How Safe Is Your Drinking Water?

H20 can equate to amoeba, pesticides, birth control pills, and rocket fuel.
I couldn’t help but notice August’s Reader’s Digest cover article and exposé on America’s drinking water. I wasn’t totally surprised that there may be more than 60,000 different chemicals in our water—like thyroid-impairing chlorine, fluoride, brominated byproducts, perchlorate (an ingredient found in rocket fuel), and heavy metals like iron, lead, mercury, cadmium, copper, and aluminum. But the EPA only protects us from about 100 of these contaminants!

According to the National Resource Defense Council, approximately 2/3 of all the bottled water on the market is sourced from contaminated water. So, bottled water is not a viable solution by any means.

What has really caught me off guard is the three deaths attributed to the brain-devouring amoeba that killed two children in Florida and Virginia who were swimming in a lake (which in many areas of the country is the source of drinking water for which antiquated treatment plants are ill equipped to purify for parasite removal). Chlorination is virtually useless against some of the most prevalent water-born parasites like cryptosporidium, for example.

Then, there was the headline about another young man who used tap water—later found to be contaminated with amoeba—to cleanse his sinuses with a neti pot. Sure, I have written about amoeba and parasites for years, but this is getting downright scary.

Pardon me, but there’s no “delicate” way around this. Parasites in the water supply either come from animals “pooping” in the water or from agricultural runoff from animal waste getting into the source water. (This was indeed the case in Milwaukee—which made national news in 1993—when the cryptosporidium parasite killed over 100 people and made 400,000 sick.) With so many individuals today with compromised immune systems—not to mention the elderly and developing young children who are more susceptible to infection —getting the right water filter in your own home is simply not negotiable when it comes to health and protecting your family.

For the very best health protection on the home front, I recommend point-of-use filtration, which can easily be installed on top of your sink counter by attaching the filter to your standard faucet or can be installed by a plumber under the sink and supplied with a separate dispenser. The CWR Crown Water Filters feature unique parasite blocking 3-stage ceramic filtration (ceramic pre-filtration with an inner activated carbon block, and heavy metal-removing filter material). It is the only filter that is cleanable on the outside to remove excess dirt to restore the flow rate.

The most important feature of all is the sub-micron particulate filtration of 0.9 microns absolute—which, unlike carbon block filters—is tested and certified to remove amoeba, giardia, and cryptosporidium. I honestly don’t know of any other filter which can boast a 0.9 micron filtration block. This is so important when you consider that crypto—the smallest of the parasites (about 3 microns to be exact)—can compress and squeeze through most carbon block filters.

This tiny parasite is not only one of the most difficult to get rid of but can leave a wake of misdiagnosed symptoms in its destructive path like chronic malabsorption of nutrients and increased gut permeability resulting in food and environmental allergies as well as intermittent colitis and blood in the stool.

Thankfully, the CWR Water Filters are crypto-proof.

The Shower and Bathtub Products filter chlorine, lead, and iron. Don’t overlook shower and bath filtration—you absorb 6 to 20 times more chlorine in the shower than you do when drinking the same water. And chlorine and its byproducts are suspected carcinogens as well as xenoestrogens. Chlorine also kills beneficial bacteria, discolors hair, and irritates the skin and eyes. Chlorine outgassing can aggravate respiratory conditions.

These filtration systems have been designed for lifetime use and feature affordable replacement filters, As a special offer to my blog readers, UNI KEY is offering free ground shipping on all water filtration systems within the Continental US. Simply select “Free Ship” at checkout and enter the promo code “SHIP824”—don’t wait, this special offer ends 8/28/2011.

-Edge On Health, Dr. Ann Louise Gittleman