How to get good Drinking Water

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With a huge population on the planet, increasing use of chemicals and pollution, good healthy drinking water is becoming increasingly rare and many humans are managing with less than the best of drinking water just as they are managing with less than the best of good air to breathe. While with the help of modern medical intervention one may increase compromised life spans, the best quality of life becomes a far cry when humans miss out on sunshine, pure air, water and food. Perhaps the only way for humans missing out on sunshine and good quality air is to change their life styles and place of living. The best quality food may be obtained when one prepares one’s food from basic ingredients (as opposed to factory processed food) that are organic or near organic and well washed in case of fruits and vegetables. It is also possible to get good quality drinking water if one knows how to. Just a few simple steps will do. That is the focus of the present note.

It may be mentioned that the best of drinking water does not cost money, it requires the right knowledge. In fact it is some of the rich that end up compromising their health with expensive bottled water in some cases that even lead to various cancers. There was a time this blogger rushed a note to one of the richest men in the world - Warren Buffet - when he ended up with one with a suggestion for a speedier cure. Just purchasing mass produced bottled water does not always help. This is because bottled water may make use of chemical agents such as iodine salts, chlorination or ozonation and these may become harmful or produce harmful compounds such as dioxins.

Grading Potable Water

Potable water is defined as water that is good enough and healthy for drinking and cooking. However as mentioned at the outset because of a general deterioration of good quality potable water on the planet, the time has come to grade potable water as Grade I and Grade II  or Alpha potable water and Beta Potable water

Beta Potable water:  This is potable water that is good enough to cook in but not good enough to drink because it may contain harmful bacteria that die in the process of cooking

Alpha Potable Water: Is potable water that does not contain harmful bacteria and therefore is good to drink, wash vegetables for salads or to add without cooking to cold soups etc.

The attempt should be to first access beta potable water that is good for cooking and then convert it to alpha potable water for drinking through simple steps that shall be presently described.


Obtaining Beta Potable Water

The majority of humans on the planet still have access to water that does not contain any major inorganic or organic impurities but may just contain soil, sand, grit and bacterial impurities. In this case filtration is required in order to get rid of sand and grit. Such a filtration at domestic level may be done through layers of cloth or vessels containing sand or commercial filters. Filtering through sand beds is a slow process but it is carried out easily by letting it happen slowly and collecting the filtered water in a separate pot. At larger community level the water may be made to pass through a series of hydrocyclones first to remove larger particles

In case the water contains serious dissolved impurities such as fluorides, excess salt, nitrates, pesticides etc. then simple filtration is no longer sufficient and processes such as ion exchange, distillation, filtration through activated charcoal bed, reverse osmosis etc. would be required

It may be mentioned that rain water or that from freshly melted snow does not usually contain major dissolved impurities and can be easily made beta potable through simple filtration. However its major defect is that it may be much too soft for the best of health. On the other hand, water from wells and underground sources may be too hard for good health and mixing the two kinds is a feasible option. In case ground water contains serious dissolved matter such as nitrates, pesticides, fluorides etc. then as already mentioned more complicated techniques are required for purification.

Converting Beta Potable Water to Alpha Potable Water

If you are lucky you already have a community level supply of beta potable water on tap in your home and you may then use it safely for cooking. A few more steps will convert this beta potable water to alpha potable water as explained next.

Boil:

In a large pot boil beta potable water and keep it on boiling for a few minutes. On cooling you shall have a pot full of alpha potable water. However do note that it does not take long for alpha potable water to revert to beta potable water on keeping, transmission and storage unless some further precautions are taken.

The further necessary steps to prevent bacterial growth is either to store water overnight in a copper vessel (or better silver if you are a king)  and drink it the next day or for longer storage transfer to clean glass bottles that are kept near a window and exposed to sunlight during the day. You may keep a few of such exposed bottles in the fridge for a day or so at a time.

Do not store for too long in a copper vessel, no more than a day for sure, because while some copper ions kill bacteria and are good for health, too much of it may be poisonous. On the other hand keeping in a silver vessel for too long may give you blue blood best avoided. Those using copper plumbing in their homes when returning from a visit away from home for longer than a day must let the water run for about two to five minutes before filling up for drinking. Those living in places with rationed and interrupted supply must also let the water run for about fifteen minutes before collecting for drinking because impurities would have leaked in during the time the supply was shut down, but do not waste that water, use it for washing etc.

Make use of Silver

For large and long term storage of water drop a silver spoon  inside the storage tank or get one coated with microdyn. For use of silver see:
http://www.thesilveredge.com/cs_developing_nations.shtml#.VXqGJfDhWYc

Also see:
http://www.discoverynews.us/DISCOVERY%20MUSEUM/SciencePavilion/Colloidal_Silver.html

 Riding on the silver fad nowadays a lot of processes and devices are floating on the internet such as colloidal silver, optical silver and so on. Some of these have an element of commercial gimmickry in them and none of them have been thoroughly researched and some may be unsafe. It is simply not worth the while of the modern drug industry to do research on something that has been around for billions of years and cannot be patented for profit. The best way to make use of the excellent antibiotic properties of silver is the ancient time tested one of using an object of pure silver (not sterling silver) placed in a storage vessel since an entire vessel of silver is too expensive now for all but royalty. Just choose an object that is large enough such as a spoon that cannot be swallowed by mistake. Soak it for about eight hours in lemon juice (alternately dissolved citric acid powder solution). Remove, scrub and clean thoroughly with fresh water and place in your water storage vessel. Leave it in there as you refill. You may repeat the citric acid treatment once a month. Please do note that these ideas on silver are presently the author's opinion albeit a considered one. More research is required to confirm them.
UPDATE: Bottled Water, March 20 2018

Aside from what has been said about bottled water at the beginning of this note a new issue has surfaced.

With increasing population and increasing pollution of earth’s natural resources, much of the rich population of the world has come to be increasingly dependent on bottled water in the hope of avoiding water related health issues. Unfortunately, a recent study released a few days ago has shown that this water contains a large amount of plastic particles. 90% of tested samples from across some of the most well known brands were found contaminated. The precise impact of this contamination on human health remains to be researched. Perhaps some of it passes through the human system without causing any major issues but some may get absorbed in the blood stream and accumulate in the system and it would not be surprising if it is found that this leads to kidney damage, liver problems, cancers, blockages in the urinary tract and other issues through long term use. Soft drinks have not been tested but it would be surprising if it does not suffer from a similar issue. The matter is under a health review by WHO

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/15/microplastics-found-in-more-than-90-of-bottled-water-study-says

One report on BBC suggested that this plastic might be from the caps of the bottle. Upon reflection this author immediately tweeted under the hash tag of bottled water and to the twitter handles of Nestle and Pepsi to explore use of some edible paint on the inside of these caps or their replacement with thin metallic caps on plastic bottles. The solution may in fact be even simpler, placing a small paper or foil insert inside the cap so that the liquid does not come in contact with the cap material. Yet another possibility is coating the caps with edible grade linseed oil and curing. All these possibilities however need further study by industry and others.

 This was an idea in public interest and therefore shared publicly and not for profit with these leading lights of the bottled world with a request that they acknowledge it. They did not. It seems the corporate world is ruled by profit, not good human values but if this tweet results in improvements even because of the profit motive, it shall be worth it for the lives of billions on the planet.  The sentiments of one individual author from their response or lack of it is of little consequence. If they do not do this replacement, others will and they shall be obliged to follow suit or wind up their business


The image (modified here) was taken through wikipedia commons from the Geograph project collection. See this photograph's page on the Geograph website for the photographer's contact details. The copyright on this image is owned by Adam Ward and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

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