Graywater — how does it fit?

 Excerpted from an article by Doug Pushard 

What is graywater? It is the water that has been used by a household, except water from the kitchen sink and toilets. Water from these two sources is called black water and requires special treatment. The state publishes a terrific graywater guide that covers graywater uses and provides some wonderful diagrams of its capture and use. It can be found atwww.nmenv.state.nm.us/p2_web/gray_water.pdf

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Stirring Portraits of People Forced to Live in Flooded Homes

by Jakob Schiller

Every year, from June through October, Jashim Salam’s house in Chittagong, Bangladesh, floods. Not once, or twice, but five or six times—per month. It’s like that throughout the city, where several million people live alongside the sea. The water flows in from the Karnaphuli River, pushed beyond its banks by the rising tide of the Bay of Bengal.

This is a recent phenomenon, one many blame on climate change and rising seas coupled with the annual monsoon season. Residents have had to adapt and adjust to the enormous hardships of a life too often lived under water. Salam has been documenting just what it’s like for him and his neighbors. The photographer has produced two series about the flooding. Water World offers an intimate look at life in his neighborhood during a flood. Water World 2 is a powerful series of portraits of people standing in their homes, or in the streets of their communities, surrounded by water.

The portraits are meant to show just how absurd life has become. But it also offers a timeline of sorts. He’s photographed children who have grown up with the flooding and consider it, if not normal, than at least a regular thing. But subjects his age—Salam is 35—and older appreciate how radically their lives and communities have changed. His portraits are both beautiful and shocking. For most, the idea of living knee-deep in water for days on end is incomprehensible.

“It’s very annoying and the people are very fed up,” he says.

To cope, Salam raised the floors on his ground-level home and built walls and other barriers to keep the water at bay. Even so, it always finds a way in. It’s ruined his furniture, shut down his bathroom, and polluted his well, forcing him to boil his water or buy bottled water. Even with these precautions, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter were sickened by the last flood.

“I have been living here for almost 35 years and even my parents have never seen this kind of water level in the city,” Salam says. “If it goes on like this and the water level increase for the next couple of years, maybe I have to shift my own home because I can’t fight every day with flooding water.”

Still, Salam insists he’s luckier than some because he could afford beds tall enough to keep his family off the floor. Less fortunate families sleep on the ground, so when the water comes in they have nowhere to rest at night.

Although the photographer concedes he’s never run across a study directly linking the flooding to climate change, he cites a World Bank study that says Bangladesh will be among the countries most affected by rising temperatures and dwindling polar ice. People will have to contend with higher temperatures, stronger cyclones and rising seas that could wipe out 40 percent of the usable land in Southern Bangladesh by the 2080s. Salam discusses these issues with the people he photographs, hoping to raise awareness of the issue. Most people tend to blame the flooding on poor urban planning, which plays a role in the problem. But he wants them to know there are larger factors in play.

Eventually, Salam hopes to publish his work in a book and exhibit it internationally, perhaps in conjunction with similar projects. He knows the problems facing Bangladesh aren’t unique to the country, and wants to contribute to a growing conversation about how to prevent disasters like this in the future.

“We’re fed up with the flooding,” he says. “We can’t stay like this forever.”

Source: Wired.

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Nicaraguans told to eat iguanas as drought threatens food crisis

Lizard diet ridiculed but Central America’s poorest country is facing hunger because of poor harvests and rising food prices

by Sam Jones

Nicaraguans struggling to afford meat as the country suffers its worst drought in 32 years should consider raising and eating iguanas, a government expert has suggested.

The advice comes amid warnings that Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador could require levels of humanitarian aid not seen since the aftermath of hurricane Mitch 16 years ago, as poor harvests and rapid increases in the prices of staple items threaten a food crisis.

“Breeding iguanas brings two benefits,” said Guillermo Membreño, a land management expert. “Not only does it supply dietary protein, it also offers a commercial use for the animals.”

A boy holds up an iguana for sale on the highway in the north of Managua. Nicaraguans are being encouraged to eat the reptiles as a nutritious alternative to more conventional meat.

Iguanas, he added, contained 24% protein compared with 18% in chicken.

Although Nicaragua’s environmental laws forbid the hunting of iguanas between 1 January and 30 April each year, the lizards can be kept for food and even exported under certain circumstances.

“Farming iguanas – and not hunting them in forests – is a good way to deal with the food shortages caused by the prolonged drought,” Membreño told the government-run online newspaper La Voz del Sandinismo.

“Even if you’ve only got 10 iguanas, you’ve got something that offers food – and cash if you sell the iguanas for their meat, their skins or as pets.”

He also suggested people grow moringa trees, which require little water and the leaves of which can be used as a highly nutritious animal feed.

A survey conducted by another Nicaraguan newspaper found that the cost of 15 of the 19 basic items in the average shopping basket – including such staples as beans, corn, tomatoes and peppers – had risen over the past week.

However, the government’s suggestions met with a mix of scorn and ridicule from some Nicaraguans.

“I was going to have an iguana for breakfast, but it ran away. I was going to have beans, but they’re up to 37 [Nicaraguan córdobas] a pound today,” tweeted one.

Another, mocking the Sandinista government’s motto – Christian, socialist, caring – posted a picture of an iguana with the caption:“Anyone fancy a caring mini-Godzilla?”

Despite the humour, the situation in Central America’s poorest country is growing increasingly serious. According to the national livestock commission, Conagan, the drought saw 2,500 cattle starve to death last month, while a further 600,000 of Nicaragua’s 4.1m livestock are on the verge of starvation.

On Monday the drought’s effect on crops and food prices ledNicaragua’s central bank to cut its economic growth outlook and raise its inflation forecast. The bank said it expected growth in gross domestic product to be between 4% and 4.5% this year, down from the 4.5% to 5% it forecast in the spring.

A day later the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet) released an alert highlighting the risk of widespread food shortages in the region next year.

“As a result of projected poor harvests in 2014, the reduction in coffee-sector income for day labourers, and a more rapid than usual increase in the prices of some staple foods, extremely poor households across large areas of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador will experience a rapid deterioration in their food security in early 2015,” it said.

With the drought and the forthcoming El Niño affecting both the livestock and fishing industries – and coffee rust disease ravaging the crop on which the region is heavily dependent – Fewsnet warned that “atypically high” levels of human assistance would probably be needed to avert a food crisis.

“Depending on the performance of rainfall and markets over the coming months, the number of people in need of assistance could be the largest since hurricane Mitch in 1998,” it said. “Governments and their partners should begin response planning immediately to protect livelihoods and household consumption over the coming year.”

Source: The Guardian

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The EPA in a Nutshell

by Hardly Waite

The EPA, aka USEPA, is an agency of the US Government that is charged with protecting human health and the nation’s environment by writing and enforcing regulations (which must be passed into law by Congress).

The EPA came into being on Dec. 3, 1970 as the result of a plan submitted to Congress by President Nixon. The agency now has about 18,000 full-time employees. The current administrator is Lisa Jackson. [Update: Gina McCarthy is the current administrator.  She took over in July of 2013.]

The EPA has regulatory authority in such diverse areas a air quality, oil pollution, drinking water, fuel economy, and radiation protection. In regard to water, it is involved with the enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974.

The EPA is an often-maligned agency that is, unfortunately, subject to the political whims of changing administrations. Its authority was noticeably weakened during the years of the George W. Bush administration. In a 2008 survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work.

The EPA has the tough job of walking a tightrope between environmentalists and commercial interests. It is unpopular most of the time with both groups. It may not be a perfect system, but the nation would certainly be the worse without it.

The EPA sets the MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level) for selected chemical substances that can pollute water. We have often pointed out the MCL are “politically negotiated” rather than based on the best scientific evidence. The regulations can also be altered by judicial action. Here’s a cut from the EPA website that explains why there is currently no established limit for chloroform, a dangerous DBP and known cancer causer. It illustrates how the process works (and why you should not necessarily feel that you can rely on the government of monitor and protect against dangerous water contaminants). I hope you won’t mind that I snipped out some of the bureaucratic jargon to make it readable by humans.

Removal of the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal for Chloroform From the National Primary Drinking Water Regulations

In December, 1968 EPA Promulgated National Primary Drinking Water Regulations for disinfectants and disinfectant byproducts that included a MCLG (Maximum Contaminant Level Goal) of zero for chloroform. The MCLG was challenged by the Chlorine Chemistry Council and the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and the U. S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit found that EPA had not used the best available, peer-reviewed science to set the MCLG as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The Court issued an order vacating the zero MCLG.

The EPA has removed the MCLG for chloroform from its NPDWRs to ensure that the regulations conform to the Court’s order. (You can read the full ruling on the EPA’s website.)

Reprinted from the Pure Water Occasional for October, 2011.

Dying of Thirst: What’s It Like?

Some 40,000 Iraqi refugees face starvation after being forced into hiding on a barren mountain top by a circling band of bloodthirsty jihadists.

They must now decide whether to descend and risk being slaughtered or hope their attackers are defeated before they die of thirst or hunger, officials said.

They were driven from the town of Sinjar by ISIS over the weekend and have already been forced to bury at least 20 children who succumbed to the harsh conditions on Mount Sinjar.

The above, from a Daily Mail article (August 7, 2014), was one of many news stories that focused on the plight of the Yazidis, a religious minority being threatened by extinction with the advance of ISIS in northern Iraq.  Dying of thirst may be an abstraction to most of us, but the real experience is a horror we don’t like to even imagine.  I’ve excerpted and adapted the following from a Washington Post story on the Yazidi dilemma. –Hardly Waite.

According to The Post’s Loveday Morris, the militants have surrounded 10,000 to 40,000 members of a religious minority sect, the Yazidi, on a barren mountain, where the refugees are beginning to die of thirst and hunger. The Yazidi, who ISIS considers apostates, fled there when the jihadi forces overwhelmed Kurdish fighters in the nearby town of Sinjar.

Children and older people are succumbing in the 100-plus degree heat, Morris reported in this terrible dispatch. There is no place to bury them on the rocky hill. The Iraqi government has tried to drop water to them, with little success.

“There are children dying on the mountain, on the roads,” Marzio Babille, the Iraq representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)  said Tuesday. “There is no water, there is no vegetation, they are completely cut off and surrounded by Islamic State. It’s a disaster, a total disaster.”

As this barbarism continues, I asked Jeffrey Berns, president-elect of the National Kidney Foundation and a nephrologist at the University of Pennsylvania, what these children may be going through.

“Thirst, as you probably know, is one of the most potent drives for behavior we have. It may be the most potent we have, more than even hunger,” he said.

“People are going to be miserable.”

The body is about 60 percent water, and under normal conditions, he said, an average person will lose about a quart of water each day by sweating and breathing and another one to three quarts by urinating, he said. In the heat and under more difficult physical conditions, that amount increases, he said.

If it’s not replaced over time and dehydration becomes severe, cells throughout the body will begin to shrink as water moves out of them and into the blood stream, part of the body’s efforts to keep the organs perfused in fluid.

“All the cells will shrink,” Berns said, “but the ones that count are the brain cells. They don’t operate normally when they’re’ shrinking.” Changes in mental status will follow, including confusion and ultimately coma, he said. As the brain becomes smaller, it takes up less room in the skull and blood vessels connecting it to the inside of the cranium can pull away and rupture.

This man, who died of dehydration, during a wilderness survival exercise, suffered delirium and hallucinations before he succumbed, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Victims’ kidneys may shut down first, Berns said, as they continue to lack access to both water and salt. The kidneys cleanse the blood of waste products which, under normal conditions, are excreted in urine. Without water, blood volume will decline and all the organs will start to fail, he said. Kidney failure will soon lead to disastrous consequences and ultimately death as blood volume continues to fall and waste products that should be eliminated from the body remain.

Sadly, children die this way every day in places around the globe where safe drinking water is not available. About 760,000 children die of dehydration caused by diarrhea, the second-leading cause of death in children under 5, according to the World Health Organization.

Yazidi Women and Children

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There’s Something in the Water and It’s Making Fish Live Longer

Pharmaceutical waste in surface waters has negatively affected marine life in the past—drugs containing the hormone estrogen making male fish pregnant, for example. But in Sweden, there may something in the water making fish live longer. According to a new study in the Institute of Physics’ Environmental Research Letters, the waste from anxiety medication Oxazepam is decreasing Eurasian perch mortality rates in the surface waters of a Swedish lake.

This is not necessarily a good thing. Researchers from Umea University in Sweden claim that the drug, while extending a fish’s life span, can alter the balance of life in the aquatic environment and might result in serious ecological consequences down the line.

According to Jonatan Klaminder, an environmental scientist and the primary author of the study, health-improving pharmaceuticals have become yet another toxin to consider when testing waters. “Ecotoxicological tests were designed with traditional toxic contaminants in mind, such as heavy metals and dioxins, which have historically been the major apparent threat against aquatic organisms in surface waters. Pharmaceuticals are a new group of contaminants that do not necessarily fit into the traditional view.”

The scientists went out and caught Eurasian perch from a lake in Sweden for the study, then exposed them to two doses, high and low, of Oxazepam. The medication, which is typically used to alleviate anxiety and insomnia in people, frequently contaminates surface waters via wastewater-treatment effluent, the product left behind from treated wastewater. The results found the fish more “bold” and active than the control group that wasn’t treated with Oxazepam.

The study also collected fish eggs from a separate population of Eurasian perch, then exposed them to three different concentrations of the drug during the first nine days of their development. After hatching, a portion of the little fish were analyzed. Results found that the hatched fry’s mortality rates were significantly lower than the control group of fry that weren’t exposed to Oxazepam.

The fish’s increased survival rates are prompting researchers to study the effects of other pharmaceuticals that get dumped into surface waters, including painkillers, antibiotics, hormones and anti-depressants, for possible ecological implications.

“A therapeutic effect leading to increased survival of one species may generate a proportional increase in mortality of that species’ prey, which may have cascading ecological consequences that need consideration,” said Tomas Brodin, co-author of the study. “A new, conceptual view of ecotoxicological testing should include the possibility that a substance can improve the health of an organism and make individuals affected by contamination more competitive than non-affected individuals.”

Source: Newsweek.

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Deadly Algae Are Everywhere, Thanks to Agriculture

Get used to algae blooms, they may be coming to a body of water near you

By David Biello

The rains come and water the spring shoots of another bounteous Midwestern corn crop in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. The rains also wash phosphorus off farm fields and into creeks, streams and rivers. The waters flow into the shallowest of the Great Lakes—Lake Erie, which is just 18 meters deep on average and far shallower on its western edge. All that phosphorus doesn’t just help crops grow. When it reaches the lake it fuels the growth of mats of bright green algae, turning the water the color of pea soup. Such Microcystis cyanobacteria bear poisons, at least 80 different varieties of a toxin dubbed microcystin. And when the shallow waters deliver an algal bloom down to the right water intake pipes, an entire city like Toledo is left without water.

“Most water treatment plants are watching for the toxin,” says Don Scavia, environmental engineer, director of the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan and an expert on such harmful algal blooms. “The options when it occurs are to treat it—very expensive—or to shut down.”

Such dangerous blooms are becoming more common, affecting all 50 states, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Just last year a township near Toledo had to shut down its water supply due to a similar bloom. And such blooms are not confined to freshwater. Offshore, similar algal blooms create dead zones; microbes consuming dead algae use up all the available oxygen in the water, killing slow-moving and sessile sea life. Such dead zones are on the rise not just on the U.S. seaboards and interior waters but worldwide. The annual ocean dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River covered an area roughly the size of Connecticut this year, after reaching Massachusetts-proportions in 2013. Freshwater blooms like the one that shut down Toledo’s drinking water cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and also occur in countries such as Brazil and China.

Warmer summertime temperatures, more powerful rainstorms and longer growing seasons—all conditions expected to strengthen as climate change continues—will only make conditions even more hospitable for such cyanobacteria, some of the oldest life on Earth. The algae have been blooming earlier and lingering later in recent years. And ecosystem changes in Lake Erie may be contributing to the problem. “The zebra and quagga mussels in Lake Erie might also be important because they do not eat the Microcystis species, favoring their growth over others,” Scavia notes.

The bloom that shut down water supplies for Toledo is just getting started, though the tap water is now drinkable again. It will persist into the fall, likely peaking in September. And such blooms are not confined to Lake Erie: similar blooms have happened in Green Bay on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay.

The microcystin toxin is quite dangerous—more potent at smaller doses than powerful pesticide DDT, neurotoxic mercury and even the poison cyanide. It can cause liver damage in humans as well as vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Its cousin, anatoxin, poisons the central nervous system. Treatment requires adding chemicals and carbon to filter out the toxins. And drinking water cannot simply be boiled to kill off the algae because this can burst the cyanobacterial cells, releasing yet more toxin into the water.

The states surrounding Lake Erie thought they had solved the algal bloom problem by eliminating phosphates in detergents that had been getting into Lake Erie via sewage treatment plants. These measures cut such phosphorus from nearly 30,000 metric tons per year to just over 10,000. But “changes in farming practices have contributed to increased runoff,” explains David Dempsey, a policy advisor at the International Joint Commission (IJC). The independent body was created in 1909 by Canada and the U.S. to deal with shared waters like the Great Lakes; it released a report on the subject, “A Balanced Diet for Lake Erie: Reducing Phosphorus Loadings and Harmful Algal Blooms,” (pdf) in February. “To some extent this is offsetting the improvements made by reducing phosphorus in detergents,” he adds.

Reducing phosphorus from farms will be much tougher challenge than cleaning sewage treatment plants, which was required by the U.S. Clean Water Act of 1972. So far, only voluntary programs have been put in place to fight runoff. “They aren’t enough,” says Rajesh Bejankiwar, leader of the IJC task force tackling phosphorus pollution in the Great Lakes. Farm fields in the Lake Erie Basin deliver nearly 640 grams of phosphorus per acre to that lake, or more than 60 percent of the phosphorus now reaching the water. As a result, the year 2011 saw the largest algal bloom in Lake Erie in recorded history. Exacerbating the problem are nutrients that flow in with waste from large animal farms as well as, still, the treated sewage from cities like Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit.

The basic idea to cut back on runoff from farms is simple: apply only the right amount of fertilizer in a targeted way at the appropriate time exactly where it can do the most good for crops and have the least likelihood of simply running off in the rain. That means no more fall, winter or early spring application to prepare fields for the growing season, according to the IJC, among others. Buffer zones of foliage and wetlands can also help filter out the phosphorus but this marginal land has increasingly been used to grow yet more corn, as prices of the crop have risen in recent years, thanks to a federal mandate to make ethanol from corn as fuel for cars. “The most important thing that can be done is to reduce agricultural runoff,” Bejankiwar says. “Prevention is better than treatment.”

Source: Scientific American.

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Texas Drinking Water Systems Draw Federal Concerns

by Neena Satija

More than 310 public drinking water systems in Texas — nearly 4.5 percent of the state’s regulated public water systems — have quality issues that haven’t been adequately addressed, federal officials told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this year. That is the highest percentage in the nation, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Most are small public water systems, like mobile home parks, serving a few hundred people or fewer. But a few are larger and serve thousands.

TCEQ officials say the federal estimate is outdated and high; by their account, about 4 percent of systems have issues that need more attention. The agency said it has dramatically stepped up its enforcement in the past year, training more staff and pursuing more than 100 public water systems in recent months for clean water violations.

Still, the EPA’s concerns and additional data suggest that keeping up with the 7,000 public water systems subject to state regulation in Texas has been a huge challenge. The TCEQ’s enforcement division now has 107 full-time employees, compared with 117 in 2007, though its annual expenses have stayed relatively constant at about $5.5 million.

“There could be more resources brought to bear,” said Robert Doggett, general counsel for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which serves border regions where many public water systems have committed clean water violations.

Some districts have the money to fix their water issues, Doggett said. “Others are poor, and they don’t have the money and expertise, and they need help. Either way, it’s a problem, and why hasn’t the state agency done much about it?”

In an email, TCEQ spokesman Terry Clawson said, “Texas’ drinking water systems face a wide array of challenges in meeting the public health protection standards aimed at ensuring safe drinking water.”

In its March letter to the TCEQ, the EPA wrote that an alarmingly large number of systems in Texas had problems that took the TCEQ too long to seriously address. Dozens have not been compliant with clean water law for close to five years, according to the EPA.

A separate EPA review done in 2012 found that nearly a quarter of public water systems in Texas had committed significant violations of water law — either because of unhealthy levels of contaminants, or because they failed to test water properly and frequently enough. That’s a higher percentage of violations than in other large states, such as California, where 8 percent of water systems had committed significant violations.

Many of the systems with the most severe problems are in remote areas and serve only a few dozen people. Their water resources have naturally occurring contaminants like arsenic that are enormously expensive to remove. Operators also constantly change or are hard to reach, making regulation by the state particularly difficult.

That appears to be the case, for example, with “Cyndie Park II Water Supply Corp.,” which serves just over a dozen households in a Nueces County colonia. The water comes from portions of the Gulf Coast Aquifer that have high levels of arsenic. Long-term human exposure to arsenic has been linked to liver, prostate and many other types of cancer.

For more than 10 years, the TCEQ has regularly cited Cyndie Park II WSC for providing water with dangerously high levels of arsenic as well as coliform — microorganisms that could indicate the presence of disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli. It has also sent dozens of notices in recent years alleging that the system is not routinely testing its water or reporting test results to the state. But there was no apparent improvement; last fall, arsenic levels were at 15 micrograms per liter, according to EPA data; the federal limit is 10.

In 2011, residents were asked on three separate occasions to boil their water because of problems with the system, according to state data. The agency sued Cyndie Park II WSC in 2012 and demanded $150,000 in fines, but never received a response.

“None of us here drink the water,” said Robert Burleson Jr., a retired resident who lives with his wife on a fixed income. “We don’t cook with it. All we do is shower and wash dishes.”

Burleson said he spends about $10 per week on water jugs in Corpus Christi, 17 miles away. That’s in addition to the water bill he pays Cyndie Park II WSC. “That’s about all anybody can afford out here,” he said. The median annual income for area households is less than $30,000.

Burleson used to serve as president of the water cooperative’s board, but quit — with the rest of the board members — a few years ago out of frustration. “Nobody had any money” to fix the arsenic problem, he said. “I had engineers do work on it and put in for grants and stuff, but we never got anything.”

Nueces County received $150,000 from the TCEQ to install an arsenic removal system that will come online in the next few months. But County Commissioner Joe Gonzalez said many other problems remain, including water lines that are cracking and ready to break. Water service was out for nearly a month last year because of such issues, he said. Some of the $150,000 remains and will be used to fix the water lines, but more is needed.

Gonzalez said that his long-term goal is to provide residents with a new supply of water. Along with arsenic, other contaminants and high salt levels consistently plague the groundwater that supplies the colonia and other nearby residents today.

Planning, design and construction costs to connect to a larger public water supply system that relies on cleaner surface water would be around $1 million, and the county plans to apply for grants from the state. But it will likely be years before any construction begins.

“We try to do what we can with the money we have, but sometimes those grants are hard to come by,” Gonzalez said.

Source:  The Texas Tribune.

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Pure Water Gazette Technical Wizard Pure Water Annie Explains How Water Moves Through An Undersink Reverse Osmosis Unit

In modern home reverse osmosis units,  tap water, driven by normal city water pressure, flows first through a carbon pre-filter, which removes organic contaminants including chlorine and its by-products.

Next, the water enters the reverse osmosis membrane, a very tight, sheet-like filter, that allows water to pass but rejects dissolved solids like sodium and impurities like lead and arsenic. Some of the water entering the unit is used to cleanse the membrane surface. This water, called brine or concentrate, flows to the kitchen drain pipes.

The purified water leaving the membrane, which is called permeate, is stored in a small storage tank until it is needed. When the RO unit’s ledge faucet mounted on the sink is opened, the purified water, or permeate,  is forced by air pressure inside the storage tank through another carbon filter, which gives it a final polish, and from there to the ledge faucet.

This is a simplified description of a three-stage RO unit. Additional stages like sediment filters and additional carbon filters or specialty filters can be included. The simplified description omits a few very essential parts like flow control devices, check valves, and an automatic shutoff devices that stops the inflow of water when the storage tank is full.

What is microcystin?

The harmful toxin responsible for the shutdown of Toledo’s water taps is on the rise, and experts suggest that farming and climate change may be to blame.

by Melissa Breyer

• Microcystin on the skin may produce a rash, hives or skin blisters (especially on the lips and under swimsuits).
• Swallowing water containing microcystin may cause gastrointestinal symptoms such as stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe headaches and fever.
• Inhaling water droplets containing microcystin can cause irritated eyes and nose, cough, and sore throat, chest pain, asthma-like symptoms or allergic reactions.
• Exposure to large amount of microcystin can cause liver damage.

• Wash with soap and water after contact.
• Avoid drinking alcohol.
• Do not use acetaminophen.
• Let your doctor know if you are experiencing any symptoms.

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