The Contaminants of Water
U.S. drinking water contains
more than 2100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer:
Ralph Nader Research
Institute
The causes of
tap water contamination are many, ranging from agricultural runoff to
improper use of household chemicals and everything in between.
Few of us realize the extent or impact of these low
level synthetic chemicals in the water we use.
While
the standard use in our society of over 80‚000 different
synthetic chemicals has offered added convenience and productivity in
our lives‚ it has also come at a tremendous price... drastic increases in
degenerative disease.
In the early
1900s‚ before chlorine‚ pesticides‚
herbicides and
the tens of thousands of other chemicals that we are exposed to every
day‚ the average American had a 1 in 50 chance of getting
cancer‚ today 1 in 3 can expect to get cancer in their
lifetime‚ 1 in every 2 males.
Our use of man-made chemicals has become so
extreme that we can now find traces of these low level SOCs (synthetic organic chemicals)
in virtually every public water supply around the world.
A recent
report by the Ralph Nader Study Group‚ after reviewing over
10‚000 documents acquired through the Freedom of Information
Act‚ confirmed that "U.S. drinking water
contains more than 2100 toxic chemicals that can cause cancer."
Once
we realize that everything that goes down the drain‚ on our
lawns‚ on our agricultural fields or into the environment by
any
means... eventually winds up in the water we drink‚ we begin
to
see just how vulnerable our water supplies really are.
"Drinking water plants are old and
out of date‚ and water
supplies are increasingly threatened by and contaminated by chemicals
and microorganisms."
Natural Resources Defense Council.
"The way we guarantee safe drinking
water is broken and needs to be fixed."
Carol Browner‚ U.S. EPA
Chief.
One of America‘s leading
authorities on water contamination ‚ Dr. David
Ozonoff of the Boston University Of Public Health states‚ "the
risk of disease associated with public drinking water has passed from
the theoretical to the real."
"While levels of these
carcinogens (SOCs) in drinking water are low, it
is precisely these low levels that carcinogenists believe to be
responsible for the majority of human cancers in the U.S."
U.S.
Council on Environmental Quality.
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