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How Safe is Your Shower?

By: Brenda R. Generali, C.N.C.

A recent series of scientific studies have confirmed that your morning shower is not the most innocuous pleasure of the day. Scientists have learned that we absorb as much or more synthetic volatile chemicals from the water we shower in daily than we receive by ingestion of the same type of water daily from food and drinking water. Two studies are considered here.

Professor Julian B. Andelman, Center for Environmental Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA, reported in the scientific journal: The Science for the Total Environment, that roughly 60^ more chloroform and trichlorethylene can be absorbed by the body in the shower than is absorbed from ingesting drinking water for that day. To prove this, he constructed a model shower in his lab, and introduced these two volatile chemicals into the shower head set at different heights and at different emperatures. When the hot water mixes in the shower with the cold water, the volatile chemicals are driven off into the air and, of course, breathed into the lungs. In the lungs, the blood barrier is only one cell thick so the chemicals gain immediate access to the blood stream.

The role of skin absorption of volatile organic contaminants (VOCs) was reported by Halina S. Brown, Ph.D., et al in the American Journal of Public Health. They found a direct line relationship between the concentration of volatile chemicals in water that were in contact with the skin, and the concentration of those same chemicals in the blood stream immediately after exposure. This is quite understandable when we realize that the skin is the largest organ of the body and is composed of lipid membranes that are indeed permeable to volatile chemicals.

What Does All This Mean To You And Me?

Chemical companies constantly affirm that a little chemical poison does not hurt us, but why expose ourselves unnecessarily.

Clinical ecologists have learned that the more you are exposed to chemicals in your environment, the more quickly you become sensitive to those same chemicals. After a time of continuous exposure, persons can reach their threshold level for that contaminant and thereafter evidence certain characteristic symptoms which will appear more and more often. Again prevention is the safest route to follow. Don't allow yourself to become sensitive to chlorine or any of the chlorinated by-products from municipal water.

Test Your Water

To those who rather doubt that this is a truth at all let us recount an experiment that is conducted in Ozark's Water Service's laboratory occasionally. Anyone can do this for themselves.

Take a glass of water from the faucet after it has been running a few minutes. Test the water in the glass for free chlorine residual. The value that Ozark received for water in Sulfur Springs, Arkansas was 1.11 parts per million free chlorine. Then hold your fingers in the glass of water for 15 seconds, and test the water again for chlorine. You will be amazed to see the difference. Ozark's value was 0.19 PPM chlorine. That calculates to a decrease of 82.9% chlorine for just 15 seconds contact. The few fingers have about 1/100th the surface area of the whole body that is exposed in a shower situation, so you can readily understand why Dr. Brown and her colleagues reported these findings in the Journal of the American Public Health Association. Something to think about the next time you swim in a chlorinated pool or take a chlorinated shower.

Reference: Ozark Water Service Newsletter

Water So Pure's Clarifier removes these toxins and more from all taps in the whole house.

Study: Chlorinated water found to increase risk of bladder cancer

by M.T. Whitney

(NaturalNews) Drinking, or even immersing yourself in, chlorinated water may increase your risk of bladder cancer, says a new study.

The new study is the first to suggest that chlorine is harmful to humans when ingested or absorbed through the skin, according to study leader Cristina M. Villanueva of the Municipal Institute of Medical Research in Barcelona and her colleagues.

Chlorine itself is not harmful, but its byproducts increase the risk of cancer. Trihalomethanes are the most prevalent by-product, and they can be absorbed into the body through the skin or by inhalation. When THM is absorbed through the skin or into the lungs, they hold stronger carcinogenic properties because they aren't detoxified through the liver, Villanueva and her team found in their research.

Villanueva and her team surveyed 1,219 individuals with bladder cancer and 1,271 control individuals without the disease, polling them about their exposure to chlorinated water, including their bathing, swimming and tap water drinking habits.

The researchers also looked at the THM levels in the water systems of 123 municipalities.

People who live in households with more than 49 micrograms per liter of THM were at double the risk of bladder cancer versus households that have below 8 micrograms per liter of THM.

In industrialized countries, the common level is 50 micrograms per liter, the researchers note.

The researchers also found that use of swimming pools increased the risk by 57 percent and that people who drank chlorinated water held a 35 percent greater risk. Taking long showers and bathing also increases the risk in households that has water with higher levels of THM.

In the United States, an estimated 67,160 new cases of bladder cancer are expected to occur in 2007, and 13,750 deaths, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.

"If confirmed elsewhere, this observation has significant public health implications in relation to preventing exposure to these water contaminants," the researchers said in their report.

The study was published in the January issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Pill-popping society fouling our water, official says

Birth control pills, cancer drugs and a host of other pharmaceuticals that people flush down the drain every day are showing up in our drinking water, says Gord Miller, Ontario's environmental commissioner.

"We need to do a better job of keeping drugs out of lakes, rivers and drinking water," Miller told the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on Wednesday.

Although the drugs are not considered a threat to human health, there is evidence that they can harm wildlife.

"There is no health hazard in drinking water now that has been detected in Canada, but we have detected substances in drinking water," he said, adding that the problem is likely to get worse rather than better as the population grows.

"Our society loves to pop pills," Miller said. "If you were designing the perfect pollutant it would probably look like a pill."

Miller was sworn in as environmental commissioner six years ago to oversee the implementation of Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. He is an independent officer of Queen's Park, where he reports on government compliance with environmental rules.

In his last annual report, Miller said contraceptives, painkillers, antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs and blood-pressure drugs are showing up in lakes and rivers, while anti-inflammatory and anti-cholesterol drugs and antidepressants are ending up in drinking water.

Experiments in northern Ontario have shown that exposure to these waste drugs has led to the feminization of male fish, delayed reproduction in female fish and damage to kidneys and livers of both sexes, the report said.

Independent studies by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States and by environmental bodies in England have turned up similar evidence.

Miller said pharmaceuticals are getting into drinking water in several ways. Unused drugs are thrown into domestic garbage, which end up in landfill sites and eventually into the groundwater.

Drugs are taken orally and flushed down toilets as human excrement. And unused drugs are washed down the sink or flushed down the toilet directly into domestic sewers.

Many drugs pass right through the sewage and water treatment plants, back into the drinking water.

"Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them," Miller said.