Aluminum Pollution Is In Your Faucet Water
The contamination of water by aluminum is an ever growing problem. Until the late 1800’s, aluminum was an expensive metal - 90 dollars a pound. This changed in 1886 when Charles Martin Hall, a college student, developed a cheap and effective method of extracting the metal from the ore. Its availability made the price quickly drop to 2 dollars a pound. Now, for over a hundred years, aluminum has been used in a variety of ways both in compounds such as alum and bauxite, and, as the third most produced metal.
But aluminum has introduced its own problems. D.R.C. McLachlan found in a study that a relationship did exist between the number of diagnosed Alzheimer’s cases and the level of aluminum present in the drinking water supply. At least one fourth of the cases could have been prevented, he concluded, if the public water supply had had an aluminum level below 100 micrograms/liter. Other problems are also related to the presence of aluminum, such as some lung diseases.
Yes, industry has taken its toll. Studies are revealing that most all metals like aluminum, when ingested over longer periods of time, adversely affect our health. They tend to accumulate and affect the body, especially the nerve cells.
Even the oceans contain a small amount of aluminum and the body normal contains 9ppm. But when the metal accumulates in the body, then the problems begin. Aluminum oxide and aluminum hydroxide are the most common water insoluble compounds. But other compounds contaminate the water supplies and are ingested by people.
The increasing appearance of Alzheimer’s is alarming and its possible connection with aluminum in drinking water will no doubt motivate all of us to act. This author did act by throwing out the aluminum pan we have been using to boil tea.
A top priority action should be drinking water filtration. After all, aluminum will be found in water from wells and city water sources. The city water systems have a minimum allowed level between 50 and 200 g/L but further filtration is certainly a good idea.
A thorough way to clean out aluminum from drinking water is to distill the water, but this also removes valuable minerals as well as taste. A better plan is to purchase a filter that uses activated carbon filters for they are able to remove 95% of the aluminum in the water. No known disease or problem results from a lack of aluminum in the body so the more we remove, the better!
Berkey Water Filters are the best line of activated charcoal filter we are aware of. Check out the Berkey Light or another model. One amazing feature is that each set of filters they ship with can be re-cleaned to purify up to 6,000 gallons of drinking water.
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Tags: aluminum drinking water, aluminum in water, aluminum water filter, aluminum water treatment