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Thursday, June 4, 2009

GREEN LIVING: Healthy Living - Does the EPA Cover Your Water Quality?

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Healthy Living - Does the EPA Cover Your Water Quality? by Donna Hoffmann

As most Americans get their supply of drinking water from large scale municipal water distribution systems that greatly rely on surface water sources like reservoirs, rivers and lakes and then there are still millions that depend on private water sources such as wells and aquifers (an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, silt, or clay) from which groundwater can be usefully extracted using a water well (Source: Wikipedia.org).

In both cases the United States is supplied by the cleanest drinking water supplies in the world. And for the most part the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the quality of the nation's water supply by issuing and enforcing standards for a safe drinking water.

The office of the Environment Protection Agency has the responsibility to oversee that we all receive a high quality water supply; each treatment facility follows these standards to the letter to provide us with the best source of drinking water. But these standards stays at the facility, once distributed these standards no longer apply, and no one can say that the quality of the water at a treatment facility would be the same once it goes through the pipes and into our homes.

It is understandable that the water once distributed may pick up a number of contaminants like industrial chemicals, factory farm waste, sewage, pesticides, fertilizer, and sediment from the ground along the way that we will never know about until it has accumulated in our system and cause health problems. These contaminants can be picked up by the water from cracks in pipelines to the pipes themselves that with age deteriorates and turns into a breeding ground for bacteria and some forms of fungi.

As consumers, we know that our water sources are being monitored by the office of the EPA to provide us a safe source drinking water but we should take up on ourselves to ensure that the same quality stays in the water once it reaches our kitchens and bathrooms. We can no longer rely on the EPA's standards once the water leaves the reservoirs and other watersheds to make the long journey to reach our households because there is no easy or inexpensive process for them to monitor the pipelines.

Filtering the supply from our end is one sure way that we can avoid ingesting or having direct contact with contaminants and impurities that was picked up along the way. Our vigilance and taking some extra precaution would go a very long way if our health and those of our loved ones are at stake. We should all take part in safeguarding the quality of our drinking water and promote awareness so that we can live a healthy lifestyle without worrying of what else is in our clear glass of refreshing drink of water.

Donna Hoffman is the owner of http://www.ezClearwater.com, provider of the highest quality, earth-friendly water purification products for home, office, pool and spa. Our goal is to share products that are "Good to You and Mother Earth Too."

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