Beware: What’s in that glass of water?

We are living in a dangerous era, a time when industrial compounds have proliferated to such an extraordinary degree that literally everyone is exposed to chemicals that cause potential harm to our systems. This includes the perfluorooctanoic acid residues from Teflon in your cooking, restaurant food, or groundwater. It can be caused by triclosan in antibacterial hand soaps and hand sanitizers. It can be due to polybrominated diphenyl ethers from the flame retardant in carpeting and clothing, contaminants in the water supply, and plastics that are everywhere and in everything, from cars to the lining of canned foods to water bottles. They are even in the rainwater and air we breath. Nobody, and I truly mean nobody, alive today has avoided exposure to these ubiquitous chemicals.

It’s unavoidable. Here are the numbers to prove it. The Environmental Working Group tested blood from the umbilical cords of newborns and uncovered 287 different industrial compounds, including mercury, 21 different pesticides, and components of industrial lubricants— this was in newborns, not 60-year-olds who had worked a lifetime in factories or other contaminated environments. Endocrine disruptive industrial chemicals can be detected in hair, urine, blood, liver, kidneys, and just about any other bodily fluid or organ. One recent study assessed individuals for the presence of perchlorates, a residue of synthetic fertilizers. Of 2,800 people tested, all 2,800 had detectable levels of perchlorates in their bodies.

Drinking water straight from the tap is toxic. Yes, most (not all) municipalities and cities do a good job of filtering water, removing most contaminants, but most also add chlorine (or, more recently, chloramine, which is more persistent and resists being boiled off) and fluoride, after filtration. Chlorine and fluoride are antibacterial in water, great for kitchen counters, but not for your gastrointestinal tract, where we want microbes to thrive. Consuming these chemicals reduces or alters the composition of bowel flora.

One way to help lesson this exposure is to drink filtered water. Filter drinking water to remove chlorine, fluoride, and other contaminants. If you use tap water to ferment vegetables, the chlorine and fluoride will block fermentation. Likewise, watering houseplants with tap water can kill off soil flora and thus cause them wither. To remove chlorine and fluoride, filter your tap water using a reverse-osmosis process and/or carbon filters. Filtered water is less likely to contain residues of prescription drugs that are making their way into our water supply. It is also added assurance against water contaminated with atrazine, perchlorates, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, arsenic, and lead from home plumbing. You can’t completely avoid the exposure to chemicals and toxins, but you can filter some out.

Note that water filtration is a modern necessity for full Undoctored health, but this makes it even more important to obtain magnesium by other means, as the good is filtered out with the bad. We will discuss this in further depth next week.