I the west of Scotland we have perfect tap water... apart from when the chlorine goes in, it tastes funny for a few days every 3 months or so.
But all this talk of soft water got me thinking... the west of Scotland has very soft water and it also has the highest rate of heart disease in the western world (possibly the whole world) the life expectancy about 15 years lower that UK average...
Could this all be linked to the soft water???
Worrying thought
To add - no jokes of deep fried mars bars please, this is a genuine concern of mine... my Dad died at 39 of a heart attack and none of my Grandparents survived past 65 (well one did, but she was doolally with ahlziemers... thats another topic altogether)
Ann Pan
"Some days you're the dog,
some days you're the lamp-post"
Annpan wrote:
Could this all be linked to the soft water???
Worrying thought
I cannot honestly say. My father always maintained that hard water was benefical to health and heart, but I do not know that he had any special expertise. He's dead now, so I can't ask him.
At university a lifetime ago a friend of mine was looking into the subject from the point of view of a geographer. She was convinced that there was a link but she was having a hard time stripping out all the other possible variables from the populations she was examining and I have no idea what she eventually concluded.
It is worrying that we seem to know so little about something that we consume in such large amount.
I recently saw a little debate on "The Wright Stuff" (CH5 morning show).
I use a filter for my tap water but I am guilty of buying carbonated water in 500ml bottles.
I dont use bottled water on a regular basis and the carbonated water, I buy occasionaly.
I find it more refreshing that anything, first thing in the morning.
Im having serious brain block at the moment, but Matthew Wright mentioned a place where there is a bottled water plant and right beside it there are people that have to travel miles to get water.
I remember seeing the documentary (and was shocked) but damned if I can remember the place.. it'll come to me........
Don't ya just hate that! Thats gonna bug me all night... what was the name o that place...... D'OH!
One of the other issues (and this is here in Aus, can't speak for elsewhere) is that the big producers such as Cocacola move int an area, put down a well and pump out of it, draining the aquifer of water (which they don't own) and bugger the poor locals who subsist on it. When they have extracted as much as they can they move on. Illegitemates!
Saw the documentary on BBC I think, and the place was Tahiti and the money they used to set up the plant was aid money which was granted to improve the water for the local inhabitants, which so far has not done.
It is then sent around the world in huge containers to be sold in the best hotels.
What a world we Live
I can't do great things, so I do little things with love.
We've got one of those under the counter attached to the pip filters, but it still doesn't seem to work that well.
And, to make it worse, a couple fo weeks ago, i had a shower with a high chlorine content! They'd been doing some work on the pipes down the street and decided to wash it all thrugh with a strong chlorine solution to 'flush out anything unsanitary'. What they didn't do was warn anyone, and i went in the shower as they were doing the chlorine washing. My skin still hasn't recovered!!
I think that if a lot of the chemicals were taken out of th tap water then things would be different. For example, i don't want to be consuming flouride when i drink water - i can drink 2 cups of tea a day and get all the flouride i need without it being added!! Flouride is not only useless to a population with adult teeth, but it is also a mind control drug in high amounts. It is not broken down easily by the body and accumulates - thereby increasing in amount...
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but methinks there are plans afoot for a more compliant population...
the.fee.fairy wrote:
I think that if a lot of the chemicals were taken out of th tap water then things would be different. For example, i don't want to be consuming flouride when i drink water - i can drink 2 cups of tea a day and get all the flouride i need without it being added!! Flouride is not only useless to a population with adult teeth, but it is also a mind control drug in high amounts. It is not broken down easily by the body and accumulates - thereby increasing in amount...
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but methinks there are plans afoot for a more compliant population...
well it hasn't affected me, affected me, affected me, affected me......oh dear!
I used to buy bottled water quite frequently, but not now. The only circumstance in which I would buy bottled water now is if I were out for several hours and could not find any tap water. And even then, I would rather buy, say, a carton of apple juice than water, it is certainly no more expensive. I am inclined to think that bottled water is a status symbol, people like to be seen drinking it! Until recently I used a water cartridge, but not now, because I got fed up wit paying the £4 a month for a new cartridge. Now I drink water straight out of the tap. There are many more harmful things in the environment than what goes in our water, and there is little we can do about those at the moment. Having said that I am not sure what I shall do if all our water is fluoridised, as is being proposed. Head for the hills I suppose (preferably one with a spring)!
You obviously don't live in an area where you tap water tastes so strongly of bleach and other chemicals then.
It may well be a status symbol for some but certainly not for me. I do not wish to pollute my body with these chemicals.
There must be more environmental disasters attributed to the worldwide transportation of soft drinks and other plastic bottles/canned beverages than water.
Almost everything commercailly available nowadays leaves a "footprint". There really are worse things happening in the world than bottled water.
if you are worried about chemical intake in your water.. then it is worth bearing in mind that not all bottled water is great. - if its mineral water then it might be too high in some minerals, if its just processed water then it can still be contaminated:
up to 12% of food poisoning cases could be caused by contaminated bottled water according to this article,
meanwhile some people believe you put yourself at risk due to he chemicals leaching into the water from the plastic bottle see article - makes you think when you consider water can have a bbd of up to two years....
of course, to balance that, sometimes something goes wrong with the tap water.
Red
I like like minded people... a bit like minded anyway.. well people with bits of their minds that are like the bits of my mind that I like...
I would hesitate to jump to the conclusion that soft water is bad for you, having lived in hard water areas for most of my life, we moved here, we have our own borehole, which draws water from an aquifer fed by a brackish lake, which is subsequently filtered through several km of gravel and sand. We moved here and I hated the taste of the water, it never seemd to quench your thirst. If we drank the water it had to be with squash (something I never used to do in the UK). The the pump for the bore gave up the ghost and we replaced it with a new one and overnight (or at least till the header tank had refilled) the water had a completely different taste and now the only treatment it gets is to put a couple of bottles in the fridge to chill them before drinking (currently the temperature of the "cold" water is 25C)
Regarding the bottled water, I really cannot understand people in Christchurch here buying bottled water, it really must be a status symbol, as the public drinking supply is pretty well the purest in the world.
I try to get into the habit of having a water bottle with me that can be refilled, most places will freely give you a top up.
The most worrying thing was I was working in a local fruit and veg shop for a few weeks, the water that veg were washed in was supplied from a local bore. The stench of the water was horrendous and I only ever tried drinking it once, after that I brought in bottles of water from home. It was worrying that water this bad was being used in food preparation (against food hygiene rules which state it must be good quality drinking water)
But it's been happening for decades now. 
