The world’s growing/expanding population has negatively impacted the quality of nature’s water. Falling as rain, water picks up gases, ions, dust, and other particles from the atmosphere.
As it flows over the earth’s surface water picks up impurities along the way. These impurities may give water a bad taste, color, odor, or cloudy appearance (turbidity), and cause hardness, corrosiveness, staining, or frothing. They may damage growing plants and transmit disease.
Water can be tainted with biological substances, such as:

• Animal & Human Fecal matter
• Cryptosoridium
• Ecoli
• Giardia
• Entamoeba
• Toxoplasma cysts
• Decaying animal matter
• Decaying vegetable matter
• VOCs – volatile organic compounds
• Our water supply can also have chemical impurities, such as:
• Chlorine
• Chlorine by-products
• Pharmaceutical ingredients
• Industrial runoff
• Fluoride
• Commercial solvents
• Pesticides
• Road salts
• MTBE – a gasoline additive

All life depends on water. In nature, water exists in many forms- clouds, rain, snow, ice, and fog … however chemically pure water does not exist. Falling as rain, water picks up gases, ions, dust, and other particles from the atmosphere. As it flows over the earth’s surface or in ground water, it carries some of almost everything it touches, including what man has dumped.

These substances may be classified as biological, chemical (both inorganic and organic), physical, and radiological impurities. They include industrial and commercial solvents, metal and acid salts, sediments, pesticides, herbicides, plant nutrients, radioactive materials, road salts, decaying animal and vegetable matter, and living microorganisms, such as algae, bacteria, and viruses. These impurities may give water a bad taste, color, odor, or cloudy appearance (turbidity), and cause hardness, corrosiveness, staining, or frothing. They may damage growing plants and transmit disease.

For homeowners, problems with water relate to color, odor, taste, and safety to family health. Chemists and engineers are concerned with the purity of water as it relates to scale deposition and pipe corrosion. Regulatory agencies are concerned with setting standards to protect public health. Farmers are interested in the effects of irrigation waters on the chemical, physical, and osmotic properties of soils, particularly as they influence crop production; hence, they are concerned with the water's total mineral content, proportion of sodium, or content of ions "toxic" to plant growth.

   One means of establishing and assuring the purity and safety of water is to set a standard for various                                                                 contaminants. A standard is a definite rule, principle, or measurement which is established by governmental authority. The fact that it has been established by authority makes a standard rigid, official, and legal; but this fact does not necessarily mean that the standard is fair or based on sound scientific knowledge. Where human health data or other scientific data are sparse, standards have sometimes been established on an interim basis until better information becomes available.

The Safe Drinking Water Act sets minimum standards to be met by all public water systems. New Jersey and most other states have established their own drinking water regulations using federal regulations as a basis. State regulations may be more stringent than the federal regulations.

HEALTH EFFECTS OF DRINKING WATER CONTAMINANTS

Chemicals in drinking water which are toxic may cause either acute or chronic health effects. An acute effect usually follows a large dose of a chemical and occurs almost immediately. Examples of acute health effects are nausea, lung irritation, skin rash, vomiting, dizziness, and, in the extreme, death.

The levels of chemicals in drinking water, however, are seldom high enough to cause acute health effects. They are more likely to cause chronic health effects, effects that occur after exposure to small amounts of a chemical over a long period. Examples of chronic health effects include cancer, birth defects, organ damage, disorders of the nervous system, and damage to the immune system.

Evidence relating chronic human health effects to specific drinking water contaminants is very limited. In the absence of exact scientific information, scientists predict the likely adverse effects of chemicals in drinking water using laboratory animal studies and, when available, human data from clinical reports and epidemiological studies.

THE FACTS ABOUT BOTTLED WATER
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THE REAl COST OF WATER
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