One California drought winner? The local car wash.

by Lauren Sommer

Editor’s Note.  How Drought Affects Businesses.  The California drought has had a devastating effect on some businesses.  Pool, contractors,  for example.  Although in the long term, a backyard pool probably usually uses less water than a conventional lawn, in the short term it’s hard to justify filling a large pool that could be better used for drinking and general household purposes. (See “A California drought loser: Pool Contractors.” )  One business that’s done well, however, is the local car wash.–Hardly Waite.

Common Protozoa that Infect Drinking Water and How to Get Rid of Them

by Gazette Technical Wizard Pure Water Annie

The the most common protozoa that affect drinking water quality in the United States are Cryptospridium and Giardia.  Both are intestinal parasites of warm-blooded animals.  There are several species of each, and some can infect humans.  Infection can come from recreational waters, drinking water, or food.

According to one authority, “Infection requires ingestion of about one to 10 organisms. Some infections are asymptomatic, so some people are not aware they are infected. Symptoms can include diarrhea and sometimes nausea, vomiting and fever. The infections are usually self-limiting, lasting several days for healthy people, but they can be chronic or fatal for less healthy or immunocompromised people.”

Both Cryptosporidium and Giardia thrive in cold water, but Crypto cysts are sensitive to higher water temperature and can survive only about a week in 85 degree F. water.  Both cysts are much more resistant to the usual water disinfectants than bacteria, and Cryptosporidium is virtually unaffected by regular municipal chlorination.  Ozone and ultraviolet treatment are very effective for both, and because both cysts are relatively large, tight filtration devices like ultrafiltration,  microfiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis easily remove them.  In fact, a common treatment for both is conventional filtration in the two-micron range and tighter.

In a word, both cysts are fairly easily eliminated by point of use treatment like tight undersink filters and reverse osmosis and point of entry treatment by ultraviolet, but regular city water disinfection with chlorine and chloramine cannot be relied upon.

 The size of the Giardia pictured above shows that the cysts are easily controlled by tight filtration devices like reverse osmosis and even conventional 1-micron filters.

More about Giardia.

More about Cryptosporidium.

Rivers, lakes loaded with artificial sweeteners

It may be lurking in your diet soda, your chewing gum and even in your favourite yogurt. Now scientists have found artificial sweeteners are also coming out of your faucet. Sweeteners are used in thousands of food and beverages sold around the world, according to The Sugar Association. And on World Oceans Day, marked every June 8, scientists are asking us to consider where sweeteners end up after they’re ingested. According to recent research, scientists have found artificial sweeteners in bodies of water around the world, including Canada.

Sugar substitutes — such as Splenda and Sweet’N Low — are designed to be eaten, but not absorbed by the body. Because our bodies cannot break them down, sweeteners go straight through humans.

That’s how consumers get the sweet taste without the weight gain often associated with sugar-laden foods.

Once the sweetener leaves the body, wastewater treatment plants face the same dilemma: studies have found they can’t break down the complex chemical. Most sweeteners, then, flow into oceans, lakes and rivers in practically the same form in which they were consumed.

It’s a situation playing out in the water flowing through southwestern Ontario’s Grand River, which empties into Lake Erie. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and Environment Canada found the amount of sugar substitute in the water is equivalent to about 81,000 to 190,000 cans of artificially sweetened soda flowing through the 300-kilometre river each day.

The study tested for sucralose, cyclamate, saccharin and acesulfame. It also found three types of sweetener coming out of the faucets in Brantford.

Sweeteners could harm aquatic life

According to the Canadian study, the effect of artificial sweeteners in the water is largely unknown. But Amy Parente, an assistant professor of biochemistry at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Penn., says scientists should be on alert.

Parente did her own study in Lake Erie looking for sucralose, the substitute used by Splenda. Her team also found the sweetener in the water. But while other studies took samples from what came out of wastewater treatment plants, Parente tested water found at the lake’s beaches, where the sweeteners had a chance to dilute.

She and her team found 0.15 micrograms of the sweetener for every litre of water, which meant there could be up to 72 metric tons of sweetener floating in the waters of Lake Erie.

Since Parente’s study came out in 2012, Parente and her students have been looking at how sweetener affects a snail living in Lake Erie that forages for food. As part of that work, one student found the presence of sweetener made the animals believe there was nutrition in the water.

The team believes the sweetener affected their foraging abilities, leaving them with fewer calories to be healthy and reproduce. And Parente thinks this could be true for other foraging animals.

“When people think about small animals and small organisms, they tend not to be concerned,” Parente said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca. But she added the impact has the potential for a domino effect.

Another study published by Environmental Science and Technology also found large amounts of sucralose, saccharin, aspartame and acesulfame near wastewater treatment plants in New York State. The study suggested sweetener can harm a plant’s ability to perform photosynthesis.

This could create less food for animals that depend on the plants, creating a ripple effect that could make its way back to humans.

The taste is not in the tap

For now, more research is needed before drawing any conclusions about sweeteners’ impact on all aquatic life, said Environment Canada research scientist, John Spoelstra, part of the team that tested the Grand River.

And while research shows a large amount of sugar substitutes in our bodies of water, Spoelstra said consumers shouldn’t expect their drinking water to taste any sweeter.

“Concentrations in the river are very small,” Spoelstra told CTVNews.ca. “They’re in the tens to hundreds of thousands of times lower than the concentration that would be in a can of soda.”

As for aquatic life, scientists have had less than a decade to study the effect of the sweeteners, since research showing its concentration only came out a few years ago, Spoelstra said. But work is underway by scientists around the world.

The few studies that have come out shouldn’t be ignored, Parente said, likening them to the canary in the coal mine.

“I feel that out of these small organisms are early warnings,” she said. “We need to heed those warnings.”

Source:  CTV News.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

B. Sharper, the Pure Water Gazette’s numerical wizard, puts out some facts about our oceans on World Oceans Day.

June 2015 date on which World Oceans Day was celebrated — 8.

Percentage of the Earth’s surface that is covered in water — 70+.

Percentage of this water that is in our oceans — 97%.

Pounds of plastics that we dump into our oceans each year — 19,000,000,000.  (Nineteen billion.)

Number of feet that sea levels are expected to rise during this century –3.3.

Degrees Fahrenheit that sea surface temperatures rose over the past century — 0.18.

Percentage of the oceans’ fish stocks that are now considered to be overfished — 60%.

Jobs that were lost when one species of cod was overfished in 1992– 40,000.

At current rate of overfishing, according to some scientists, the date at which it is expected that we will simply run out of fish — 2055.

Percentage of marine predators that have already been removed from their habitats — 90%.

Percentage of Caribbean coral reefs that were damaged due to “coral bleaching” — 50%.

Percentage of the marine life that lives in coral reefs. — 25%.

Percentage of our carbon dioxide emissions that end up in the ocean — 30%.

Percentage of the oceans that have actually been explored by humans –less than 10%.

Source of Numerical Facts.

How Much Water Should Humans Drink?

 Gazette’s Introductory Note:  Although asking how much water we should drink is in a way like asking how much air we should breath, since our intake of both of life’s essentials is mainly self-regulating,  almost everyone who writes about health and nutrition has at some time chimed in on the topic of how much water a person should drink.  Although we know of no one who believes in drinking zero water, quantity advice ranges from not much to gallons per day. The Gazette has consistently stuck with the radical “drink water when you’re thirsty” theory. Below is a view on the subject from a technical journal focused on water treatment.  It is excerpted from a piece by Dr. Joseph Cotruvo.

The statement, “Water is life,” is not an exaggeration. All living plants and animals require regular and sufficient water consumption for survival, as well as for growth and development. Serious and even fatal outcomes can occur under extreme conditions of either seriously inadequate or very excessive water intake, and there might be some health benefits associated with consumption beyond the averages. Water is also a common element in Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious writings.

Daily water consumption occurs from several sources: Tap water, beverages and foods made with tap water, bottled water, bottled beverages and metabolic water that is produced from ingested food and its conversion to energy. The first four are obvious. The fifth, metabolic water, is created by living organisms through metabolism by digesting and oxidizing energy-containing substances in their food. Metabolism produces about 110 grams of water per 100 grams of fat, 41.3 grams of water per 100 grams of protein and 55 grams of water per 100 grams of starch. So, it adds a few hundred milliliters to our daily water intake.

How much water should we drink?

Ingested water serves many functions. It is essential for maintaining blood composition, salts balance and cellular osmotic pressure, and it aids digestion, helps eliminate wastes in urine and feces, provides a solvent/solute load for the kidneys and helps control body temperature through perspiration. It usually contains salts and some nutrients like calcium, magnesium, chloride, sulfate, sodium and potassium; and, uptake of essential minerals is often more efficient from water than from foods. Calcium and magnesium uptake from water and milk is in the range of 50 to 60 percent versus approximately 15 to 20 percent from foods.

It is important to consume water regularly, especially during physical stress conditions. I recall when coaches would not allow athletes to consume water during practice and games, ostensibly to prevent vomiting. Nowadays, we see them drinking constantly. Acute dehydration has immediate, measurable and adverse consequences. Fluid loss of one percent stimulates thirst and impairs thermoregulation. Vague discomfort and loss of appetite appears at two percent. Dry mouth appears at about three percent loss. At four percent loss, work capacity decreases by 20 to 30 percent. Headaches and sleepiness occur at about five percent loss. Collapse can occur at about seven percent, and a 10 percent loss is life-threatening.

Water intake is needed at a minimum to replace losses and prevent dehydration. Water is lost through urine, feces, respiration and evaporation. Young children, pregnant and lactating women, the elderly, heavy work and exercisers and persons with certain diseases have increased fluid requirements compared to the general sedentary population. Numerous studies have attempted to determine water needs, but in 1989 the National Research Council (NRC) concluded that because of the complexities, a Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) could not be established, but an Adequate Intake (AI) reference value was provided for healthy Canadian and American populations.

Water needs under conditions of physical stress, high temperature and humidity are substantial. Physically active individuals might sweat at the rate of three to four liters per hour under those conditions. Daily fluid requirements have been shown to range from as little as two liters per day to 16 liters per day. Several national military organizations have conducted studies of the water needs of troops under stressed survival and endurance requirements. A study of members of the Zimbabwe National Army doing strenuous work over 12 days showed that consumption of the test group was 11 liters per day versus seven liters per day in the control group.

The U.S. Army revised its water replacement guidelines to 0.5 liters per hour for an easy work rest cycle at 78^o to 81.9^o F to at least one liter per hour for a hard work/rest cycle of 10/50 minutes at > 90^o F. The revision occurred after 190 military personnel were hospitalized over several years for hyponatremia (excess, unreplaced sodium loss by perspiration), which can be fatal when excessively large volumes of plain water were consumed in combination with a low sodium chloride diet.

Gender and age specific AIs were established by the NRC in 2004 (See Table 1).

Table 1

The values in Table 1 are applicable under typical, nonstressed conditions. For higher stress situations (e.g., athletes), the amount of water ingested should equal the amount lost, i.e., 1 kg of lost weight = 1 kg of water consumption. Alcohol has a known transient diuretic effect, but adequate fluid intake immediately following alcohol consumption will not result in appreciable fluid losses over a 24-hour period.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) requirements in liters per day for adults are listed in Table 2.

Table 2

How much water is actually consumed by U.S. citizens?

Regulatory agencies establish regulations for contaminants in water partly based upon assumed values for daily human tap water consumption. Precise determinations of actual consumption vary by individuals and conditions; so to simplify the regulatory decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assumes lifetime consumption of two liters per day for a 70 kg adult, and one liter per day for a 10 kg child. WHO assumes two liters per day for a 60 kg adult and one liter per day for a 10 kg child. Canada assumes 1.5 liter per day for a 70 kg adult.

Several large-scale surveys have produced data on consumption of community water and/or total water by individuals and groups. Results tend to be in similar ranges given the margins of variability in these types of studies (e.g., Kahn; and Kahn and Stralka, 2008). For example, a 1989 report by Ershow and Cantor, using survey data for three consecutive days from 1977-78, concluded that the mean value for tap water consumption was 1.193 liters per person per day, and 88 percent consumed two liters per day or less. A more recent analysis of a survey for two, nonconsecutive days from 1994-96 (EPA, 2000) of 15,303 persons gave 0.927 liters per person per day as the average per capita ingestion of tap water. The estimated 90^th percentile consumption was 2.016 liters per day (range 1.991 to 2.047). Some people reported drinking no tap water, so results for 14,012 “consumers only” were 1.0 liters per day (0.976 to 1.024) as the mean, and the 90^th percentile value was 2.069 liters per day.

Values for “total water consumption” for “consumers only” were 1.241 liters per day (1.208 to 1.274) as the mean, and the estimated 90^th and 95^th percentiles were 2.345 and 2.922 liters per day, respectively. So, 83 percent of consumers only consumed two liters of water per day or less.

The average reported consumption for bottled water drinkers was 0.737 liters per day; the 90^th and 95^th percentile estimates were 1.568 liters per day and 1.971 liters per day.

The total water consumption average for all individuals was 1.232 liters per day, and the 90^th and 95^th percentiles were 2.341 and 2.908 liters per day. In this study, approximately 84 percent of the U.S. population consumed two liters or less per day. About 13 percent of the U.S. population water consumption in those studies was attributable to bottled water and 10 percent to other sources.

For children between one and 10 years old, the mean total water consumption was 0.528 liters per day, and the 90^th and 95^th values for total ingestion were 1.001 and 1.242 liters per day. Thus, 90 percent of children consume one liter of water per day or less.

Are there health benefits from greater water consumption?

Although it is difficult to precisely determine desirable and ideal water consumption levels, there are reports that people with greater water consumption may benefit more compared to those with less. Dehydration has been linked to increases in risks of urinary tract infections, dental disease, constipation, kidney stones and impaired cognitive function. Higher fluid intakes have been associated with reduced risks of urinary tract stones, colon and urinary tract cancer, and mitral valve prolapse in some studies. More research is necessary on this appealing hypothesis.

Conclusions: How do these approximate values compare to AIs and regulatory default assumptions?

It is clear that the actual water consumption in the U.S. is below the recommended AI values for almost every age group. Some additional water is provided by metabolism and nontap water sources, but the AI values would not likely be exceeded in many cases except perhaps for active high consumers.

Regarding the default water consumption values of two liters per day for adults and one liter per day for a 10 kg child, approximately 90 percent of adults are consuming two liters per day of tap water or less, and almost all very young children are consuming about one liter of tap water per day or less. So, water consumption levels indicate that drinking water standards are generally protective of the population and have greater margins of safety for essentially all very young children and virtually all adults. Additional conservatism is embedded in calculations of drinking water standards by inclusion of relative source contribution factors attributable to drinking water as a source. The usual default value is 20 percent which results in additional safety.

There are several studies indicating potential health benefits from long-term consumption of greater amounts of water, which is worth exploring further.

So, today’s take-home message is: More water and a little more salt is good for people with more strenuous activity. And, the good news is that community tap water in the U.S. is safe almost everywhere.

Article source: Water Technology.

Water Required to Produce These Three Hamburger Patties: 1350 Gallons.

Our Water-Guzzling Food Factory

by Nicholas Kristof

LET’S start with a quiz.

Which consumes the most water?

A) a 10-minute shower.

B) a handful of 10 almonds.

C) a quarterpound hamburger patty.

D) a washing machine load.

The answer? By far, it’s the hamburger patty. The shower might use 25 gallons. The almonds take up almost a gallon each, or close to 10 gallons for the handful. The washing machine uses about 35 gallons per load. And that beef patty, around 450 gallons.

The drought in California hit home when I was backpacking with my daughter there recently on the Pacific Crest Trail, and the first eight creeks or springs we reached were all dry.

The crisis in California is a harbinger of water scarcity in much of the world. And while we associate extravagant water use with swimming pools and verdant lawns, the biggest consumer, by far, is agriculture. In California, 80 percent of water used by humans goes to farming and ranching.

That’s where that hamburger patty comes in.

I grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Ore. I worked for a year for the Future Farmers of America, and I still spend time every year on our family farm. But while I prize America’s rural heritage, let’s be blunt: It’s time for a fundamental rethinking of America’s food factory.

A mandarin orange consumes 14 gallons of water. A head of lettuce, 12 gallons. A bunch of grapes, 24 gallons. One single walnut, 2 gallons.

Animal products use even more water, mostly because of the need to raise grain or hay to feed the animals. Plant material converts quite inefficiently into animal protein.

So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce. A pound of chicken, 468 gallons. A gallon of milk, 880 gallons. And a pound of beef, 1,800 gallons of water. (Of course, these figures are all approximate, and estimates differ. These are based on data from the Pacific Institute andNational Geographic.)

You can also calculate your own water footprint at National Geographic’s website.

Our industrial food system produces food almost miraculously cheaply. In 1930, whole dressed chicken retailed for $6.48 per pound in today’s currency, according to the National Chicken Council; in real terms, the price has fallen by more than three-quarters. And, boy, is the system good at producing cheap high-fructose corn syrup!

Yet industrial agriculture imposes other unsustainable costs:

• It overuses antibiotics, resulting in dangers to the public from antibiotic-resistant diseases. About four-fifths of antibiotics sold in the United Statesare for livestock and poultry — even as 23,000 people die annually in America from antibiotic resistant infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Farming overuses chemicals such as pesticides, some of them endocrine-disruptors that have been linked to possible cancer, obesity and reproductive disorders.

• Factory farming is often based on treating animals, particularly poultry,with ruthless cruelty.

To this indictment, we can add irrational subsidies and water engineering projects that have led to irrigation in areas where it doesn’t make sense. Today, California, despite the drought, is effectively exporting water (in the form of milk, beef, walnuts and produce).

Most of agriculture’s irrationalities aren’t the fault of farmers but arise from lax regulation and mistaken pricing, and that’s true of water as well. Traditionally in the West, water was mostly allocated on a first-come basis, so if you acquired water rights more than a century ago you can mostly still access water for uses (two gallons per walnut!) that no longer make sense in an age of scarcity.

As for the foolishness of agricultural subsidies, until recently, the federal government paid me, a New York journalist, $588 a year not to grow crops in Oregon. I rest my case.

Let’s be clear that it’s unfair to blame farmers for the present problems. We’re the ones eating those water-intensive hamburgers, and we’re the ones whose political system created these irrationalities.

Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.

Maybe our industrial agriculture system is beginning to change, for we’re seeing some signs of a food revolution in America, with greater emphasis on organic food and animal rights. Just a week ago, Walmart called on suppliers to stop keeping calves in veal crates and hogs in gestation crates.

Something good could come from the California drought if it could push this revolution a bit further, by forcing a reallocation of water to the most efficient uses. But remember that the central challenge can’t be solved by a good rain because the larger problem is an irrational industrial food system.

Source: New York Times.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Rain in North Texas

At Denton’s Farmer’s Market, May 23, 2015, PWP employees, from left, Kristen Lewis, Katey Shannon, Kacy Ewing, and Theresia Munywoki, are pictured just before a rainstorm cut the event short. Click picture for larger view.

Those praying for rain in North Texas have perhaps overdone it. We’re getting flash floods and the wettest May in many years.  To the south of us,  areas that were very dry are now experiencing the flooding of the San Marcos and Blanco Rivers.  Parts of the area have received more than 1-1/2 feet of rain since May 1, six times what it typically receives in all of May.

Flooded San Marcos River, May 24, 2015. Click for larger view.

Full details about May flooding in Texas and Oklahoma.

Fracking to resume in Texas city that banned fracking after state steps in

 More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think

by Aaron E. Carroll

When I was a kid, my parents refused to let me drink coffee because they believed it would “stunt my growth.” It turns out, of course, that this is a myth. Studies have failed, again and again, to show that coffee or caffeine consumption are related to reduced bone mass or how tall people are.

Coffee has long had a reputation as being unhealthy. But in almost every single respect that reputation is backward. The potential health benefits are surprisingly large.

When I set out to look at the research on coffee and health, I thought I’d see it being associated with some good outcomes and some bad ones, mirroring the contradictory reports you can often find in the news media. This didn’t turn out to be the case.

Just last year, a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies looking at long-term consumption of coffee and the risk of cardiovascular disease was published. The researchers found 36 studies involving more than 1,270,000 participants. The combined data showed that those who consumed a moderate amount of coffee, about three to five cups a day, were at the lowest risk for problems. Those who consumed five or more cups a day had no higher risk than those who consumed none.

Of course, everything I’m saying here concerns coffee — black coffee. I am not talking about the mostly milk and sugar coffee-based beverages that lots of people consume. These could include, but aren’t limited to, things like a McDonald’s large mocha (500 calories, 17 grams of fat, 72 grams ofcarbohydrates), a Starbucks Venti White Chocolate Mocha (580 calories, 22 grams of fat, 79 grams of carbs), and a Large Dunkin’ Donuts frozen caramel coffee Coolatta (670 calories, 8 grams of fat, 144 grams of carbs).

I won’t even mention the Cold Stone Creamery Gotta-Have-It-Sized Lotta Caramel Latte (1,790 calories, 90 grams of fat, 223 grams of carbs).Regular brewed coffee has 5 or fewer calories and no fat or carbohydrates.

Back to the studies. Years earlier, a meta-analysis — a study of studies, in which data are pooled and analyzed together — was published looking at how coffee consumption might be associated with stroke. Eleven studies were found, including almost 480,000 participants. As with the prior studies, consumption of two to six cups of coffee a day was associated with a lower risk of disease, compared with those who drank none. Another meta-analysis published a year later confirmed these findings.

Rounding out concerns about the effect of coffee on your heart, another meta-analysis examined how drinking coffee might be associated with heart failure. Again, moderate consumption was associated with a lower risk, with the lowest risk among those who consumed four servings a day. Consumption had to get up to about 10 cups a day before any bad associations were seen.

No one is suggesting you drink more coffee for your health. But drinking moderate amounts of coffee is linked to lower rates of pretty much all cardiovascular disease, contrary to what many might have heard about the dangers of coffee or caffeine. Even consumers on the very high end of the spectrum appear to have minimal, if any, ill effects.

But let’s not cherry-pick. There are outcomes outside of heart health that matter. Many believe that coffee might be associated with an increased risk of cancer. Certainly, individual studies have found that to be the case, and these are sometimes highlighted by the news media. But in the aggregate, most of these negative outcomes disappear.

A meta-analysis published in 2007 found that increasing coffee consumption by two cups a day was associated with a lower relative risk of liver cancer by more than 40 percent. Two more recent studies confirmed these findings. Results from meta-analyses looking at prostate cancerfound that in the higher-quality studies, coffee consumption was not associated with negative outcomes.

The same holds true for breast cancer, where associations were statistically not significant. It’s true that the data on lung cancer shows an increased risk for more coffee consumed, but that’s only among people who smoke. Drinking coffee may be protective in those who don’t. Regardless, the authors of that study hedge their results and warn that they should be interpreted with caution because of the confounding (and most likely overwhelming) effects of smoking.

A study looking at all cancers suggested that it might be associated with reduced overall cancer incidence and that the more you drank, the more protection was seen.

Drinking coffee is associated with better laboratory values in those at risk for liver disease. In patients who already have liver disease, it’s associated with a decreased progression to cirrhosis. In patients who already have cirrhosis, it’s associated with a lower risk of death and a lower risk of developing liver cancer. It’s associated with improved responses to antiviral therapy in patients with hepatitis C and better outcomes in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The authors of the systematic review argue that daily coffee consumption should be encouraged in patients with chronic liver disease.

The most recent meta-analyses on neurological disorders found that coffee intake was associated with lower risks of Parkinson’s disease, lowercognitive decline and a potential protective effect against Alzheimer’s disease (but certainly no harm).

A systematic review published in 2005 found that regular coffee consumption was associated with a significantly reduced risk of developingType 2 diabetes, with the lowest relative risks (about a third reduction) seen in those who drank at least six or seven cups a day. The latest study,published in 2014, used updated data and included 28 studies and more than 1.1 million participants. Again, the more coffee you drank, the less likely you were to have diabetes. This included both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee.

Is coffee associated with the risk of death from all causes? There have been two meta-analyses published within the last year or so. The first reviewed 20 studies, including almost a million people, and the second included 17 studies containing more than a million people. Both found that drinking coffee was associated with a significantly reduced chance of death. I can’t think of any other product that has this much positive epidemiologic evidence going for it.

I grant you that pretty much none of the research I’m citing above contains randomized controlled trials. It’s important to remember that we usually conduct those trials to see if what we are observing in epidemiologic studies holds up. Most of us aren’t drinking coffee because we think it will protect us, though. Most of us are worrying that it might be hurting us. There’s almost no evidence for that at all.

If any other modifiable risk factor had these kind of positive associations across the board, the media would be all over it. We’d be pushing it on everyone. Whole interventions would be built up around it. For far too long, though, coffee has been considered a vice, not something that might be healthy.

That may change soon. The newest scientific report for the U.S.D.A. nutritional guidelines, which I’ve discussed before, says that coffee is not only O.K. — it agrees that it might be good for you. This was the first time the dietary guideline advisory committee reviewed the effects of coffee on health.

There’s always a danger in going too far in the other direction. I’m not suggesting that we start serving coffee to little kids. Caffeine still has a number of effects parents might want to avoid for their children. Some people don’t like the way caffeine can make them jittery. Guidelines also suggest that pregnant women not drink more than two cups a day.

I’m also not suggesting that people start drinking coffee by the gallon. Too much of anything can be bad. Finally, while the coffee may be healthy, that’s not necessarily true of the added sugar and fat that many people put into coffee-based beverages.

But it’s way past time that we stopped viewing coffee as something we all need to cut back on. It’s a completely reasonable addition to a healthy diet, with more potential benefits seen in research than almost any other beverage we’re consuming. It’s time we started treating it as such.

Source: New York Times.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

A Versatile New Water Softener for RV Owners, Car Washers, and More

Although it’s less than two feet tall, this water softener is capable of softening hundreds of gallons on water before it needs regeneration.

Designed primarily to soften all water entering recreational vehicles and mobile homes, our 10,000 grain water softener is portable and easy to apply to other applications such as washing cars, washing windows, rinsing solar panels–any application where hard water causes scale buildup or spotting.

The small but powerful softener prevents hard water spotting on vehicles, dishes, windows, decks and patios.

Very easy to use, it requires no installation and no special tools or skills for operation. It connects with standard garden hoses and washer hoses and is regenerated with ordinary table salt.

This small but mighty softener uses the same cation resin as full-sized residential water softeners and has an initial capacity  to treat 10,000 grains of hardness.  That’s about 1400 gallons of moderately hard water, or 700 gallons if you live in San Antonio, TX.

Here are some highlights:

• Requires no installation. No electricity. No connection to drain. It comes ready to use with garden hoses and washer hoses.
• High flow: handles up to 4 gallons per minute, so it works with pressure washers.
• Regenerates with two pounds of regular table salt. No chemicals required.
• Compact (less than 2 feet tall), easy to store, easy to move from place to place, even when it’s full of water. Stands on its own base.
• One year warranty on the unit. Ten year warranty on the on the mineral tank.
• Comes with hardness test kit to tell you when it’s time to regenerate.
• Made in USA by a leading softener manufacturer.  Replacement parts, if needed, are readily available from Pure Water Products.
• Equipped with a flow restrictor that takes the guess work out of regeneration flow rate.
• No meter, no setup hassles, no counting of gallons, no “sizing” problems. Works on any potable water source.
• Comes with excellent instructions for use and regeneration of resin as well as a hardness test kit.
• Produces instant soft water anywhere there’s a garden hose.

The orange Y fitting allows easy transition from service mode to backwash. The tap at the very top allows easy insertion of table salt to renew the resin. 

Not yet on our website, so please call or email for purchase information:

Pure Water Products

pwp@purewaterproducts.com

940 382 3814