Things You Can Do with Reverse Osmosis

If you know me very well by now, you probably know I'm a big fan of Reverse Osmosis (RO) as a water purification technology. There's a lot of conversation about it lately, a lot of people talking about the pros and cons, and like any technology created by man, nothing is perfect - but RO is very good!

I decided to clear up some of the confusion over what it's all about by starting an article series about the many benefits of RO. Most people think of it as a drinking water source and that's about it. It gets compared to tap water, to bottled water, to carbon filtration, the "pitcher-style" filters and on and on, but instead of focusing on the technology, I want to talk about the many "other" uses of RO - beyond drinking water.

There are so many "alternate uses" that I can't cover them all in one article - what I'll do is give you a few with each posting and talk about them with enough detail so you can see whether or not this would be a good application for you - something you'd want to try yourself.

1. Cooking. This may seem simple, but it's often overlooked. My thinking on this one is, "If I wouldn't drink the water, why would I use it to cook my food?" Think of the ways you can use RO water for cooking....

Steaming vegetables. We use a countertop vegetable steamer. We had used it with tap water for a long time, and the steam generator had a buildup from the dissolved minerals that are left behind when the water evaporates. Since switching to RO, most of those minerals have flaked away and the unit looks like new again. Just the same way your teapot doesn't need to have that white, gunky build-up, any water-using appliances can benefit from RO's clean, pure water.

What about rice? If you look at the hard, dry grains you start with, and then compare those to the fluffy, white grains you end up with, you'll easily see how much water goes into rice. The cleaner, the purer the water you use to make your rice, the better, tastier and healthier your rice will be. This just makes sense - why would adding chlorine or other contaminants do anything but hurt the flavour of one of the tastiest side dishes around?

Same thing goes for pasta. Most people wouldn't think of using 4 or 6 litres of bottled water to make their pasta, but when you have an RO system, there's really no limit to how much you can use! Just like rice, pasta absorbs and takes a lot of water in as it cooks. If the water is clean and pure, you won't have all the chemicals or bits of dissolved rock to taste - if you make home-made pasta sauces, this is a must. So much time, effort and love goes into those sauces that it is almost criminal to poison the flavours by introducing chlorine and other toxic chemicals into your meal. Let your flavours do what they're supposed to do - be delicious!

...instead of focusing on the technology, I want to talk about the many "other" uses of RO - beyond drinking water.

2. Spot Free Rinse. Wait a minute, you're probably thinking... I've heard about that at the car wash, but how can I use RO for this? That's all the spot free rinse at the car wash is - Reverse Osmosis water. It removes any chlorine and any dissolved materials that will create and leave behind water spots when the vehicle dries.

So how do you do this at home? Easy - when you're ready to wash your car, just follow the normal steps you'd always do, but have a spray bottle ready that's filled with RO water. Once your vehicle is clean and rinsed off, use the spray bottle as a final step - mist the entire vehicle and that should be about it. No hand drying should be required and you'll have a virtually spotless finish! (AND - for a LOT less money than doing it at the car wash!)

*** TIP: if you use softened water to make your soap solution, you can save even more money by reducing the amount of soap required by about 75 - 80%! As an added bonus, when you use less soap, you'll not only be saving money, you'll also be less likely to miss some soap when rinsing and you'll waste less water rinsing it away at the end!

3. Humidifiers. This is one of my favourite RO water uses. When we install an RO system into a basement, we always ask the homeowner if they'd like their furnace's humidifier connected. Most people are familiar with the disgusting gunky build-up you see after only a few month's of running the furnace humidifier. That's all the material that's carried along in the tap water that normally feeds the humidifier (yes, it's true - if you drink tap water, just look in your humidifier to see all the "stuff" that you're drinking down in each glass of water, tea, coffee or juice made with it - GROSS!!!)

By running the appropriate water connection from the RO system to the humidifier, you'll be sure that only pure water gets to the system. One of the main reasons humidifiers fail so quickly is the buildup of all the dissolved and carried-along particles in the tap water. If you use purified water (which now doesn't cost you any extra with your in-home RO system) your humidifier will last MUCH MUCH longer, all the while requiring less maintenance and less toxic chemicals to clean!

Ok - that should be enough to get us started. Please feel free to post any questions or comments - and if you have a unique way to use your RO system, send it over to us at info@douglasenviro.ca - we'll reward you for your efforts! (or if you're shy about email, visit us online at: www.douglasenviro.ca and use the contact form to submit your idea. While you're there, make sure to sign up for our free newsletter, filled with ideas and information like this on water, air quality and healthy living!)

Take care and enjoy healthy water for life!


Greg

Arsenic linked to Type II Diabetes

An article was published today in the Americal Journal of Medicine that has linked low levels of arsenic to Type II Diabetes. At concentrations of 0.01 mg per Litre, this colourless, tasteless and odourless contaminant gets into the body where diabetes develops. This was discovered in urine tests - people with high arsenic levels detected were THREE TIMES more likely to have diabetes.

Arsenic is found mostly in western regions of North America, but can be found anywhere. Municipal water treatment plants are required by law to monitor and remove arsenic, but there is no such program to assist people drawing their drinking water from a private well. Thankfully, there are reverse osmosis systems that are certified to remove arsenic as well as a broad range of other contaminants.

This is yet another reason to ensure your well water is treated before consuming it. I had two seperate clients yesterday comment that they drink the water from their well just as it comes out of the ground. One client was talking about how their family has been on that land for a long time and it seemed fine. I had another one tell me they use it for cooking because of the salty flavour it makes nice pasta and vegetables!

When it comes to your family's health, well water is something to be taken seriously. Even if your family has been on the land for a long time, and for 3 or 4 generations have been drinking the water from that well - try to picture what has changed in the world! Around these farms and rural areas, crops have been treated with newer fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and all kinds of chemicals. Our cattle are injected with hormones to make our meat more tender and lean. All of this finds its way down into the ground and into the water table. If you draw your water from the ground - this HAS to concern you!

In many areas, land that used to be used for farms have been purchased and re-zoned for commercial, industrial and residential usages. Commercial and industrial processes can add toxic pollutants. New residential development adds septic systems as well as fertilizers and other chmicals to the water. Increasing levels of air pollution have affected the rain that falls and ends up in the wells.

It is so important to look at the big picture when it comes to your health. Just because your great grandfather drank from that well 75 years ago does not mean that the water is "just fine" now....

Arsenic is a well-researched problem. There is ample information on this element at the EPA, the World Health Organization and Health Canada. For a free copy of Health Canada's Arsenic in Drinking Water Guidelines, email: info@douglasenviro.ca with ARSENIC in the subject line. We can mail a hard copy if you prefer, just send us your name and address.

Bird Flu is Back: How to Protect Yourself in Five Easy Steps

Its been out of the news for a while, but it seems we're not quite done with Bird Flu. The HN51 strain, the strain we're most-concerned with because of its ability to infect both birds and humans, was found in Indonesia, bringing their toll to 112 deaths related to this illness.

In June of this year, a new "H7" strain has also been identified. This is believed to be a mutated strain that can easily cross over to infect humans.

Its been out of the news for a while and many had assumed the threat had come and gone - this is clearly not the case.

As a consultant, I've been asked about pandemic preparedness steps for some local government managers. Below are some helpful tips you can use for your home or office:

1 - Maintain your health.

• Proper diet and exercise. A healthy body, armed with all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes necessary for life, is better at defending itself.
  
• Drink plenty of clean, pure water. Drinking about 1/2 ounce of water per pound is the recommended amount to maintain healthy hydration. eg. a 150 pound person should drink 75 ounces of water. -That's about 2.5 Litres a day, or ten 8-ounce glasses. Water plays a vital role in a healthy immune system.
  We recommend reverse osmosis water to ensure a clean, pure and almost unlimited source. Achieving and maintaining proper hydration using bottled water can be a costly and time-consuming approach.
  Having your own water treatment system allows you constant access to as much water as you could possibly need. Get yourself an inexpensive, re-usable, BPA-free water bottle and keep it filled and with you all the time. Drinking water continuously throughout the day becomes an easy habit, helps stem off hunger and has so many health benefits, it would take hours to read about them all. This is an easy and cost-effective way to improve your overall health and your immune system.
  

2 - Be clean!

• Wash hands frequently with soap and warm water. Research shows that this is all that is required. Antibacterial soaps can come with their own set of problems and haven't been shown to help prevent infection any better than plain old soap and water.
  
• Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze - then wash your hands! Your mother taught you when you were little, and she was right! Not only is it rude to do anything less, it can definitely spread germs.
  

3 - Avoid infecting, and being infected by others.

• Stay away from others as much as possible if you are sick. "Presenteeism" is a new term that has been used to describe the "superhero type" who refuses to take a day off when sick. Typically, these people are trying to do what they think is responsible, but in reality, they're often working at a significantly-reduced capacity, as well as potentially infecting an office full of their peers and co-workers. Offices should encourage sick workers to stay home!

4 - Stay informed.

• Talk with your local health care providers. They can supply information regarding identifying signs of sicknesses and outbreak.

5 - Take precautions.

• Implement "Active" air purification systems. These systems, as opposed to "passive" or filter-based systems do not require air to be brought to the purifier to be treated. They use technology to send 'scrubbers' out to clean the air and surface, sanitizing against germs - including the Bird Flu! They also help control odours and keep the air clear of dust, mold spores, pollen and other airborne pollution that can aggravate allergies.
  

Talk to an indoor air quality professional about your concerns. For a very reasonable rate, your home or office can be assessed and a customized solution can be implemented to handle your current air quality concerns, as well as giving you peace of mind knowing that your family or coworkers are protected from Bird Flu and other allergens and germs.

Greg Douglas, owner of Douglas Environmental Solutions
(www.douglasenviro.ca) is an Indoor Environmental Specialist, certified by NORMI and an active member of the Water Quality Association (www.wqa.org)

Drugs in Our Tap Water

A recent Associated Press probe found that drugs were found in the water in major centres across the US and Canada. This affected both municipal (or "city water") and private well water sources.

Contaminants ranged from pharmaceuticals and vitamins to anabolic steroids. When people take medications, most of it is absorbed by the body and used, but some inevitably passes thru the system and is excreted with the rest of the body's waste materials. In New York, heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer found in their public water supply.

Its not just human wastes we're concerned with either - a study done in an area downstream of a cattle ranch found that the water was affected here too. Cattle are often fed steroids like "trenbolone" by an ear implant that slowly administers the dosage to increase cattle size. These typically are the types of anabolic steroids used by bodybuilders to bulk up.

A German study showed that 10% of the steroids passed thru the cattle and quadrupled the levels detected in the ground water. (Side note - kind of scary to think that this already was in the water UPSTREAM too! These steroids were detected in the water even before it reached the cattle, and were found to be FOUR times higher in concentration in the water downstream.)

Although the levels of these medications were typically found in doses MUCH lower than anything you'd receive by taking the drugs directly, long-term exposure is clearly a concern. Another problem with city water arises with the addition of chlorine, typically considered a "catch-all" type of treatment for the millions and millions of gallons that flow thru these plants.

Chlorine is a cheap way to treat bacteria and helps to treat some of these problems. Unfortunately, with these medicines and chemicals, there is evidence that chlorination now makes some pharmaceuticals more toxic! It also creates "trihalomethanes" (THM's) as a byproduct of chlorine disinfection. Health Canada and the World Health Organization regards these THM's a bigger health concern than the chlorine itself.

The results clearly show that these are not only found in water supplies, but they are also not isolated - this was widespread. The studies were performed across the US, and included Canada and Europe as well. They also talked about how to protect families from them. Processes like Reverse Osmosis can remove these contaminants with their technology - the "nuts and bolts" of how this is done is beyond what I'll cover here - but suffice it to say that a typical inline or "jug style" filter setup will absolutely not remove this sort of contaminant. Reverse Osmosis selectively rejects things other than water and washes them away - out of the system and out of your drinking water supply.

True, there are pro's and con's to any technology, there is no "perfect" system, but when you are talking about your health, all options should be weighed accordingly and decisions must be made. Even bottled water isn't a guarantee. Many bottled waters are packaged as "spring" or "mineral" waters. In these cases, they are simply not treated with purification technology to remove these chemicals. We recommend a combination approach of filtration and reverse osmosis. By using these two technologies together, it is possible to prevent these chemicals from entering the home's water supply.

Basically, what it all comes down to is taking control. There is simply just no economical way that city water treatment plants can handle the volumes of water they do, and treat it to the levels that make it clean, pure water suitable for drinking, for bathing, washing dishes or cooking. When dealing with a private well water system, there is nobody to monitor the water and ensure it is safe. There are safe, easy and economical solutions to your water quality concerns.
Consult an expert - find out what's in your water and what you can do about it!

Greg Douglas, owner of Douglas Environmental Solutions
(www.douglasenviro.ca) is an Indoor Environmental Specialist, certified by NORMI and an active member of the Water Quality Association (www.wqa.org)