Can Drinking Alkaline Water Keep You Extra-Hydrated And Disease-Free?

by Molly Shea,  Assistant Editor, Yahoo Health

 Can Trendy Alkaline Water Cure What Ails You?

Gazette Introductory Note:  This piece calmly dismisses the basic assumption of sellers of the products called “alkalizers” or “ionizers”  that the human body needs large amounts of very alkaline water to maintain its health.  The key idea is expressed in the statement that the body does quite well at maintaining water’s pH balance.  It has been doing this for eons without the help of radically treated water or the $2000 machines being sold to produce it.  The fact is that the body must have water at a very specific pH level and it has perfected the way of achieving that level quite without the help of special bottled water or costly electronic gadgets. Truth is, the pH level of the water we drink seems to have no effect at all on the body’s ability to get the pH of the water it uses exactly right.–Hardly Waite.

Water is nature’s perfect beverage. Hydrating, calorie-free, and readily available, the simple drink is as good as it gets for ensuring proper functioning of all your body’s organs. But what if there was a different water, an even more hydrating liquid that goes farther to keep you healthy and thriving?

That’s the premise behind alkaline water, a version of H2O with a pH level higher than 7. (A pH above 7 is considered alkaline, while a pH lower than 7 is acidic — normal water typically has a pH of 7).The thinking is this: Maintaining a bodily pH level of 7.4 is key to optimum health. Because so many foods in the modern diet are considered acidic, drinking water with a higher pH than normal can help your body stay alkaline and disease-free, improving all aspects of health. Proponents call it a better form of hydration, and some drink alkaline water exclusively.

The water comes in two forms: “natural” alkaline water, gathered from areas like Hawaii’s volcanic regions, or “artificial” alkaline water, which is ionized by a machine or made by adding an alkalizing salt to normal water.

Where The Trend Began:

While water with extra benefits has been revered for ages, the specialty bottled water industry has boomed in just recent years. “People are drawn to something that impacts the body’s pH [levels]. Whether it’s placebo or fact, people feel that drinking alkaline water will help them get healthier,” says Richard Medina Jr., co-founder of L.A. Distributing Company, a New Age snack and beverage distributor. Even Mark Wahlberg and Puff Daddy got into the game in 2013 co-founding “Aqua Hydrate,” a brand of alkaline water that they tout as a natural hangover cure.

But for all its celebrity sparkle and dramatic claims, can drinking alkaline water actually make you any healthier?

What The Science Says:

As alluring as it sounds, the answer is no, says Stanley Goldfarb, MD, hydration expert and professor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “If you drink a lot of alkaline water, all you’re going to do is pee out a huge amount of alkaline material. There really is no rationale for this,” Goldfarb explains. Yes, maintaining the right pH balance is important, but your body does that on its own — no fancy water required.

“What people need to appreciate is that the body is designed to maintain its equilibrium in the face of whatever you take in,” Goldfarb explains. “We are designed to maintain the pH of our bodies in an extraordinarily specific range. We have so many defense mechanisms to prevent an accumulation of alkaline that drinking alkaline water will have little effect.”

As for claims that alkaline water can hydrate better than normal water, delivering vitamins and minerals to your body more rapidly and efficiently — those just don’t hold up. There are no studies that prove that drinking alkaline water is any more hydrating than your average tap, filtered, or bottled water, and any claims that it does so fly in the face of hydration research, says Goldfarb. “When it comes to… whether you’re taking in acid or alkaline, it really makes no difference,” he says.

But as much as alkaline water’s benefits have likely been overblown, so too have any potential side effects. Some warn against drinking too much alkaline water, for fear that it could lead to alkalosis — when your body’s pH level is too high, causing confusion, headaches, vomiting and more. According to Goldfarb, there’s very little chance that drinking alkaline water, even if you’re drinking it exclusively, could lead to any internal issues. “It’s not to say that you can’t overwhelm your system, but it’s rare.” That said, says Goldfarb, “if you have a disease, the answer changes, so I’m hesitant to say oh, no, drink what you want, [but in general] it won’t make a difference.”

As for whether water that’s naturally alkaline is any better than water that’s artificially alkalized, Goldfarb doesn’t see the evidence. “There’s no difference between natural and unnatural alkaline—it really doesn’t matter.”

The Verdict:

There are some situations where the pH level of the water you consume does impact your health, Goldfarb explains. “For example, [for] some people who have kidney disease, their bodies cannot rid themselves of acid as quickly as others. If you’re prone to kidney stones, then acidity might be a problem.” A study did suggest that drinking water with a pH of 8.8 (which is more alkaline) can help relieve symptoms of acid reflux, when it’s done as part of a doctor-approved treatment plan. Those exceptions aside, swilling alkaline water won’t make much of a difference.

If you love the taste of a certain water and have some extra money to blow, spending it on pricey aqua isn’t the worst thing you could do. Just turn a wary eye to health claims and don’t expect any magic.

Source: Yahoo Health.

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Why Almond Farmers Aren’t the Water Enemy

by Brad Gleason

A quarter-century ago, when I first started farming the fertile ground of western Fresno County, my crop was cotton.

I wasn’t alone. Back then, the San Joaquin Valley had more than 1 million acres of white gold. Federal water cost me — hard to believe today — only $25 an acre-foot. And there was plenty of it. My neighbors and I irrigated inefficiently by sprinkler and furrow.

But I knew then that cotton wasn’t a sustainable crop for California. It could grow almost anywhere, and there was a surplus of it. Plus, cotton growers got a rather considerable payment from the federal government. Those double subsidies — cheap water and price supports — gave cotton growers a black eye. We were portrayed, with some justification, as the greedy farmers of Fresno’s west side.

So my farming partner and I decided in 1989 to plant our first almond trees on 40 acres outside Coalinga. Almonds were a higher-value crop, and there were no crop subsidies for nuts, which was a good thing for the American taxpayer. Also, if the price of water rose — and it certainly did — almonds produced a higher return to offset that cost.

In the years since, we have planted thousands more acres of almonds and pistachios. Once again, we’re not alone. Up and down the valley, orchards of nuts now exceed 1 million acres. Only 200,000 acres still grow cotton. And where furrows once dominated, you’ll find the precision of drip irrigation.

But now we’re the bad guys again. Article after article in newspapers, magazines and online put nut growers in a bad light related to the drought. The whole equation seems to be reduced to a single number wielded by our critics: It takes one gallon of water to grow one nut.

Boy, that sounds wasteful. It’s a figure designed to outrage, and it does the trick.

But looking at the societal value of producing food only by gallons of water used is silly, if not absurd. My fellow growers of other crops calculate that it takes about 168 gallons of water to produce a single watermelon. And 50 gallons for a cantaloupe. That head of broccoli that you feel good about serving to your child? Thirty-five gallons. A single ear of corn requires roughly 40 gallons.

I planted my almonds based on a contract with the federal government to deliver surface water from Northern California. I didn’t anticipate the contractual supply dropping to zero for two straight years; I didn’t foresee having to dig wells deeper into the earth of my farm to pump groundwater to make up the difference. Yes, almonds are a “permanent” crop with a life span of 18 to 20 years, and they don’t offer me the easy option of fallowing orchards in drought as some vegetable farmers have done. But let me point out that my almond trees are a lot less permanent than the houses that continue to get built in California on the same dwindling water supply.

Drive across the expanse of farmland around us and you’ll be hard pressed to find a puddle. That’s not because of the lack of rain. That’s because of the efficiency of irrigation. Out here, every gallon of water is measured from ditch to drip line.

With the curtailment of federal water deliveries, farmers are paying, on average, $1,000 an acre-foot for any surface water piped in on the open market. So you can bet that we’re not using a drop more than we need to keep our trees alive and productive.

I’m proud to be a farmer of almonds and pistachios. We produce something real and healthful that contributes mightily to the economy of California. Last year, farm gate sales for nuts alone topped $7 billion in our state. The export market is healthy and so is domestic consumption. Ask the county tax assessor what the rising value of nut acreage has meant for the tax rolls, and you’re likely to get a big smile.

Some of the old-timers still remember when this stretch of Fresno County belonged to the horned toad, jack rabbit and tumbleweed. Just as the architects of the Central Valley Project envisioned, water and man’s ingenuity turned the middle of California into the world’s most productive agricultural region.

Over time, farmers have adapted to answer the demands of water shortage, new crops, cities and fish, and I know we’ll continue to adapt as California confronts a new era of limits. But demonizing us — and what we grow — is no way to meet the challenge. We’re not the bad guys.

Source: LA Times.

 Why God Created the Deep, Deep Ocean, and Where Is Adolf Hitler Today?

Excerpted from The City of God by E. L Doctorow

Have you ever wondered why Nature  created  the “lightless, airless ocean bottom” with its tons of pressure per square inch, its outrageously ugly creatures, its “living tube worms and anglerfish, sea spiders, whipnoses” . . . hanging around in the soundless deep blackness, “their mouths agape and tentacles upheld to catch the flocculent dead matter drifting like snow from the blue and green ocean above?”  Well, according to one of the characters of novelist E. L. Doctorow, it’s all part of a Plan.–Hardly Waite.

 Hatchetfish from the Deep, Deep, Deep Ocean

This is all part of the Universal Plan.

We are instructed that life does not require air or warmth. We are instructed that whatever condition God provides, some sort of creature will invent itself to live in it. There is no fixed morphology for living things. No necessary condition for life. Thousands of unknown plant and animal beings are living in the deepest canyons of the black, cold water and they have their own movies. Their biomass is far in excess of our own sunlit and air-breathing plant and animal life. At the very bottom of the sea are smoking vents of hydrogen sulfide gases in which bacteria are pleased to flourish. And feeding upon these are warty bivalves and viscous, gummy jellies and spiny eels with the amazing ability to fluoresce when they are attacked or need to illuminate their prey. God has a reason for all this. There is one fish, the hatchet, which skulks about in the deep darkness with protuberant eyes on the top of its homed head and the ability to electrically light its anus to blind predators sneaking up behind it. The electric anus, however, is not an innate feature. It comes from a colony of luminescent bacteria that house themselves symbiotically in the fish’s asshole. And there is a Purpose in this as well which we haven’t yet ascertained. But if you believe God’s divine judgment and you countenance reincarnation, then it may be reasonably assumed that a certain bacterium living in the anus of a particularly ancient hatchetfish at the bottom of the ocean is the recycled and fully sentient soul of Adolf Hitler glimmering miserably through the cloacal muck in which he is periodically bathed and nourished.

Hatchetfish, Front View. Adolph Hitler Is Visible only from the Other End.

Our new AerMax installation kit mounts the air pump on the tank itself. 

The traditional AerMax that we’ve sold for many years now comes with an optional installation kit. With the traditional AerMax unit, the air pump is wall mounted beside the treatment tank.  The new optional installation system, pictured above, allows the air pump to be installeed on top of the tank itself, providing a more compact, vibration-free mounting.  The vertical mount system is now available, as is a timer control that makes installation much easier than previously.  Please call 940 382 2814 for details.

Death of the lush, green lawn

by Jim Hightower

Introductory Note:  Unlike High, whom you’ll meet below, I have never been addicted to the lush lawn.  In fact, I take some pride in being way ahead my time in this.  Many years ago, when lawn adoration was virtually a social necessity, watering, mowing, and bagging grass were never among my interests. I have always mowed just enough to keep Code Enforcement from my door. Several years ago our city government started an anti-bagging campaign to save landfill space. They actually gave awards and cash prizes to people who swore off bagging. There was no award for me, who have never in my life bagged a single blade of grass. Nor have I ever received an award for not watering my lawn or for not mowing it, though these save water and energy and reduce pollution. Being ahead of one’s time isn’t easy.–Gene Franks.

My father was an early member of a group now known disparagingly as “ultra-lawn people.”

“High,” as everyone called him, was dedicated, body and soul, to the Sisyphean task of trying to maintain a lawn full of lush St. Augustine grass in hot, dry Texas. He planted, watered, fertilized, watered, mowed, watered, fought bugs and brown patch, watered, re-planted, watered… ad nauseum. Some years he won, in other years, nature rolled him.

High departed his lawn and this Earth well before climate change turned Texas from merely hot & dry into scorched & parched. I know he would’ve denied it at first, but I think even he would’ve finally given in to today’s new reality: In our drought-ravaged Southwest, the lush lawn is dead. Literally and ethically.

From Texas to Southern California, city after city is adapting to nature. They’re policing neighborhoods to impose big fines on excessive lawn watering, paying homeowners and businesses to rip out grass and replace it with desertscapes, and even outlawing grass yards in new developments. And, it’s working. A pioneering 2003 turf-removal rebate program in Las Vegas, for example, has now pulled 168 million feet of thirsty lawn grass out of the area, saved more than 9 billion gallons of water, and cut water use by a third, even as the population has mushroomed.

Such an effort would’ve been treated as heresy only a decade ago, but now it’s simply considered the right thing to do. This is not merely an environmental adjustment, but a fundamental ethical shift, especially among younger people. The idea that green lawns are exercises in ecological narcissism has taken root in this arid and politically conservative region – demonstrating that conservatism really can be about conserving. Mother Nature and future generations will be grateful.

Source: JimHightower.com.

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Is Science’s “More Is More” Bias Skewing our Understanding of BPA?

by Gene Franks

A recent Newsweek article (“BPA Is Fine, If You Ignore Most Studies About It”) reveals the telling fact that eleven of eleven chemical industry funded studies on the safety of BPA, the much suspected ingredient of things from plastic water bottles, to tin can liners, to heated copy papers, have found BPA to be perfectly safe, while 109 of 119 studies that had no industry funding (92 percent) found bad effects from BPA.

The outcome of the industry-financed research comes as no surprise; we’ve come to expect researchers to become the whores of whoever is paying the bill. Nor is it surprising that findings on BPA become confused and meaningless because of Big Science’s stubborn refusal to put aside one of its sacred beliefs–the unquestioned assumption that large doses of any substance are more powerful than smaller doses.  The Newsweek author, Douglas Main, explains:

Several dozen studies in the past five years or so have found average human blood serum levels of BPA in the low range, around 1 part per billion (ppb). Many of the negative health effects in animal studies have been shown to occur at these levels, says Laura Vandenberg, who researches endocrine disruptors at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. But the established methods for testing the toxicity of substances—the degree to which they can harm the human body—assume that the toxic impact is more or less proportional to the amount ingested. Endocrine disruptors like BPA, which act like hormones, don’t “play by the rules,” says Patricia Hunt, a geneticist at Washington State University. Hormones can have very different effects at low and high levels. An estrogenic chemical can induce cell growth at low levels but inhibit it at high concentrations, for example. Regulatory agencies have begun to recognize this but still “keep relying on standard toxicology tests,” Hunt says.

The FDA has recently concluded that there is not sufficient evidence linking BPA to behavior disorders like hyperactivity and obesity for it to be banned, although “to date, there have been around 1,000 animal studies on BPA, and the vast majority show that it causes or is linked to many health problems, from alterations in fertility to increased risk for cancers and cardiovascular problems to impaired brain development.”

What kills more women than AIDS and breast cancer? Dirty water.

Nearly 800,000 women die every year because they lack access to safe toilets and clean water, said the development organization WaterAid, which analyzed data from the Seattle-based Institute of Health Metrics research center.

“This completely unacceptable situation affects women and girls’ education, their health, their dignity and ultimately, in too many cases, results in an early and needless death,” WaterAid CEO Barbara Frost said in a statement.

The only conditions more fatal for women than the lack of decent sanitation are heart disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to the report.

More than 1 billion women, or one in three women around the world, do not have access to a safe, private toilet, while 370 million – one in 10 – do not have access to clean water, according to WaterAid.

More than 2 billion people gained access to clean water between 1990 and 2012, but nearly 750 million remain still lack what the United Nations recognizes as a human right.

Dirty water and poor sanitation are at the root of problems such as maternal and child mortality, and sexual violence.

Many women in developing countries give birth at home without access to clean water, exposing themselves and their babies to infections.

Without safe toilets, women and girls have to venture outdoors to relieve themselves, often at night, putting them at risk of sexual harassment and assault.

Moreover, in many poor countries fetching water is considered a the responsibility of women and girls, who spend hours each day trekking to and from wells, keeping them from attending school or caring for their families.

Source: Reuters.

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Installing the Bottom Drain in the Vortech Dome Hole Bottom Drain Tank from Pure Water Products

Referring to the pictures will make the installation easier.

After the tank has been removed from the box,

1. Lay the tank on its side on a table and remove the base from the bottom of the tank. This is usually accomplished easily by tapping downward on the base with a small hammer. Work around the circumference of the base, tapping until the base comes off.

2. Install the IN/OUT tank head (it should have a plug preinstalled in the “out” port) into the bottom hole of the tank and tighten until you have a firm fit. (Get it as tight as you want it now, because when the base is in place, it will be difficult to tighten it more.) Do not tape the threads on the tank head. The seal is made by the O ring on the head. The easy way to tighten the head is to screw the 5″ pipe nipple temporarily into the empty (IN) port of the head to use as a handle. Remove the nipple when the head is installed.

3. When the head is installed, put the base back on the tank. Be sure that the hole in the In/Out head is centered in one of the windows on the base, because you’re going to have to install the valve assembly through the window. The easy way to reinstall the base is to start it in the correct position, then set it upright and tap it against the floor. The weight of the tank will drive the tank into the base.

4. Assemble the remainder of the system. using teflon tape on all threads. The metal garden hose fitting can be installed if you want to hook to a garden hose; if you prefer to hook to a pipe, leave the garden hose fitting off.

The ball valve should stay in the off position (with handles at right angles with the pipe). To drain the tank, turn off the inlet water, remove the “dome hole” plug near the top of the tank to release the vacuum, and open the drain valve.

The bottom drain assembly installed.

View from the bottom.  

How the pieces go together.

Water loss: seven things you need to know about an invisible global problem

by Sarah LaBecque

A staggering 46bn litres of drinking water are lost globally every day. What can consumers, business and governments do?

  Iraqis fill drinking water and wash clothes at a broken water pipeline in a Shia district of Sadr City, Baghdad. 

While concerns over water conservation, access and hygiene feature high on the news agenda, the problem of water loss often gets overlooked. Yet this vital issue affects millions of lives. A recent live discussion hosted by Guardian Sustainable Business looked at the role business and government should play in addressing global water loss and where things are set to go next. Here’s what you need to know.

What do we mean when we talk about water loss?

Water loss is often referred to as non-revenue water (NRW) – water that is produced in a network but never reaches the consumer. This might be due to aging networks which haven’t been properly managed, metering inaccuracies, theft or unmetered authorised consumption, like water used from fire hydrants.

It’s not a problem restricted only to the developing world either – Montreal, for example, loses 40% of the water it produces (pdf).

But Louise Whiting from WaterAid was keen to make sure the word “lost” is properly defined. “Very often”, she said, “water is used but then returned to the system in virtually the same quantity”.

So when we speak of water loss in an industrial sense, we’re referring to that which is not returned to the system through natural processes like, for example through plant transpiration.

There isn’t a one-size fits all reason which explains water loss

Plain, old-fashioned leaky pipes have much to answer for in explaining why NRW costs utilities about $14bn (£9bn) per year, but Marco Fantozzi, water loss regional representative for south east Europe for the International Water Association, says not all NRW is due to leakage.

Distribution systems in many parts of the world are not efficient enough, he says, and there is a lack of “state of the art technologies, not enough awareness of best practice methodologies and not enough training”.

So addressing this global issue means looking at infrastructure, but also at utilities, and if they’re embracing new technologies and investing in staff training.

Newer cities might have better rates of loss as well, like in the US where most distribution systems are younger than 100 years. These systems “may have less loss due to improved materials of construction and better construction techniques”, said Dale Jacobson, governor of the World Water Council.

Consumers have a part to play in this issue

In the UK, the majority of consumers feel that their utility is not doing enough to reduce leakage – 70% in fact, according to Tony Smith, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water. This perspective in turn affects consumers’ motivation to conserve water themselves.

“Two thirds of water customers feel their efforts to save water make little difference when so much is being lost through leakage”, offered Smith. At the end of the day, industrial water loss is a public policy issue which must be addressed by business and government, but consumers can put the pressure on. And they can do their part when it comes to conserving water at home and when on holiday.

Governments should be imposing targets on utilities to reduce losses

In the UK, OfWat, which is responsible for regulating water usage, has targets in place which water companies must meet as regards water loss reductions. Fantozzi mentioned that this was something European governments should be replicating. “UK utilities are in general more efficient than the average European utility,” he said.

The very fact that water loss isn’t a widely known or understood problem means policymakers and government need to integrate targets into country and international-level agreements, but political will sometimes lacks.

Technologies and solutions are available

First of all, you must address the more “low-hanging fruits” – active leakage control and pressure management, said Morten Riis, business development manager at Grundfos. Maintaining stable pressure in pipes within a distribution network “has proven to have a positive and immediate effect on reducing the water loss.” And technologies like intelligent water pumps and distributed sensor systems for leak detection offer great opportunities for efficiency improvements.

Jacobson also highlighted water audit programs offered by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the International Water Association (IWA). “The IWA/AWWA Water Audit Method features sound, consistent definitions for the major forms of water consumption and water loss encountered in drinking water utilities. It also features a set of rational performance indicators that evaluate utilities on system-specific attributes such as the average pressure in the distribution system and total length of water mains.”

The private sector will play an important role in reducing water loss in the developing world

Governments in the developing world don’t necessarily have the financial resources to invest in network infrastructure – their efforts would more likely be centred around issues of hygiene or access. Indeed, Leong Ching, senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy, University of Singapore says the likelihood of developing countries being able to finance new and impoved infrastructure developments is slim. 7% of the world’s population was served by private water companies in 2009, whereas that figure is projected as 23% for 2015, she says.

Jacob Tompkins, managing director at WaterWise said: “There is a big role for public-private sector collaboration, but … the key is appropriate regulation of this process – this is where NGO and community group involvement is essential.”

Are corporates getting involved?

Selma Spaas, program leader of the International Water Leadership Programme at Nyenrode Business Universiteit brought up this important question. The burden of managing water loss is often naturally pinned to utilities and government, but corporations can get their feet wet too, or dry in this case. “I won’t mention them by name,” said Smith, but there are “‘major retail household brands’ operating in the UK and overseas” who have done a lot. In an effort to save money and as part of their corporate social responsibility strategy, Smith mentions that supermarkets in particular are communicating to their customers about water conservation.

Hannah Greig, private sector advisor at WaterAid was a bit more sceptical, however. “Corporates are recognising water is an increasing risk but action isn’t yet following at the same pace – and even fewer corporates are including the impact on communities as part of their risk assessments,” she said.

Considering the World Economic Forum ranked water crises as the top global risk in its 2015 Global Risks Report, business would be wise to engage in reducing water loss.

Source: The Guardian.

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