Is it time to clean up your water act?
“Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” -The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Clean drinking water is essential to human survival. It delivers nutrients, transports waste, lubricates joints, protects organs, enables chemical reactions, and regulates body temperature. For these reasons and more, we can’t go more than a few days without it.
But did you know, a long list of chemicals show up in our tap water, sometimes at alarmingly unsafe levels? Aging water infrastructure and industrial agriculture practices are to blame for sending everything from pesticides and microplastics to heavy metals and prescription meds into our water supply. These contaminants can interfere with digestion, reproduction, endocrine, and nervous system function, while contributing to chronic disease.
If you’re spending a lot of effort to improve your nutrition and not seeing the results you expect, water quality could be a factor. For this edition of Fix the Food, we decided to look around for the best solutions to filter out the bad stuff and add more of the good. Read on, to see what we discovered:
Sources of water contaminants
Drinking water issues vary by location, so let’s start by getting familiar with the most common contaminants and their sources:
Aging water infrastructure: Old rusting pipes can leach heavy metals, such as copper and lead, while also allowing dirt and debris into water systems.
Industrial agriculture: Excessive use of nitrates, nitrites, and phosphates from fertilizers runs off into rivers and streams. Spraying pesticides and herbicides on row crops gets chemicals like atrazine and glyphosate into our air and water. And a nimal waste from factory farming can send E. coli, salmonella, and other bacteria into the local water supply.
Manufacturing: Toxic fluorinated cheicals known as PFAS - also called forever chemicals and commonly used in fire-retardants, non-stick cookware, and other industrial products - are making their way into downstream water systems, along with VOCs and heavy metals. In fact, the The Environmental Working Group estimates that more than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in our drinking water at a concentration of 1 part per trillion, or ppt, or higher.
In other news, prescription medications from pharmaceutical manufacturing and improper consumer disposal are appearing in water systems across the country. Obviously, residual antibiotics, hormones, painkillers, and the like have no place in clean drinking water.
Natural geological contaminants: Some locations have high concentrations of arsenic and radon that appear in groundwater and can impact human health.
Water treatment processes: Added fluoride can interfere with your thyroid function, according to this study. Chlorine is added for disinfection, but can leave residual taste and odor. Even worse, are the disinfection byproducts that form when disinfectants react with organic matter. Aluminum sulfate used during water treatment may leave trace residues as well.
Urban and municipal runoff: For city-dwellers and bottled water fanatics, microplastics from consumer products and urban waste should be one of the biggest concerns to address.
Strategies for filtering water
Once you’ve decided to take water matters into your own hands, you have a dizzying list of home treatment options, according to the contaminants you want to remove and your budget:
Basic charcoal filters in a pitcher are one of the easiest and least expensive ways to reduce chlorine and some heavy metals, but they usually are made of plastic and are limited in how much of the contaminants they remove. Clearly Filtered is a popular choice in this category. Their pitchers are plastic, but travel size bottles with a built-in filter are available in stainless steel. Aarke is another brand that makes a glass and stainless steel pitcher and may be worth a look. Faucet-mounted filters also use activated charcoal to remove chlorine and lead, but at a slower capacity than other options.
The next step up would be a countertop system from a company like Berkey, which uses stainless steel reservoirs in a variety of sizes and offers the option to include additional filters that remove fluoride from your water. Unfortunately, we know from personal experience that these systems do not work well with softened water, which clogs the filters.
If you have the budget and kitchen sink set-up to install an under-the-counter filter, a reverse osmosis (RO) system is one of the best ways to purify tap water and remove most contaminants. The downsides of RO systems are the installation hassle, extra water usage, and the removal of beneficial trace minerals, which need to be replaced with drops from a product like ConcenTrace.
Distillation, UV treatment, and ion exchange are additional methods for removing unwanted elements in water. They may be combined with other systems for a comprehensive solution, depending on your needs.
Strategies for enhancing water
Removing contaminants through filtration is an excellent first step to improving your drinking water. If you’re open to experimentation, there are even more ways of enhancing water for more potential health benefits. While generally considered safe to try, most of these options fall under the category of emerging science and are best approached from the N=1 perspective. Try them and see for yourself whether you notice the improvements that their proponents suggest:
Hydrogen water is supplemented with molecular hydrogen by using effervescent tablets such as those made by Water & Wellness, a company founded by water scientist Robert Slovak. According to the Molecular Hydrogen Institute, more than “3000 scientific studies, including over 200 clinical studies, suggest that H2 has therapeutic potential.” Enhancing water with hydrogen gas may improve brain function, cardiovascular system, energy levels, and immune response. Ben Greenfield is an affiliate of Water & Wellness, who explored this topic in this podcast episode.
Deuterium-depleted water (DDW) removes one of the three hydrogen isotopes that make up natural water to create a form of water that is “lighter” in structure for improved cellular function. DDW water has been linked to some unusual biological effects in plants and animals, including longer lifespan and faster growth rates and is now marketed by a few companies including Litewater, for its metabolic health and longevity benefits. DDW is difficult to produce and accordingly expensive to buy, but it is gaining acceptance among health experts, as explored in this episode of the Bioptimizers podcast.
Ionized water is treated through a process called electrolysis to have a higher pH than regular tap water, which is intended to help balance acidity in the body. You can buy expensive ionizers for the home to create your own alkaline water, however, many critics explain that drinking this kind of water will not have a systemic effect on the body’s pH levels, since everything gets neutralized in the stomach. Another consideration: Ionization only lasts a few days, so definitely don’t waste money on any store-bought bottled water that claims a higher pH.
Two other enhanced water terms you may encounter:
Structured water draws on concepts found in nature to realign molecules in a hexagonal shape that mimics the structure of pure spring water. Proponents believe this type of water can be created by exposure to different energy sources, such as vortexing (swirling), magnetism, sunlight, and grounding (contact with the earth). If you’re curious, read these FAQs about structured water on The Wellness Enterprise website.
Micro-clustered water: In researching water options, you may come across the idea that processing water into smaller clusters of 4-6 molecules is healthier for you than drinking regular-sized clusters of 15-20 molecules because it may promote faster absorption into the body’s cells. Water scientists explain that we don’t yet know enough about the properties of water to create stable versions of these micro-clusters, and brands that claim to be delivering such a product are overpromising.
At Senza, we tested the output of one such system called Kangen Water for a couple of months, and while it tasted fantastic - just like pure spring water from a mountain stream - and had some detoxifying effects, it didn’t deliver any dramatic health benefits in that timeframe. Perhaps a longer testing time was needed and more detailed logging of symptoms/results, but the sky-high cost, difficult installation/maintenance, and multi-level marketing sales pitch were a turnoff for us.
Water quality homework
With all of this information now top-of-mind, what steps should you take to improve your drinking water quality?
Find out what’s in your water by purchasing a basic at-home testing kit.
Choose a filtration system that will remove the most troublesome contaminants.
Avoid drinking water out of plastic bottles and pitchers.
Consider using trace minerals, hydrogen tablets, or structuring devices to enhance your filtered water.
Keep up with the latest water research from leading environmental engineers, biophysicists, and microbiologists, as new findings and strategies are discovered.
Learn more about drinking water
Water-related episodes on the Ben Greenfield Life podcast
Huberman Lab Podcast: Optimize Your Water Quality and Intake for Health
Pollack Lab’s water research themes
Not All Water Is Equal: 7 Healthiest Types of Water to Drink, an easy read on the Klean Kanteen blog
Berkey countertop filters
Reverse Osmosis brands to consider
Wow! I had never heard of any of the 5 enhancing water. The link under duterium depleted water had two things that really jumped off the page. Himalayan salt is contaminated by iron oxide?!!! Two of my sisters like to use it. That same link said that camels produce duterium depleted water naturally and that's why they can survive in the desert for days. That's so amazing! But nonetheless we are not camels and I personally lean towards wanting to remove contaminants from water as much as possible while steering clear of unnatural water like those mentioned in the enhanced category. But it's so great to know about these things and understand what's out there while making our decisions. It's a dream to figure out how to get clean water which has good minerals in it. Might need to go with distillation and adding back minerals. This was another incredible article on an extremely important/critical topic for our health. Thank you!!!!!!