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Comment by jamesbressi | Hacker News Reader

I'll get flamed, but I feel that way about most the water supply in the U.S. Ever look at the reports per county for what is in your water supply here? I don't care what anyone says, most of those contaminates listed aren't acceptable to me at any level. I hate the fact that I have to shower or brush my teeth with it.

Even worse are the chemicals they use to "clean" it, which doesn't get things like medications out, like my favorite additive "chloramine". The website is a little wonky, but check out http://chloramine.org --not to be confused with chlorine which can be filtered out... chloramine is damn near impossible to filter.

I'm not an environmentalist nut, but if there is one thing in this country I don't find safe, it is my drinking/bathing water--and I'm not buying what the government is dishing about its safety and purity.

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Not acceptable at any level? Do you think infinitely dilute poisons are still harmful poisons? Do you think one molecule of arsenic will kill you?

BTW, did you know that natural spring water has contaminants too? And the water in every other country? Maybe the level of contaminants is better in some places, but you don't seem to be paying attention to that.

And did you know that all filters do is reduce the level of contaminants? There is no such thing as an absolutely perfect filter.

Yes. And the air we breathe is full of dangerous microbes. Almost anything we touch or ingest contains something risky. The bodies of human beings, as the bodies of all living organisms, include adaptations to deal with less than ideal environments.

As an actual matter of fact, tap water in quite a few parts of the United States is all but sterile.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17456554

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1472650/

And in case you're tempted, you may want to think twice before drinking that ultra-pure, 18 MOhm water you have handy in the lab:

http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdeminerali...

Arsenic is a metallic element - it comes in atoms, not molecules :)

The sad thing is that I almost didn't click on this submission because, glancing at the headline, I felt certain that it was going to lead to some sort of paranoid rant.

Instead it turns out to be a one-hundred-percent-real news issue that affects many of my friends and neighbors [1].

I was nearly a victim of the "Reddit who cried wolf" effect.

I'm glad I can continue to have faith that HN's moderation system is working.

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[1] This is one time when I'm actually glad to be living in a relatively distant suburb of Boston.

You know the computer monitor you're sitting in front of is giving off radiation, right? Which is also bad for you at any level. The brick wall behind the monitor is giving off radiation too, for that matter.

That is what the tinfoil hats are meant for.

Those give off radiation too.

At first I thought you were going to write about decrepit infrastructure in the US. That's probably more worth ranting about.

The pipe was only 6 or 7 years old: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/23337764/detail.html

It's more apt to rant about corruption in construction contracts in Boston union jobs

That document is one of the more ridiculous things I've read today, and that's saying something.

If you get any significant proportion of your mineral intake from your drinking water, you have bigger problems than water.

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