this result is considered a modest effect relative to the potency of some other industrial chemicals in spurring breast cancer cell growth, the sheer volume of bottled water people consume elevates the health significance of the finding. While the specific chemical(s) responsible for this cancer cell proliferation were not identified in this pilot study, ingestion of endocrine-disrupting and cancer-promoting chemicals from plastics is considered to be a potentially important health concern (Le 2008).

So if you happen to be a woman drinking that/those particular brand(s) of water you pretty near double your potential risk for breast cancer. Add to all of this the damage done to the environment through the manufacturing, shipping and disposal of those bottles, not to mention the utter waste of petroleum (increasing dependence on imported oil along with the geopolitical repercussions of that) and you have to question your sanity for even considering buying bottled water.

If you don’t like the taste of your city’s water then get a filter for your tap – a good filter like Britta will remove just about everything that makes it past your municipal treatment plant.

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