US water contains more ‘forever chemicals’ than EPA tests show | Hacker News Reader

US water contains more ‘forever chemicals’ than EPA tests show

theguardian.com

111 pointsjustinpowers21 comments

It’s really a shame how bad water has gotten in my lifetime. I only trust protecting my family with a RO because I no longer trust our government preventing corporations from poisoning our water or trust our government to safely filter and transport water to our household.

What is an RO?

Reverse Osmosis

Reverse osmosis water filter systems. They basically "squeeze" water through holes small enough for it but not other larger contaminants.

Looks like it also removes minerals from the water. Not sure if that’s a problem.

it doesn't remove all minerals. Flouride isn't removed, unless the unit also has an alumina filter.

Source? All I see say RO does remove fluoride, like https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/system.php?pws=CA0110001 at the bottom.

The good ones actually have an additional filter that remineralizes the water. Which is great, IMO because this also keeps the taste of the water consistent and you don’t have any funky flavors from the mineral content of your area.

There is some literature out there about pure RO water not being great for you.

My anecdote: I have been purchasing RO water from the local grocery store for quite some time because I dislike the taste of my tap water after softening. For a long while I drank the RO water as-is. When I started adding mineral drops to the water, I felt a lot better.

Trusting someone else with your families health or safety is a mistake. They will never care as much as you do.

Better haul out into the woods then, Ted

Unfortunately the entire existence of society since humans were apes living in trees relies on this whole "trust" thing

How's that working out for the people in Flint? They still don't have clean water. Is it like the fairy in Peter Pan where if you believe hard enough the people in charge will magically become competent?

Obviously there are limits but having your water tested from time to time isn't bad advice.

Another thing I do is test my kids toys for lead, and it comes up positive roughly 1 out of 15 times. I could trust that the government and the big box store makes sure that never happens, maybe you do, but I do science so I can know instead.

Knowing > Trusting

Why do you trust those tests made by other people to be accurate?

Or the science of it being a problem (or not) to be accurate?

The flaw in your reasoning is that you implicitly assume trust anywhere

This isn't a binary between complete blind trust and "living in the woods", my point is if you want your kids to have clean drinking water the best way to do that is test it yourself. If you trust the US government to provide it for you, you'll end up here crying about how they abused your trust for the ten thousandth time and be somehow, inexplicably, surprised.

Water quality is primarily the responsibility of states. They generally follow EPA standards, but there isn't some EPA guy visiting your local water plant, it's the state.

It's wild that people think water quality has gotten worse over time.

I installed a whole-house filter that was great when the EPA's recommended limit was 70 ppt, since mine drops it to < 10 ppt. Now that it's something on the order of ppq, I may have to add RO to at least the fridge, since that's where we get drinking water.

What is your whole-house filter setup look like?

Enpress Pioneer[0] with a pleated paper pre-filter. My influent water has - according to my water supplier - 1.8 ppt of PFOA/PFAS, so this drops it down to 90 ppq. Still sadly almost two orders of magnitude above the new recommended limit, but I'll take what I can get.

[0] https://www.enpress.com/site/project/pioneer-filtration/

In the UK we don't even test AFAIK. Presumably one day some academics will do it here and come up with horrifying results.

Does anyone know how to go about getting home water tested? Is there a place you can send it, or kits to buy? 23andMe for water?

This site has a database by zip code, https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/

There are many testing labs, https://www.epa.gov/waterlabnetwork

Home kits vary by test type, https://www.thespruce.com/best-water-testing-kits-4155794

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