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Drinking/tap water thread (and ideal water filters/pitchers)


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Huberman lists some but he doesn't even capture all of the issues 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121

Water filtration creates its own MP contamination.. if you look at the graph, THE MAJORITY OF NPS are not from the bottle, but from the water itself...

Ideally, you'd test RIGHT BEFORE filtration and right after filtration

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7150600847725383680/

The 2024 recent microplastics papers (above) also show that contamination comes from the REVERSE OSMOSIS FILTER ITSELF (RO filters are made of plastic too), so b/c of this I'll still rely on my pitcher

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some testing services [non-ideal]

 

https://mytapscore.com/products/advanced-city-water-test

THEY STILL ALL LEAVE OUT THE MOST IMPORTANT: POLYSTYRENE AND PVC

https://mytapscore.com/products/microplastics-water-test?_pos=1&_sid=6135ed9de&_ss=r

is microplastics but i dont know what a report looks like.. you know, you could test the water at universities where the water is supposed to be super-clean... [and where a case can be argued for especially high social importance..]

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Do you do water testing of canned beverages? Also do you do nanoplastics testing? What does a microplastics testing report look like? (does it have separate scores for polystyrene?)
 
Hi again
When you say "canned beverages" are you referring to something like bottled water? Or a non-water product (like a milk or juice)?
 
We currently do not offer any nanoparticle testing - as there are no commercially avaialbe methods for nanoparticles and nanoplastics (its typically only avaialbe in speciality university and academic reserach labs)
 
Our microplastics tests does not specifically identify the material of the plastics found. It only does concentration of microplastics (by particle size) and typically the plastic particles assoicated with bottled water and other packaged beverages are so small that are not very well captured by that test - so I just want to be transparent that it may not be a good fit
 
based on what you are describing/looking for

 

🙂
Edited by InquilineKea
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All four co-authors interviewed said they were cutting back on their bottled water use after they conduced the study.

Wei Min, the Columbia physical chemist who pioneered the dual laser microscope technology, said he has reduced his bottled water use by half. Stapleton said she now relies more on filtered water at home in New Jersey.

But study co-author Beizhan Yan, a Columbia environmental chemist who increased his tap water usage, pointed out that filters themselves can be a problem by introducing plastics.

“There’s just no win,” Stapleton said.

Outside experts, who praised the study, agreed that there’s a general unease about perils of fine plastics particles, but it’s too early to say for sure.

 

“The danger of the plastics themselves is still an unanswered question. For me, the additives are the most concerning,” said Duke University professor of medicine and comparative oncology group director Jason Somarelli, who wasn’t part of the research. “We and others have shown that these nanoplastics can be internalized into cells and we know that nanoplastics carry all kinds of chemical additives that could cause cell stress, DNA damage and change metabolism or cell function.”

Somarelli said his own not yet published work has found more than 100 “known cancer-causing chemicals in these plastics.”

What’s disturbing, said University of Toronto evolutionary biologist Zoie Diana, is that “small particles can appear in different organs and may cross membranes that they aren’t meant to cross, such as the blood-brain barrier.”

Diana, who was not part of the study, said the new tool researchers used makes this an exciting development in the study of plastics in the environment and body.

About 15 years ago, Min invented dual laser microscope technology that identifies specific compounds by their chemical properties and how they resonate when exposed to the lasers. Yan and Qian talked to him about using that technique to find and identify plastics that had been too small for researchers using established methods.

 

Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer at the Sea Education Association, said “the work can be an important advance in the detection of nanoplastics” but she said she’d like to see other analytical chemists replicate the technique and results.

Denise Hardesty, an Australian government oceanographer who studies plastic waste, said context is needed. The total weight of the nanoplastic found is “roughly equivalent to the weight of a single penny in the volume of two Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

Hardesty is less concerned than others about nanoplastics in bottled water, noting that “I'm privileged to live in a place where I have access to ‘clean’ tap water and I don't have to buy drinking water in single use containers.”

Yan said he is starting to study other municipal water supplies in Boston, St. Louis, Los Angeles and elsewhere to see how much plastics are in their tap water. Previous studies looking for microplastics and some early tests indicate there may be less nanoplastic in tap water than bottled.

Even with unknowns about human health, Yan said he does have one recommendation for people who are worried: Use reusable bottles instead of single-use plastics.

 

 

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  • Alex K Chen changed the title to Drinking/tap water thread (and ideal water filters/pitchers)
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

https://mccormickmd.substack.com/p/surprising-levels-of-microplastics

https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/ (for this [AND in any water filters] look for PFAS/PFOA, chlorination byproducts [eg Bromodichloromethane, Dibromochloromethane, haloacetic acids], heavy metals [like lead], microplastics)

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reverse osmosis is more costly and harder to install (unless you buy something like Aquatru, more about that later

https://www.amazon.com/Countertop-Filtration-Purification-System-Exclusive/dp/B0CNS8LZW3?crid=3JERPLF3AIJY6&keywords=aquatru&qid=1655222633&sprefix=aquatru%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-5&linkCode=sl1&tag=examined06-20&linkId=08590958f6f5bd9e5518de79829dc5f1&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl&th=1

Edited by InquilineKea
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  • 4 weeks later...

also look out for dry cleaner chemicals

==

“There is one class of precursors called perfluoroalkyl sulfonamides, which have a very similar molecular structure to PFOS, only with a sulfonamide head group on the end,” Pickard explains. “These precursors can break down to PFOS or other similar terminal compounds depending on the carbon chain length of the molecule. But what we're finding is that those chemicals aren't breaking down. They persist for a long time and accumulate at high concentrations in the fish.” 

This last finding—about the resilience of precursors and the levels at which they accumulate in biota—is one Pickard says should concern regulators and the public. “My work is trying to sound the alarm,” she asserts. “These precursors we've assumed aren’t a problem probably are. So, we need to include them in regular biomonitoring and conduct toxicity assessments to identify whether or not exposure to these types of chemicals is important for fish consumers.”

Mitigating Risk

 

A woman wearing overalls and gloves standing in a river next to a raft

Heidi Pickard posing for a photo in the Quashnet River on Cape Cod, where she collected fish using an electrofishing method (Heidi Pickard)

Pickard's advisor Elsie M. Sunderland, professor of environmental science and engineering, says that exposure to PFAS is often underestimated because of a failure to take precursors into account. Her advisee’s research will fill that gap.

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  • 6 months later...
On 1/11/2024 at 5:04 PM, Alex K Chen said:

The 2024 recent microplastics papers (above) also show that contamination comes from the REVERSE OSMOSIS FILTER ITSELF (RO filters are made of plastic too), so b/c of this I'll still rely on my pitcher

 

Curious why using a plastic pitcher would leach fewer microplastics than the RO filter? And is this specific to RO / plastic membranes, with carbon filters being uanffected?

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Relative to diet and exercise,I have decided not to fret about tap water. I rarely drink bottled water, unless in an area where there is no potable tap water. I figure that the chlorine and chloramine can't kill all of my gut bacteria, since I feed them with between 60+ to 100+ grams of fiber daily. As to plastics, there are everywhere, from the bags that contain the legumes and grains I buy, to my toothbrush.

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On 10/30/2024 at 3:48 AM, Mike Lustgarten said:

Home Water Filter Use Is Associated With Less Lead In Blood

Thanks for the video, Mike.

I am, however, inclined to see it mostly as a correlation, at least extrapolating from my own results. My lead levels are below detectable, despite the fact that I have drunk tap water for 6 decades and have consumed large amounts of cacao nibs and cacao powder for at least the past decade. Thus I am a bit leery of attributing your low levels to water filter use.

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1 hour ago, Alex K Chen said:

Well how old is the apartment you live in? Boston got rid of most of its lead in its pipes, I think

Who knows... I was born in the 1960s and have lived in plenty of old buildings in NYC and the West coast, plus a few years in Europe and the Southern Hemisphere. My point is that unless one grew up pealing and eating lead paint, it doesn't appear that lead or cadmium, or whatever, is a major concern compared to diet and lifestyle. After ConsumerLab used cacao cadmium in their highly successful PR campaign, I started testing and none of my levels are detectable, even though I was consuming daily 40+ grams of cacao nibs at the time.

Going whole-food vegan and cutting out stuff like olive oil (or  stopping DHA/EPA supplementation) has had a far more pronounced impact on my bloodwork.

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On 10/31/2024 at 12:05 PM, Ron Put said:

Thanks for the video, Mike.

I am, however, inclined to see it mostly as a correlation, at least extrapolating from my own results. My lead levels are below detectable, despite the fact that I have drunk tap water for 6 decades and have consumed large amounts of cacao nibs and cacao powder for at least the past decade. Thus I am a bit leery of attributing your low levels to water filter use.

Hi Ron, that's definitely possible, I mentioned in the video that water filtration is one possibility, but there are others...

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