Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’
Drinking water of millions of Americans contaminated with ‘forever chemicals’
I live in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina and we are dealing with this. Chemors, the maker of Teflon, has been dumping PFAS in our water.
My town recently built a reverse osmosis water treatment plant. It is the only way to get it out of the water. Traditional water filters don’t work.
Did they at least get Chemors to stop dumping the shit too??
3 companies were found liable for having knowingly dumped toxic PFAS into our drinking water supply. Chemours, Dupont, and Corteva. They admitted no wrong doing, but settled out of court for a total of 1.19 billion, half of which was paid by Chemours, the main contributor, and the other half paid by Dupont and Corteva. This happened in June 2023.
Annual Profits
Dupont: ~14 billion per year
Chemours: ~7 billion per year
Corteva: ~17 billion per year
PFAS in drinking water has been found to cause numerous health problems, including "altered metabolism, fertility, reduced fetal growth and increased risk of being overweight or obese, increased risk of some cancers, and reduced ability of the immune system to fight infections."
Bottled water is the fucking problem. Don't whinge about anything climate based if you recommend plastic. The disconnect on solving contaminated water with plastic water bottles s mind boggling.
If you don't have a water source very close plastic beats glass very fast.
Glass is so much heavier that the additional fuel to transport it over 100km offsets whatever emissions plastic creates.
This is the classic "no good option" dilemma depending where you live.
In many parts of Europe you can buy the locally sourced water from glass bottles - but it doesn't make much sense buying glass bottles for climate change reasons otherwise
As long as the companies providing the water a) make more than enough profits and b) are not held accountable, why should they do anything about it?
Everyone for years - "Why do you waste money on bottled water" (the big 5 gallon kind on a dispenser)
Me - Uh, have you ever had tap water?
Isn't most bottled water just tap water packaged in landfill fodder?
Yep most people have no clue that your bottle water is tap water filter but as all the same chemicals in them.
If they didn't the water turn green or brown in a month.
Grew up on well water you can't keep it for months on end and if you don't use the line for awhile there is a smell.
Sparkletts has a filter option which iirc they call primo and a spring water option. I get the spring water, so unless they are flat out lying, no it’s not in my case.
Yeah, no, you're just paying to drink tap water and making a shitty company like Nestle rich in the process in addition to creating more waste.
Do yourself a favor and get a nice stainless steel or glass waterbottle along with a good filter or better yet, purifier. They won't get rid of everything but they reduce a lot of stuff you don't want to drink (like lead) and taste better than tap water.
What material are those bottles made out of by the way?
Exactly. One thing I’ve learned from areas with unsafe drinking water is the beauty of stores dedicated to providing purified water (delivery an added bonus). Going back to the US and drinking “safe” tap water has always been pretty gross after that, even in houses with some filtration systems.
A home-based RO system would be nice, but I’ve always wondered if the ones people usually get (<$500) can compete with the quality of the commercial suppliers/stores that you typically see in other countries. Likewise for the small fill stations common on the outside of US grocery stores. Are all these systems truly of similar quality? I have a hard time trusting those tiny little under-sink setups and the unattended outdoor water fills.
I lived the majority of ky adult life with a roommate who kept a 100 gallon salt water coral aquarium for almost a decade. One of the most expensive, difficult, time demanding hobbies I've ever seen. He couldn't afford to replace the 20 or so gallon that needed to be replaced every couple weeks to keep the salinity and other chemical levels stable, so we had one of those under the sink RO filters. It always tasted great unless he forgot to change the filters. I worked at a Starbucks for quite a while and they basically just have a larger version of that which is changed out whenever the sensors ping their maintenance hq. Water there tasted the same.
Plastic bottled water to me is one of the ultimate fuck yous to the planet's ecosystem that most people could easily stop today. It's telling that the consumable plastic market is primarily owned by the oil companies, hell it's one of the many products that can be developed from the refinery process. Short answer is get a metal thermos or canteen and refill it with RO or some other filtered water, get one of those Brita pitchers if you can't or won't install an RO, and cut back on your plastic containers as much as you feasibly can.
After having one of those undersink systems, I can say they work, the water is very pure coming out, only issue being that it's basically pure water - no minerals, no anything - some issues there with actual hydration since drinking pure water can kill you - look up hyponatremia.
edit: might not be the case - see reply
The principle is the same as for the more expensive systems, what you don't get is
If you have around 45 psi of water pressure on your tap, it's good enough, but don't expect to be bathing in the stuff, it takes quite a long time to get usable quantities and I think you get 1L RO water to 4-5 L 'waste' water. Higher pressure - higher efficiency and speed but check the pressures the membrane is rated for. Also if your water is chlorinated you need some activated charcoal pre-filters because chlorine harms the membrane.
Maintenance should also be done regularly to change prefilters once every 3 months and the membrane once every 9-12 months. And it can get slightly messy on cheaper models.
I’m imagine it depends who the service company for the filling machine is. Our delivery is from sparkeletts, and I made sure to get the spring water, not the filtered water.
I'm a fan of under sink filters. Dead simple to install and replace the filter. I never trusted those dispensers because many of them are just local tap water.
I doubt your house filter removes PFAS either.
Got a big water pitcher/filter I keep in the fridge. Fill it maybe once a day. Now my water is filtered and cold. under sink is probably better quality filter, though.
It’s spring water from sparkletts. I made sure not to get just filtered tap water. Unless they are flat out lying about what is in the bottles (not saying it’s even a far stretch, but I can’t do any more due diligence)
Most of these comments are people recommending bottled water or various filtration methods, both of which could work in varying degrees. Let’s not miss the point that people who will be most impacted are low income and might struggle to pay their tap water bill. Bottled water and filters are a stretch for those folks. The true fix is demanding more of our politicians to hold polluters accountable and push for better treatment of the tap water.
Aren't people paying taxes?
No idea why people would rather spend more money than to hold the government accountable to fix the services they pay for.
Conservative "government is the problem" brain rot is extremely pervasive.