Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid

Hey some places do have subpar water, I live in one with arsenic and chromium flirting above EPA guidelines. But a $150 reverse osmosis system from Amazon and a $30 deionizing filter after that if I want to get crazy and almost a 0 ppm TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) reading on a $10 eBay TDS meter solves that problem. It provides almost limitless fresh perfect water to drink.

The marketing speak these companies utilize makes me cringe. As a science teacher, I aim to help students develop the ability to critically analyze claims like these. I think half of the people in charge of these companies believe their own hype, and half of them are just doing it to take money from uneducated people.

These "live water" individuals are morons. It's unbelievable what people will pay for. This is anti-science, and anti-progress. I've been to Sierra Leone, a place where all water is "live" and they have never added flouride or chloramine. Want raw water? Go live there and enjoy the cholera and dysentery. Municipal water grids are a triumph of urban development. Early New York City understood it, they built the first tunnel to import meteoric water in 1917, because people did not want to drink nearby water made filthy by their neighbors and by industrial development. Hell, even the Romans got it: you need a water system for a large population, and it has to be safe water. This is something we have only improved with treatment. Have there been missteps with lead pipes? Sure. But they aren't actually a problem unless the water their carrying has a pH that will solubilize the metal.

If you want to drink healthful water: use a multi-stage filter.

As an aside, let me tell you: having a well can be terrible. We're talking unbelievable minerality that you either remove via ion exchange with a water softener or that you watch clog your pipes, faucets, and water heater. Haven't experienced soft water? It tastes salty, and it feels like you can never fully wash soap off. When I was young I had to take flouride tablets because, of course, none was added to our water. The dose was a bit higher than in city water. I've never had dental carries, and I have my careful pediatrician to thank. We could afford the tablets, but in a different circumstance we may not have been so fortunate. The poor in cities get flouride for free thanks to municipal flouridation. Of course there is also the risk of the well running dry during droughts, and during blackouts there is no water because well pumps are electric. That means no toilets either. Where there is no city water, there is no city sewer either, so waste ends up in a septic tank that needs to be pumped out every couple years. That of course prohibits having a garbage disposal. It goes on and on. City services are valued for good reasons. The wealthy should be championing them, and fostering their improvement and expansion, not opting-out with bogus "live water" and vague misbeliefs about health.

At the same time most 'natural ground water' in the west coast has naturally higher fluoride content than what is considered safe. Municipalities remove fluoride, they don't add it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#/media/File...

It always amazes me that in some countries (or areas within those) you still can't expect safe tap water, and still have a large 'bottled water' industry and consumption. It doesn't help anyone and it doesn't align with the idea of setting up a specialised entity and supply them with resources to do it (a.k.a. water supply company and governing instances).

We expect normal, clean water that is just water and not added with anything for 'our benefit' out of the tap, and that's what we get. It's tested, and there are multiple different grids with individual sources and individual filters. It's not hard to do, it's what we have here; it costs almost nothing, and doesn't fail. Strangely enough, one neighbouring country (France) doesn't have this uniformly (don't drink water in Paris...) but in another (Germany) the water is just fine again.

You'd think that a civilised country that sets up organisations and systems to deal with basic needs at scale would be able to accomplish their designated tasks.

To me it's interesting to consider the long-term impact of all products that are consumed/applied frequently (both manufactured and natural ones, though somehow natural usually seems less worrisome). I believe it is best to introduce fairly dramatic variety just to give the body a chance to dodge any long term accumulating effects/deficiencies... but this hasn't translated into a soap-switching schedule yet! (a very low personal priority thanks to mass-market manufacturing similarities).

Water supply selection seems to be one of the most critical choices in this department; I appreciate this chance to learn from what other HN users have researched and implemented as best.

I thoroughly recommend "The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink" by Dr. Robert Morris [0]. Kinda feels like these quacks need to be reminded of the life and death lottery our water supply used to be.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Death-Intriguing-Present-Danger/...

Every day feels one step closer to Idiocracy.

Is it portable? For example, the article mentions Burning Man. Could you theoretically bring this to a desert and extract water from the air? There's probably enough sunlight in a typical desert to power the solar panels, but is there enough water moisture in the air to extract?

(Context: I generally agree with the perspective that water treatment keeps water safe to drink.) How could I test water from the ZMW system to ensure that it meets similar safety standards as tap water? Could I process the extracted water myself? What does that process look like?

I get the general sense that this particular system is being marketed to wealthy people. Are there any similar systems that try to do this cheaply? Maybe as a mission to make water accessible to everyone.

General question around climate change: is "more water moisture in the air" one of the expected long-term effects of climate change?

secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure

Those glass trees would slowly terraform lifeless desserts back into green pastures, while withstanding sandstorms and goats.

Someone close to me used to have all kinds of health problems. These included digestive tract problems, skin problems, and many others.

After seeing many doctors and specialists over many years, they were worse off than when they started. They decided that maybe it was something in their diet. They eliminated pretty much everything except water from their diet, and that did not work.

Shortly after, they went on a trip where they were off grid for a few weeks. During that time, the health problems started going away. When they got back to civilization, the problems started coming back.

That's when the thought hit. What if those crazy people on the internet are right about municipal water?

After some experimentation, it was determined that chlorinated water was the culprit. They've moved to a house with a well and are much better off than before.

Since then, I've met other people with similar health issues who have benefited by eliminating chlorinated water as much as possible (drinking or bathing). Some have installed large carbon block filters on their municipal supply.

Chlorine has had undeniable public health benefits, but it is also a poison, and affects some people in a very detrimental way.

Fluoride has been linked as detrimental to IQ by Harvard - search and you'll find the study (and afaik not only by Harvard, one example should be enough).

Regarding tap water it will soon be the organisation of it through the state that stands between a massive "outbreak" of cancer in the population and keepign up the current rates of it. -Fracking has created holes inbetween water sources and oil/gas pockets - these are filled in by pumping down gravel and cement. That mixture to begin with isn't even as "qualitative" as you might think as pokects of other materials are created and as the layers of rock, dirth etc shifts the material is ground down. Within 30 years there is a really high risk of failure and over time the vast majority will fail - resulting in a poisioned watertable. Do you really think the people who have ownership of gas, oil and fracking companies will be held accountable by the legal system? Or by corrupt politicians - many who surely had a hand in the allowance to drill in the manner which has been done...

Tap water is the way to assure massive amounts of clean water to a population - that however does not mean that it does not come without a cost (if it is fluoride and a lowering of IQ to create a docile people or not) and that tradeoff should be known - both the positive and the negative of it.

Transparency drives technological evolution, if the tradeoff is known and can be argued to be problematic there is an incentive to come up with a better solution.