Drinking water contaminations have affected water piped to more than 49 million Americans since 2004, according to an  exhaustive study just completed by The New York Times.  And while the government is aware of the violations, it has rarely fined or punished the violators.

In its Dec 7 issue, the Times reported analyzing federal data on violations since 2004 of rules regulating toxins found in city water. These violations document illegal concentrations of chemicals, radioactive substances, or dangerous bacteria from sewage. More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems, often the smaller systems, broke the EPA regulations.

These violations were reported as they occurred. But only six percent of the water systems that broke the law received fines or other punishments from state or federal officials.  Some violations constituted one-time events, but others persisted for years, according to the Times.

Members of Congress, responding to the Times reporting, demanded an explantion from the EPA at a hearing Dec. 8. Enforcement leadership at the EPA is pledging to overhaul its system, according to ABC News.

The Safe Drinking Water Act violations have occurred in parts of each state. For example, in prosperous Ramsey, NJ, too-high concentrations were found of arsenic and tetrachlorethylene, a cleaning solvent. Both are linked to cancer. In New York State, 205 water systems were found to contain illegal amounts of bacteria.

Ramsey, NJ, was not fined–but it did update its filtration systems. In New York, just three water systems were penalized.

According to the Times, research indicates that diseases follow the contaminants and show that as many as 19 million Americans get sick each year from parasites, viruses, and bacteria found in drinking water.  And we all know cancer rates are rising; could this fact be related to increasing levels of carcinogens in our drinking water?

A home water filter is the best way to protect y our family, experts agree.  For the best of the best, get a Multi-Pure triple-carbon filter that’s certified to remove the most pollutants of any carbon filter, while leaving in beneficial minerals. Or, if you want to remove everything and add the beneficial minerals back in, you can get a Multi-Pure reverse osmosis system plus the carbon filter. Multi-Pure filters provide you with peace of mind and a warranty unmatched in the industry. I love mine. You’ll love yours too.

USA Today has created a Web page giving information on the BPA controversy. BPA, you recall, is a man-made estrogen that the plastics industry has been using to strengthen clear plastics, like those used for water bottles, baby bottles, and tin can liners.

On the USA Today BPA page, Frederick Vom Saal, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, speaks on an audio recording.  While the BPA concentrations used are low, he says, “this is a phenomenally potent chemical.”  BPA has been linked with cancer and with late puberty in boys, early puberty in girls. The FDA has maintained that it thinks it is safe, but is currently reviewing its position, in the face of growing outcry.

If you want to keep your family safe from this chemical, don’t buy bottled water or soda. Instead, get the safest water source: a home water filter. Multi-Pure’s home water filter is the best triple-carbon filter on the market. It is certified to remove the most toxins, while allowing the healthful minerals we need, like calcium, to remain in the water. It’s durable. It has the best warranty on the market, too: 90 days satisfaction, and lifetime warranty on the housing.  Shouldn’t you take a look?

A new study shows that bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen, creates higher risk of male sexual dysfunction at very high exposure levels.

The study, released by Human Reproduction on Nov. 10, builds on animal studies that suggest BPA in food containers such as bottled water and soda bottles is an endocrine disrupter.

In the study, investigators interviewed male workers in China who had been exposed to extremely high levels of BPA, 50 times higher than the average person. They discovered significantly higher risk of sexual dysfunction in the workers.

Whether this study is significant because of the high exposure level remains to be seen. In the meantime, the FDA is re-evaluating its prior judgment that BPA is safe to use in food containers such as bottles and as tin can liners. The FDA is expected to announce its determination at the end of the month.

The Environmental Working Group, which advocates for clean water and other topics, announced it is troubled by the study’s results because it indicates BPA affects not only children, but adults.

If you are troubled about chemicals in plastics, you should definitely stop drinking bottled water and get yourself a great high-quality home water filter to protect your family. Multi-Pure home water filters are the best in the business.

I’m bringing up the topic of underachieving young men again, because it has come up in the news. An article in the Wall Street Journal Nov. 6 describes lack motivation in boys and young men, who aren’t applying to college in satisfactory numbers.

The author, Richard Whitmire, was discussing a Civil Rights Commission announcement that it will investigate whether colleges are discriminating by having lower admission standards for men. The issue: underperformance by men.

It’s evident in statistics such as these, cited by Whitmire: “This summer the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University published the results of a study tracking the students who graduated from Boston Public Schools in 2007. Their conclusion: For every 167 females in four-year colleges, there were 100 males.”

What could be causing this situation? Whitmire doesn’t know. “The real issue is the flagging academic interest among boys, a phenomenon that dates back only about two decades. It’s a new issue to most Americans but hotly debated in countries such as England. So far, nobody has solved the boy mystery, but some countries are years ahead of the U.S. Australia has had some success with literacy-boosting programs for young boys.”

In a post not long ago on this blog, I described a 2007 book written by Leonard Sax, MD, addressing this issue. In the book, Boys Adrift, Sax identified five contributing causes to the underperforming young male in Western culture. One of those is an estrogen, BPA, used to soften plastics, notably the plastics used in soda and water bottles and to line tin cans.
The other four factors in the epidemic of men who don’t grow up named by Sax are:

* Education system changes. Kindergarten has become a very frustrating time for boys, who are expected to sit down and learn to read. They aren’t ready, and as a result they learn to hate school.

* Video games

* ADHD medications

* A scarcity in our culture of traditions for transition to manhood.

The Wall Street Journal article Nov. 6 got a response in the form of a letter to the editor from Prof. James W. Bovinet of the University of Phoenix Online in Monmouth, IL. Bovinet’s underscores the seriousness of the situation. “Young women are the first to notice this lack of ambition. The marriage rate in this country per 1000 people is the lowest it has been in 50 years. Single women are the fastest growing segment of the home-buying industry. Women are simply not going to wait to build a life–wait until males decide to put down the Xbox controller, the cold beer, and exit their parents’ basement.”

Bovinet identifies the situation as something much larger and more important than the Civil Rights Commission’s concern about equal treatment in higher education admission. The US is in the midst of the creation of a “matriarchal economy,” he says. Women influence the purchase of 80 percent of all goods and services.

Going back to the Nov 6. WSJ article, Whitmire says this female domination is bad for the economy because women are less likely to take the risks needed for successful business ventures. “…Women remain less inclined to roll the dice on risky business start-ups or to grind out careers in isolated tech labs. Revenue generated by women-owned businesses remains less than 5% of all revenue. And while the number of women taking on economically important majors is rising, women still earn only a fifth of the bachelor’s degrees granted in physics, computer science and engineering.”

It’s definitely time to ditch bottled water and soda, and address Sax’s four other concerns too. One of the things you can do is get a great home water filter like Multi-Pure and put it into stainless steel bottles when you go out.

PCE is a commonly used solvent and frequent contaminant of drinking water supplies. So, should you worry about it?

The answer is yes, according to a study published in the open access journal Environmental Health in September. The study tracked the infants of pregnant women exposed to the chemical inadvertently by PCE coating inside water piping used on Cape Cod between 1969 and 1983.

Ann Aschengrau, Boston University School of Public Health, and a team combed through records of those living through this episode. They compared rates of birth defects for fetuses exposed to the PCE to a control group which was not exposed.

They found an increased risk of cleft palate and neural tube defects, especially anencephaly.

Troubling news? Actually, I have the solution for you. Multi-Pure triple-carbon home water filters are certified by the NSF to remove more than 99 percent of traces of this chemical, also called tetrachloroethylene. Multi-Pure filters protect your family from many toxins, including mercury and PCB’s–which are not filtered out by many competitors. Its 90-day satisfaction warranty is unmatched.  Check out Multi-Pure today!

The Boston Globe has declared an end to the bottled water craze.

In an opinion piece Aug. 25, Derrick Z. Jackson  reported a 5 percent drop in
Nestle bottled water sales in North America and Western Europe. Suppliers Pepsi and Coke reported drops in sales too. These drops come from a variety of brands: Nestle’s Poland Spring, Perrier, S. Pellegrino, and Deer Park; Pepsi’s Aquafina; and Coke’s Dasani.

Jackson finds that the sad part of this news is that “ending the bottled-water fad took a recession, when common sense should have kicked in long ago.”

Most bottled water is just filtered municipal tap water, water that is packaged and transported at great cost.  The Earth Policy Institute has estimated that it costs $10 per  gallon for bottled water to reach the consumer.  It’s more than the cost of the many plastic bottles; it’s also the cost of transporting this heavy load from its source to your supermarket.  This distribution system is terribly inefficient–that $10
per gallon cost compares to the retail price of gasoline at $2.50 per gallon or so, about 1/4 as much.

In fact, the Government Accountability Office reported that delivery costs of bottled water to Los Angeles were 1,100 to 2,000 times more than the delivery cost of tap water.

Consumers report a belief that bottled water is safer than tap water. Yet bottled water IS tap water, says Jackson. (Most brands are derived from tap water; the others come from more exotic locations.)  The GAO also concluded that the EPA safety rules for tap water are generally stronger than the FDA’s safety rules for bottled water.

And the bottles? Three-quarters wind up in landfills. They leach harmful chemicals. We don’t need them.

Let’s join those who are going back to tap water. But let’s make sure it’s safe by using Multi-Pure home water purification systems, installed easily at your kitchen sink. Multi-Pure’s filters are the top of the line. I like mine. You will like yours. Just click here for more information.

Read the article here: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/25/bottled_water_scam_finally_feels_squeeze/
or here:
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/boston-globe-bottled-water-scam-finally-feels-squeeze

Susan, a reader, submitted a question to this blog:

Hi Phyllis,
Thanks for your website. I too am concerned about toxins in municipal water. I’ve spent a few weeks doing a ton of research on different water filter systems. I agree that Multi-Pure is the best on the market. (And I was very turned off by questionable Aquasana marketing practices – ie. numerous fake websites – and their lack of NSF certification.) Do you know if their MPAD countertop model is BPA free polypropylene? They don’t seem to specify, and that’s a huge selling point for me. I am trying to decide between the stainless steel models and this plastic one (MPAD). Thanks, Susan

Hi Susan,
I asked MultiPure your question. Here is the answer:
“Yes, the MPAD is BPA Free.  We use food grade quality polypropylene for
our plastics.  The NSF tests for this as well.  We are certified by the
NSF.  We do not add anything into the water from our Systems.”–Lorinda Long
Customer Service, Multi-Pure Corporation

So I asked another question:
“How about the tubing? Is it free of phthalates and BPA?”

Her answer:
“Yes!”

I told you recently that the Endocrine Society, a professional organization of researchers and others, has issued a statement. It said that BPA and similar chemicals found in food, water, and other products present “a significant concern to public health.”

BPA, as you know, is present in the clear plastic bottles used to package water and soda. It’s also in the liners for tin cans containing food.

The most significant threat is to fetuses and small children, said the society’s Andrea Gore, an University of Texas pharmacology professor interviewed by the Environmental Working Group. For for infants and unborn, even small exposures may have consequences many years later including infertility and cancer, she said.

The society is not concerned only about BPA. It’s also concerned about PCB’s, pesticides, fungicides, plastics, and other plasticizers.

In fact, the Endocrine Society is recommending a huge shift in U.S. policy. We should treat compounds as potentially hazardous until they are shown to be safe, said Gore.

Currently, it’s the other way around: compounds are allowed to proliferate in our food and water until they are proven unsafe. And what constitutes proof? In the case of BPA, there are many more studies showing it unsafe than safe, but the compound continues to be approved by the FDA, at least for now.

Keep your family safe from BPA and its effects. Don’t drink bottled water or soda. Get a reliable, high-quality water filter for your kitchen sink. Check out Multi-Pure water filters, which I offer to you at a substantial discount. Find out why I chose Multi-Pure!

Bottled water safety issues are getting a lot of attention in Washington right now. A congressional subcommittee yesterday held a hearing on the question.

At the hearing, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report recommending that bottled water producers be required to label their products with the same information that municipal water providers are required to disclose.

Currently, there are separate requirements for bottled water — regulated under the FDA — and municipal water, regulated under the EPA. The EPA requirements are more stringent, and require more testing.  For example, the EPA limits phthalates, a chemical used in plastics manufacture that causes cancer. The FDA does not.

In addition there are state requirements for bottled water that in some cases are more stringent than the FDA requirements, but less stringent than the EPA requirements.

The GAO surveyed consumers in all 50 states and reported that consumers are misinformed about bottled water — they often think that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog nonprofit group, also reported at the hearing. EWG said it believes consumers need more information to make good choices. Consumers should know where the water comes from, how it is treated, and what contaminants are in it, according to the EWG’s Richard Wiles.

That information is not currently on the label in many cases, although it may be available at the bottling company’s Web site, as a spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association pointed out at the hearing.

But complete disclosure is rare.  An EWG study released at the hearing checked 188 bottled water brands and found that less than 2 percent disclose all three basic facts about their water, on the label or in a Web site. Those facts are the water’s source, how it was purified, and what contaminants remain.

The EWG recommends using a home water filter for your tap water.  I researched the possibilities and got one I’m very happy with. If you want to consider the highest-quality, most durable water filter on the market, take a look at Multi-Pure. As a distributor, I  can give you a great discount on it!

The Breast Cancer Fund has weighed in on the BPA controversy with a summary indicting the widespread use of the chemical.

In the summary, Gretchen Lee called BPA “one of the most universal chemicals in modern life.”

BPA was originally synthesized to use in estrogen replacement therapy in 1936. But in the 1940s, plastics researchers discovered it and began using it to soften transparent, brittle polycarbonate plastic.

Now it is used in a variety of consumer products, especially water and soda bottles and liners for food cans. In addition, it’s an additive for dental sealants and other plastics, including plenty used by infants and toddlers. In fact, more than 2 billion pounds of BPA are produced in the US each year. Counting other countries as well, there are more than six billion pounds produced annually.

The problem with BPA, wrote Lee, is that it is an unstable polymer. This means that molecules can easily fall apart, responding to conditions such as heat, acid, or base. Once the bonds break, the BPA is free to leach out of the plastic and be absorbed into the food or beverage, and into the person consuming the food or beverage.

CDC researchers have found BPA in 95 percent of the people they tested. It has even been found in blood samples from amniotic fluid and fetuses.

More than 130 studies suggest that at very low doses, BPA is associated with a large number of health problems, including prostate and breast cancer, obesity, ADD, early puberty, brain damage, immune system irregularities, and lowered sperm counts. Tiny doses have been shown to disrupt normal prenatal development.

To cut down your family’s exposure to this dangerous chemical, stop using bottled water and soda, and get a home water filter. Carry your water with you in a stainless steel bottle. Protect your family! Consider the best home water filter on the market, Multi-Pure, which stands up to many years of use.  I can give you a great deal on Multi-Pure filters. Take a look!