Drinking Water Levity

The profits from all that overpriced bottled water, allow for some pretty creative marketing. It skirts the REAL issues surrounding this product, but manages to be both endearing and creepy at the same time. Since drinking water should be a positive part of a healthy lifestyle, you've got to credit Evian for this gem.

Facts About Throw-Away Plastic Water Bottles Continue To Pile Up

The bulk of the article cited below surrounds the controversy of single-serve plastic drinking water packaging.

Major bottlers try to re frame the issue, but the bottom line is still the same; it is up to consumers to change their habits with respect to all one-use throw-away plastic if we hope to stop choking the environment in the stuff.

clipped from topics.nytimes.com "More than 90 percent of the environmental impacts from a plastic bottle happen before the consumer opens it,'' said Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Oil for plastic, oil for shipping, oil for refrigeration -- and in the end, most of the effort goes to landfills.

Stop Blame Game - Take Personal Positive Steps

If you have any question about who is responsible for the mess plastics have (and continue to make) of our environment, please take 8 minutes out of your day and watch the video posted here of a presentation given by Captain Charles Moore. It's fascinating in its scale and horrifying in its consequences. The time for reflection has past, the time for action among all responsible people is now.

It is easy to blame the plastics industry, Big Brother, the greed of capitalism/consumerism or just that thoughtless "other guy". The fact is we all have a hand in distributing the plastic material that ultimately collects in places it was never intended to be; even by the most shortsighted litterbug.

View this video and you WILL be moved to make personal changes to do your small part to work toward a more sustainable consumer mindset.

Think Disposable Plastic Is Defensible?

Project Earth: Water Water Everywhere...

Project Earth: Water Water Everywhere...

Contamination: The Stew Effect

This is a follow up to the prior post. These excerpts highlight the complexity of the pharmaceutical contaminant issue. We have the research to prove these compounds are in our water supplies. We don't know at what concentrations they become hazardous to human health. But, perhaps more to the point, we also don't know what potential threats are imposed by these pharmaceuticals in combination.

Many people, including some who think of themselves as environmentally savvy, have a false sense of security about our public water supplies. The fact is most municipal systems were designed to process water for the treatment of pathogens. They were never designed to monitor or treat these contaminants. By the time industrial processors react to the scientific data many millions of people will have already been impacted.

clipped from www.infozine.com What may be more troubling is the mixture of contaminants and how they might interact to cause health problems. “The biggest concern is the stew effect,” says Scott Dye of the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program. “Trace amounts of this mixed with trace amounts of that can equal what? We don’t know.” With such contaminants proving elusive to municipal filtration systems, the burden of protection often lies with the end user. But getting traces of birth control and other drugs out of your tap water isn’t so easy. Of the many different kinds of in-home water filtration systems available today, only those employing reverse osmosis have been shown to filter out some drugs. Some makers of activated carbon water filters claim their products catch pharmaceuticals, but independent research has not verified such claims.

Pollution experts: Save fish from drugs in wate

The content below is excerpted from an article post by the associated press.

It's true, scientists don't yet know the effects of pharmaceutical contamination of drinking water on humans. However, here's the problem, the type of research necessary to account for all the variables; including what effects result from pharmaceutical contaminant "cocktails" takes many years of controlled testing. By the time results confirm highly plausible suspicions it'll be too late to prevent harm to many millions of affected people. The other area of concern is that most municipal water systems do not test for these types of contaminants so there is no assurance potentially harmful pharmaceuticals are not being dispensed from taps across America.

clipped from www.google.com Pollution experts: Save fish from drugs in water "Hundreds of peer-reviewed publications ... demonstrate that numerous ubiquitous chemicals in the environment can interfere with development via the endocrine system, but there appears to be no will or authority to remove those chemicals from the supply chain," said zoologist Theo Colborn, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida, who founded the nonprofit Endocrine Disruption Exchange. Utilities say their drinking water is safe, and no human risks are confirmed from pharmaceutical pollution. However, research shows that the pharmaceuticals sometimes harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species. Also, researchers report that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain drugs.