Water is bad; drink more alcohol!

Originally Posted by Marie19

See, this is exactly why my mom tells me "if it tastes good, eat it" (or drink it), and not to think/worry about what could/might be in it! Now I'm going to be freaking out over what might be in my cheap bottled water. *shivers*

Half my problem is that tap water does not drink or taste good to me. I can tolerate some bottled water, and the stuff we get from Lindsay Ecosystems at work has a decent taste as well, but I crave the stuff I keep at home.

For the record, most bottled water I've distilled has considerably less residue left over. Those Britta water filters also fliter out a noticable amount, but the reverse osmosis kits you can install on your tap seem to the best job besides actual distilling. Granted, these comparisons have been made in an unscientific manner.

I remember showing one friend my distiller before cleaning it once, and the guy actually wiped his finger in the powder and tasted it. I asked him if he knew what he was tasting, and he said, "yeah. It's dried water." Twenty minutes of arguing couldn't convince this guy that there was actually stuff dissolved in his water.

(I'm in a water utility) Taste is very much a personal thing. The actual taste of water without contaminants like hydrocarbons, geosmin, and others, is determined primarily by what minerals are dissolved in it. Distilled and deionized water have virtually no minerals in them, so to many people taste "flat". Others perfer that taste to mineral-rich water. Therefore, objectionable tatse does not mean it's unhealthy. I personally like the taste of the water our utility produces, than the one in which I live. (used to live in "ours" but moved due to housing availability). "Ferrous" stains on plumbing fixtures may well be caused by manganese and not iron as assumed. Managanese is frequently to blame for the discoloration of clothes. Our utility uses a process that causes dissolved manganese to solidify and therfore be filtered out of the final product. Based on empirical data (not taste or assumption) MOST water utlities produce water that is every bit as high quality as bottled water. In some cases, EXACTLY the same since some bottled water companies have been known to essentially bottle tap water after adding some extra minerals to "enhance" the taste. ONe actually uses reverse osmosis (removes even minerals, similar to distillation) and then adds minerals back in. Yes, occasionally things willl go wrong and tap water MAY not meet the EPA's stringent requirements. (And yes, they are very picky, contrary to conspiracy theories), but by and large their standards are exceeded (on the good side!). Our utility uses a "micro" filtration process that passes the water through 0.1 micron pores. Bacteria cannot pass through it! The chloramines (chlorine/ammonia compound) added during the process take care of viruses before the water ever leaves the plant. Our measureable/quantifiable water quality parameters are several times better than what is required by the EPA/local health department.

And lastly, a kilogram or E.coli in a year?!?!? #1, a kilogram of ANY bactreria is an astronomical quantity--roughly 1,600,000,000,000 cells. (see http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/LouisSiu.shtml) #2, the chlorine/chloramines used the processing would kill them, so you'd be "consuming" dead bacteria. No harm, no foul. Hey, you eat dead stuff all the time, don't you?

[Keeper of the Mad Bunnies]

Originally Posted by bjohn13

Gasses trapped in the water are also included in that 1.7% figure that is cited in a pamphlet my city sends out once a year to all residents with a mailing address.
b "not exactly a scientist, but I learned about them in high school" john13

Would it look like this?

I don't see anything in the pamphlet concerning 1.7%.

James Powell

[ChildofMusic]

I just want to know how the author went from 1 kilo Escherichia coli to 2 pounds of poo. I work with E. coli every day, and while it does have it's own stinky "aroma," it certainly is not poo.

Child of "What's that smell? Oh, it's just the poo in the petri plate." Music

If this is true then I'm never drinking water again. Only bottled or distilled. But alcohol drinking is not an option. I get the joke but many might think you're offering an alternative. Teenagers especially might not consider the irony and take it as a fact.

[diddy]

Didn't Adam Savage of Mythbusters once quote "there's poo everywhere!"

[WildaBeast]

Originally Posted by diddy

Didn't Adam Savage of Mythbusters once quote "there's poo everywhere!"

I don't know, but that sounds more like something Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs would say.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by WildaBeast

I don't know, but that sounds more like something Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs would say.

I know it wasn't Rowe. The episode of Mythbusters is referencing a myth of your toothbrushes being infected by fecal chloroform via a tolet. They found that the stuff is everywhere.

Originally Posted by scubabeme

And lastly, a kilogram or E.coli in a year?!?!? #1, a kilogram of ANY bactreria is an astronomical quantity--roughly 1,600,000,000,000 cells. (see http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/LouisSiu.shtml) #2, the chlorine/chloramines used the processing would kill them, so you'd be "consuming" dead bacteria. No harm, no foul. Hey, you eat dead stuff all the time, don't you?

Thanks for the clarification on the water standards, and the support for my belief that most of our tap water is perfectly safe to drink.

Regarding your bacterial count - I think you're missing a few zeros in your number. I reviewed the link you provided, but it didn't match with my training - and my textbooks are all at work right now. My graduate studies in microbiology (albiet a few decades ago ) yielded the following information (numbers are approximate, but within an order of magnitude):

Bacteria detected in feces (both aerobic and anaerobic) = 1 * 10^12 per gram

Approximate bacterial composition of feces = 90% anaerobic and 10% aerobic (over half of which is E. coli). For calculations shown below, I took a conservative approach and assumed only 1% was E. coli.

Maximum possible concentration of E. coli (centrifuged pellet) = 3 * 10^12 per gram

Allowable quantity of E. coli in tap water (per EPA guidelines when I was in college - since changed in 2007 to allow zero E. coli) = 1 per 100 mL (0.1 liter)

Using a backwards calculation from the assumption that "drinking 1 liter of water daily yields 1 kilogram of feces per year," that liter of water would have to contain in the neighborhood of 2.7 * 10^7 cells of E. coli. Hardly believable - both in that the EPA would shut down any water treatment facility that allowed that amount of coliforms to be distributed, and that the concentration is high enough to be detectable by the consumer (either by smell or by a slight turbidity).

Regardless of the exact quantities and calculations, I'm with the rest of you - bogus post serving as scare tactic only.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by Bassist

Allowable quantity of E. coli in tap water (per EPA guidelines when I was in college - since changed in 2007 to allow zero E. coli) = 1 per 100 mL (0.1 liter)

Quoted to emphasize this. Current standards for potable water in New York State, and I believe generally in the US, allow for no detectable E. coli.

There is a good deal of E. coli around, but it's not supposed to be in the drinking water. (Which is not to say that it's guaranteed not to be in any drinking water; things do go wrong, and many people using individual wells haven't had their water tested for years, if ever.)

Most strains of E. coli will do you no harm, and some strains are likely to be doing you good. It's a normal component of the bacteria in the human digestive tract; and having the right bacteria in your digestive tract is good for you. Some of your digestion is actually performed by bacteria, and the presence of beneficial and otherwise-neutral strains in your gut helps keep out the pathogens.

E. coli is tested for in water systems, not because all strains are pathogens (though a few of them are), but because it's a cheap and easy way to test for possible fecal contamination in general; specifically because it's normally found in human (and other animals') intestines. Modern drinking water systems are supposed to be sealed off; a system that isn't properly sealed will almost certainly show this by the presence of E. coli.

[Jay Temple]

The lady from the Temperance Union was addressing a group of hillbillies. She poured a glass of water and a glass of whisky. She dropped a worm in each. The worm in the water lived, and the one in the whisky died. She asked, "What does this tell you?"

One of the hillbillies answered, "Drink whisky and you'll never have worms."

Sorry, that's what the OP made me think of.