A Common Sense Look at Bacteria and Water Filters

by Gene Franks,  Pure Water Products

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

In A Nutshell: An unqualified fringe of the water treatment industry has spread the myth that carbon water filters are breeding places for dangerous bacteria.  Not so.

Bacteria are everywhere.  A high percentage of your own body consists of the bacteria that live within you.  When you eat a fresh salad, it is literally teeming with bacteria.

Most bacteria are not only “friendly;”  they are essential to our well-being.  As  with most other areas of our world, however, it is the occasional bad actor that gets all the attention. The discovery of E. coli in a sausage factory is the lead story on the TV news, but news reports that sing the praises of the bacteria that live in your large intestine and make the digestion of food possible are scarce.

For each of the few disease producing bacteria that can live in the human body, hundreds of others are necessary for our existence.

Bacteria help us digest our food, for example–otherwise, we’d starve.

— Nature Bulletin from the Argonne National Laboratory.

The bacteria that do harm are called  pathogenic.  Pathogenic, or disease-causing bacteria are responsible for such diseases as cholera, typhoid fever, infectious hepatitis, dysentery, and gastroenteritis. Modern water treatment methods have done an excellent job of keeping pathogenic bacteria under control in most advanced societies.

The bacteria we hear most about is E. coli (which stands for Escherichia coli). E. coli is found in the intestines and in

Rod-shaped E. coli usually measure about 2 microns long and half a micron across. This makes them big enough to be caught by a tight water filter.

the fecal matter of humans and animals, so when E. coli  is found in water, it usually indicates that the water supply has been contaminated from sewage. E. coli might get into the water supply, for example, through a broken well casing, a ruptured supply line, or runoff from a septic system or dumped sewage. E. coli is of significance mainly as an indicator bacteria. E. coli itself is most often non-pathogenic, but its presence indicates that more dangerous fecal bacteria are probably around. E. coli is always present in humans, and normally a newborn baby’s intestines are inhabited by E. coli within the first 40 hours of life.

Modern water treatment has had great success in the control of pathogenic bacteria.  The leading strategies are chlorine (or chloramine) to treat public water supplies, plus ultraviolet, ozone, very tight filtration,  and other chemicals like hydrogen peroxide or potassium permanganate in other venues.

Harmless and usually helpful bacteria outnumber the pathogenic.  These can be found everywhere, and one of their favorite places to live is in the moist, dark recesses of the carbon inside a water filter.

The bacteria that grow in carbon filters, usually called heterotrophic bacteria (or HPC), are naturally occurring bacteria which usually have no consequence for human health. Numerous studies have shown them to be harmless to humans.  HPC are found also in trace amounts in public and bottled water as well as on fresh fruits and vegetables.

HCP can grow in carbon beds,  and they may be found in reverse osmosis units downstream of the initial dechlorinating filter. Although their presence can be something of an aesthetic nuisance, forming a slickness on the surface of filter cartridges, for example, they pose no threat to health.  They may, in fact, inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria and be useful in other ways.

Why, then, the persistent myth that water filters are writhing nests of dangerous bacteria waiting to strike us down? In my opinion, the bacteria issue that troubles many water filter owners is a lingering result mainly of marketing misinformation that was spread by overzealous amateurs bent on selling “bacteriostatic” water filters.  Multi-level marketers of the 1980s and 1990s  were sent into the world  preaching the virtues of silver-impregnated carbon in “bacteriostatic” water filters; their main message was that the standard carbon carbon filters being sold by everyone else were dangerous breeding beds for bacteria.  More recently, sellers of mixed bed carbon and KDF (also a “bacteriostatic” agent) filters have kept the myth alive in a more subdued way.  (Bacteriostatic, by the way, does not mean that the filter kills dangerous pathogens in the water, making unsafe water safe, but simply that it inhibits the growth of bacteria within the carbon bed.)

Common Sense

Let’s be reasonable.

When did you last hear a news report about a disease epidemic that was spread by pathogens growing inside  water filters?

The water treatment systems that are used in homes to remove disinfectants, chemical contaminants, and heavy metals while improving the aesthetics of the water are not designed for use on non-potable water.  They are used on water that is pathogen free.  It is unreasonable to fear that pathogen-free chlorinated city water will somehow introduce dangerous microbes into a water filter where they will grow and flourish.

If the presence of bacteria is a concern, or if you have strong reasons to protect yourself from all bacteria, good or bad, it’s easy to install a ceramic filter as the final stage of your drinking water filter or reverse osmosis unit.

Pa.  pushes drillers to frack with coal mine water

By Michael Rubinkam

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

In A Nutshell:  Each day Pennsylvania coal mines dump 300 million gallons of polluted water into the state’s streams and rivers.  At the same time, oil companies use up to 5 million gallons of fresh water for each gas well they frack. It only makes sense to divert the coal mine waste to fracking.

Each day, 300 million gallons of polluted mine water enters Pennsylvania streams and rivers, turning many of them into dead zones unable to support aquatic life. At the same time, drilling companies use up to 5 million gallons of fresh water for every natural-gas well they frack.

State environmental officials and coal region lawmakers are hoping that the state’s newest extractive industry can help clean up a giant mess left by the last one. They are encouraging drillers to use tainted coal mine water to hydraulically fracture gas wells in the Marcellus Shale formation, with the twin goals of diverting pollution from streams and rivers that now run orange with mine drainage and reducing the drillers’ reliance on fresh sources of water.

Drainage from abandoned mines is one of the state’s worst environmental headaches, impairing 5,500 miles of waterways.

“It’s a problem (the drillers) didn’t create, but hopefully a problem they can help solve,” said Sen. Richard Kasunic, a southwestern Pennsylvania Democrat who’s co-sponsoring legislation to spur the use of mine water in fracking.

While not all mine water is chemically suitable for fracking — and a mine discharge has to be close enough to a well pad to make transport via truck or pipeline economical — experts believe Pennsylvania has more than enough polluted mine water to meet the needs of the drilling industry.

More than 10 drillers have already received Department of Environmental Protection permission to use mine discharges for fracking, a technique in which millions of gallons of water, along with chemical additives and sand, are pumped down a well to break apart gas-bearing shale deposits.

“There’s a lot of potential here,” said Doug Kepler, vice president of environmental engineering at Seneca Resources Corp. “People are looking for the right place to do it, the right commitment to do it, and it has to make sense for your operation.”

Seneca has been withdrawing polluted water from the Arnot No. 5 coal mine in Tioga County since late 2010 and piping it some 6 miles to the well pad. DEP considers the mine, which discharges water at an average rate of 2,000 gallons a minute, one of the top contributors of pollution to the upper Tioga River watershed. Seneca’s permit allows it to take up to 500,000 gallons per day from the Arnot discharge.

“We’re not doing this to save money, and it’s not really costing us any more money,” said Kepler, a former environmental consultant. “It’s just an alternative that we choose to do to try to minimize our impact.”

The idea enjoys broad bipartisan support in Harrisburg. A bill that would encourage drillers to frack their wells with polluted water from abandoned mines cleared the state Senate by a unanimous vote last year, but passage came late in the legislative session, and the measure died in the House.

Kasunic’s revised bill had been making its way through the Senate when it was tabled abruptly last week after environmental groups complained it would give drillers too much protection from liability.

The legislation would remove what had been seen as a barrier for drillers wanting to use coal mine water: the state’s Clean Streams Law. The law’s strict liability provisions could be interpreted as requiring drillers to treat a mine discharge in perpetuity once they begin withdrawing water from it, even though they had no role in creating it. The Senate bill would shield gas companies from that liability.But PennEnvironment and other environmental activists claimed the bill also would give drillers immunity from responsibility for spills and other accidents at a well pad, too.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration supports the bill and contends it was fine as written.

It “does not provide blanket immunity for the act of hydraulic fracturing, and any assertion to the contrary would be false,” John Stefanko, deputy DEP secretary, wrote to Kasunic and another of the legislation’s co-sponsors, Republican Sen. Gene Yaw.

He said it does not “provide any protection to the transporter or user of the treated water when it is used for fracking or other well development purposes.”

Lawmakers say they’re willing to make adjustments and are hopeful it will win passage.

 

Source: Bloomberg News.

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 More People Drown Than You Think: Ten Per Day in the US

Ten people die every day from unintentional drowning in the United States, making it the fifth-leading cause of unintentional injury death.  About 20% are under the age of 14. Nearly 80% are male.

Only about 35% of Americans know how to swim, and only 2% to 7% swim well.  Teens are particularly susceptible to peer pressure and often go past their limits. Exhaustion or disorientation under water could cause a weak swimmer to panic.

In this case, the swimmer would go through the stages of what lifeguards call an “active drowning.”  The word “active” may be misleading, as active drowning is nothing like what you usually see on TV.

In an active drowning, a swimmer is at or below eye level at the surface of the water for about 10 to 20 seconds. The head is tilted back to get air. The eyes are either wide open or tightly shut. The mouth is often in an “O” shape from shock.  If you can call for help, you aren’t drowning.

After about 20 seconds, the victim will start to sink and will hold his breath underwater for anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds. If rescued during this time, the swimmer usually will be fine.

After 90 seconds,  a swimmer will black out. At this point, the outcome is hard to predict.  If a swimmer is resuscitated after the four-minute mark, there’s a high risk of brain damage.

Typically, a person holding his breath will be triggered to breathe when his CO2 levels get high. But if a swimmer is holding his breath for a long time while exhaling underwater, or is going underwater repeatedly, his CO2 levels are lowered. When that happens, the brain’s built-in alarm to breathe doesn’t go off, despite a lack of oxygen.

More than half of drowning deaths in people older than 15 occur outside of pools, according to the CDC. And alcohol is involved in 70% of cases.

More information from CNN Health.

 In Rural India, Where Rains Pour Down in Buckets,  Water Is Scarce

Gazette Numerical Wizard Bee Sharper Indexes the Numbers that Harper’s Misses

by Bee Sharper

Portion of the water supply in rural India (where 70% of the people live)  that is routinely contaminated with dangerous bacteria — 1/2.

Approximate number of Indian children who die each year of diarrhea or pneumonia caused by toxic water — 600,000.

Year by which it is predicted that India will need to double its current water supply — 2030.

Number of Indians who currently scrounge for water from unproven sources — 100,000,000.

Percentage of the world’s population that lives in India — 16%.

Percentage of the world’s fresh water supply that is available to India — 4%.

Annual rainfall in the small northern Indian town of  Cherrapunji — 4 feet.

Occasional daily rainfall amount during the rainy season — 1 foot.

Factor by which this rainfall exceeds the annual rainfall in Seattle — 12 times.

Number of miles many Cherrapunji women have to walk to bring water to their homes during the dry season — 1+

Number of trips per day required to bring water to the home — 4 to 5.

Number of hours per day that residents have tap water in the city of New Delhi — 2 to 3.

Percentage of New Delhi’s total water output that is lost to leaky pipes and theft — 30% to 70%.

Women Carrying Water from a Community Tap in Cherrapunji.

Reference: New York Times

Land and Ocean

by Janet Kaspersen,  Stormwater Editor

 

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

Gazette’s Nutshell View:  The problem of plastics in the ocean is getting worse all the time.  Two years after the Japanese tsunami, Hawaii is catching the debris.

The problem of plastic in the ocean—where it lasts for decades and gets eaten by birds, fish, and other animals—is nothing new; in fact, it’s getting worse. Now, two years after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Hawaiian islands are receiving an extra share of plastics and other debris.

By some estimates, about a million and a half tons of debris was washed out to sea during the tsunami; some has landed in North America. Hawaii, though, which is sometimes described as the “comb” of the Pacific because it catches debris as it swirls westward across the ocean, is getting much of the material now. Items with Japanese text and logos, ranging in size from tiny shards to whole appliances, have been prevalent for months. Although big items like refrigerators are more dramatic, it’s the smaller and more plentiful ones—bottle caps, bits of plastic bags—that are of greater concern to wildlife specialists.

Earlier studies by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography showed that 9% of ocean fish had ingested plastics. As this article details, recent NOAA studies have shown that 12% of fish—and as much as 45% in some species—have done so. And one oceanographer studying albatross in Hawaii says that every single bird he examined recently had eaten some sort of plastic debris. It’s a reminder, another NOAA researcher says, that “the land and the oceans are incredibly connected.”

Source:  Stormwater

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 The Comeback of Water as America’s Drink

Gazette Numerical Wizard Bee Sharper Indexes the Numbers that Harper’s Misses

by Bea Sharper

Percentage increase in the amount of water consumed by the average American vs. 15 years ago — 38%.

Per capita US consumption of of soda in 1998 — 54 gallons.

Per capita US consumption of water in 1998 — 42 gallons.

Per capita US consumption of  soda in 2013 –44 gallons.

Per capita US consumption of water in 2013 — 58 gallons.

Per capita US consumption of water in 2013 in ounces — 7,242.

Per capita US consumption of water in 2013 in cups — 2.5.

Year in which soft drinks peaked in popularity in the US — 1998.

Estimated total annual American consumption of all liquids, in gallons — 180.

Estimated total annual American consumption of all liquids, in kegs — 11.

Estimated total annual American consumption of all liquids, in bathtubs-full — 4.

Estimated total annual American consumption of all liquids, in large aquariums-full — 1.

Percentage increase in American bottled water consumption since 2001 — 50 %.

Percentage of US bottled water market now held by Coca Cola — 13%.

Percentage of US bottled water market now held by PepsiCo – 10%.

Percent increase in wine consumption in the US during the past decade — 20%.

Percent decrease in beer consumption in the US during the past decade – 12%.

Cups of light yellow or colorless urine that you should produce each day if you are drinking enough water, according to the Mayo Clinic — 6.3.

Ms. Sharper’s Sources:

Beverage Digest.

The Atlantic.

Dead Pigs in Shanghai Water Supply Don’t Ring Alarm Bells for Chinese Officials

by Peter Ford, Christian Science Monitor

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

Gazette’s Nutshell View:  When Chinese pigs die of disease, farmers routinely toss their bodies into the nearest river.  The Huangpu, Shanghai’s drinking water source,  gets more than its share. 

More than 2,800 pig carcasses were discovered in the Huangpu River, which feeds Shanghai taps. Rivers are apparently a popular repository for swine that die of disease.

Here’s a riddle for you: When is the discovery of 2,813 dead and rotting pigs in a major city’s water source not a public health problem?

Answer: When the discovery is made in China.

The Shanghai water bureau, which oversees the water consumed in China’s largest city, was insisting on Monday that tap water derived from the Huangpu River met national standards despite the presence of the decomposing pigs.

All I can say is that I am glad I live in Beijing, not Shanghai.

Workers Pulling Dead Pigs from the River that Provides Drinking Water for Shanghai

 

Truly disgusting photographs of bloated porcine carcasses on a riverbank have appeared in many Chinese papers and websites, drawing attention to what seems – believe it or not – to be a relatively common occurrence.

When pigs die of disease, farmers who cannot be bothered to bury the animals just toss them into the nearest river.

Local residents of one pig-rearing village upstream from Shanghai told the national broadcaster China Central Television on Sunday that disposing of dead pigs in the river was a common practice. “After the pigs died of illness, [they] just dumped them in the river … constantly. Every day,” one villager said.

“They are everywhere and they smell very bad,” the villager added.

Thousands of pigs in the Shanghai area have succumbed to epidemic disease in recent months, according to the Jiaxing Daily, a government-run paper in a hog-raising region southwest of Shanghai.

Last week the paper reported that more than 18,000 pigs had died since the beginning of the year in Zhulin, a village in the Jiaxing district. It was not immediately clear how many of them had been legally disposed of and how many had been thrown into the river.

But in a report last week, the paper quoted one pig farmer as saying that “when things are busy,” he and his fellow farmers do not bother to call the local veterinary services to take the corpses away and just “throw them away where we can.” In the summer, he added, the smell of rotting meat is sometimes so strong that villagers cannot open their windows.

More worryingly, the paper said, many readers had called the editorial desk’s hotline to report pig carcasses abandoned by the roadside or in water channels that had mysteriously lost their hind legs overnight.

“What if they were cooked in a restaurant?” the newspaper article wondered.

Source:  Christian Science Monitor

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) include drugs and personal care cosmetic products as well as household cleaners.These are many and diverse. They include both synthetic and natural products, prescription and over-the-counter concoctions, plus medicines and grooming products for animals. Also included are natural and synthetic hormones and antibiotics, including natural hormones excreted by animals and humans.Some very common examples include aspirin, ibuprofen and caffeine. Some exist in very small amounts. To keep things in perspective, a cup of coffee contains about one million times the amount of caffeine that has been detected in some water samples. Other common examples of drugs and PPCPs found in water are detergents, household cleaning agents, insect killers and repellants, etc.

PPCPs include products that are ingested or used for personal health and well-being and for cosmetic purposes. They include prescribed and over-the-counter drugs, veterinary drugs, fragrances, lotions, cosmetics, detergents, plasticizers, pesticides, flame retardants, and illegal drugs.  

In a word, there are so many items in this category that generalizations about their effects or how to remove them from water are at best simply generalizations.

Although it seems from media reports that the presence of drugs and PPCPs in water is on the rise, it is likely that increased reporting due to improved detection methods is in part responsible. In any case, presence of drugs and cosmetic items are being reported frequently now in ppt (parts per trillion) amounts as well as microgram and nanograms.

Because of the tiny amounts being detected, there is no reason to assume that human health is being affected. However, there is now strong evidence that behavior changes in fish can be caused by drugs in the water even in tiny amounts. Also, “feminization” of male fish near sewage release points has been reported, and the supposition is that drugs and hormones are the cause.

Water Treatment: There is obviously no way to determine the preferred treatment method for every possible drug, cosmetic, or household chemical, but it is safe to assume that standard water treatment techniques can be effectively used in most instances. Some contaminants can be oxidized by chlorine, ozone, or hydrogen peroxide, and granular carbon, the standby tool for most chemicals, can be used to adsorb a large percentage of the contaminants in this category. Reverse osmosis membranes will screen out chemicals with larger molecular weights (over about 100 daltons). More advanced oxidation processes, though expensive, are also available for items not removed by conventional treatments.

From a residential water user’s standpoint, an undersink reverse osmosis unit (which contains pre- and post- carbon block filtration) is the obvious best choice for pharmaceutical-free and PPCP-free drinking water. A good multi-stage carbon filter would also be an excellent second choice.

Source Reference: Water Technology.

River Water in China That You Would Not Dare Swim In

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

Gazette’s Summary: China has gone through a period of increasing economic prosperity, but industrial development has taken its toll on the nation’s waterways.  Many of China’s rivers are far too polluted for use by humans, yet environmental officials usually rate them as meeting national standards.

If we Chinese die of cancer caused by pollution, what’s the meaning of economic growth for us?”—Jin Zengmin.

In February of 2013 a Chinese eyeglass entrepreneur offered a $32,000 reward to the chief of the local environmental protection department if he would swim in a local river for just 20 minutes. The offer was declined.

The eyeglass maker, Jin Zengmin, lives in a small city near Shanghai.  The city has known economic prosperity in recent years, but prosperity has taken its toll.  The city is the home of 100 shoe factories that dump raw chemical wastes directly into the local river.

In late 2012, Jin’s sister died of lung cancer at age 35.  He blames water pollution for her death. “When my sister received medical treatment in big cancer hospitals in Shanghai,” Jin says, “we found that many patients there are from my hometown. They have various cancers, and what is astonishing is that most of the cancer patients are in their 30s to 50s. They are still young. I realized these cancers may have something to do with the water pollution in our hometown.”

Jin made his $32,000 bet after local environmental officials declared that the foul-smelling Sina Weibo river met national health standards. After Jin’s wager, internet users posted thousands of pictures of polluted waterways in their regions.

Black Waste Water from a Chinese Electronics Components Recycling  Plant

Clearing Rubbish Along a Chinese River

Source Reference: Time.Com

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