Buta Full Life

Welcome to a place for those who are smart, passionate, and committed about living healthy, dynamic lives. We're smart about diet, nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle. We're passionate about our environment and our impact upon it. And, we're committed to doing what we need to do to get the results we want to live our beautiful lives.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Mixed Organic Cocktails Anyone?

The Massachusetts Regional Water Authority is a highly reputable water company. By Massachusetts law, they test above and beyond the federal EPA standards for a wide variety of minerals, and even organic disinfectant by-products. They do a good job.

But they don’t test and can’t test for all of the industrial and agricultural products commonly present in our water supply. Just a sampling of common persistent organic compounds include atrazine, alachlor, simazine, benzene, xylene, carbofuran, pentachlorophenol, methoxychlor, Dinoseb, and the most widely used pesticide in the world, 2,4-D (2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid)

I oppose legislation, perhaps surprisingly, requiring water companies to test for all of these chemicals. I know what that would entail from my professional experience in water quality and toxicology labs. With the expensive technology, our water bills would go through the roof creating more of a hardship for homeowners in these tough economic times.

Does that sound inconsistent with wanting everyone to have safe water and even everyone having the right to safe water? Confusing, but by now, it’s obvious that I’m too passionate about health to not propose simpler and fully economical solutions to mandated contaminant testing.

Here’s three actions that can make your water safer.

  1. Everyone needs quality water filtered drinking water. Top brand filter pitches aren’t effective against most or all persistent organic chemicals just like they are not rated for lead. Ours is. So, if our brand is as good or better than what your are already using, would there be any reason not to switch brands and be sure? Both pitcher styles or family models are available
  2. Secondly, do not depend on bottled water. Bottled water has the same standards as tap water. If you want to be sure your bottled water does not contain the lovely POCs listed above, please request full testing information from each individual company you use.
  3. Third, maintain your lawn in a safe environmentally sound manner. Fertilizers and pesticides from lawns are main pollution sources. Here's a link for organic lawn care. Better yet, consider an indigenous species lawn like I'm cultivating on the Cape, or ultra low maintanence lawns. (Would you please let them know I sent you?) And, to reduce storm water run off that carries off fertilizers and lawn pesticides, check out the Charles River Watershed Association brochures.
Thanks for reading!

Susan
Butafullife.com