HEALTH NOTES MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

From the desk of Dr. William D. Stimack

Vol 1, NO. 1

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

In looking at the title of this inaugural newsletter, “The Origin of Life,” what comes to mind? If you thought of water, you would be absolutely correct. Water is life. It's as simple as that. Water is the foundation of all life on Earth. Water is the lifeblood of the planet, the life-giving fluid in all organisms, plants, animals, and humans. Our precarious existence is intimately connected with the quality of the water that is available to us. How much thought have you given to the quality of the water you drink everyday? Chances are your attention is more focused on what you put into your body. You may read the labels of foods you buy, comparing calories gained through fat or carbohydrates; you may try to avoid processed foods that are high in sodium and loaded with additives that only a chemist could understand; you may even supplement your diet with vitamins and herbs and organic foods. However, what do you do to ensure that you not only drink enough water but that the quality of that water is adequate enough to provide the life-sustaining properties we all take for granted?

Our Dependence on Water

Every part of the human body is dependent on water. That should come as no surprise when you consider that our bodies are composed of approximately 25 percent solid matter and 75 percent water! Percentages vary depending on what part of the body we are looking at; for instance, the brain is said to be 85 percent water, blood is 90 percent water, muscles are 75 percent water, the liver is 82 percent water, and human bone is 22 percent water. If our glands and organs are not nourished with good, clean water, they begin to work less efficiently. Their functions begin to deteriorate, and our overall health likewise begins the same deterioration process. Therefore, it is vital that we begin to pay much more attention to the water we drink. While we need to become more concerned with the vitality and the quality of our drinking water, we also need to try to get more information about where that water originally came from and what forms of treatment it received before it was deemed safe for human consumption. If we know that water is truly the origin of life, and if water quality and vitality are so important to us, why do we allow harmful chemicals and toxins to be added to it?

Man's Tampering with Perfection

Living in an advanced, growing, industrialized society that is dependent on modern technology may be beneficial in many ways in terms of financial wealth, convenience, and even health care, but it is rapidly destroying water's life-giving capacities. Along with our typical short-sighted engineering projects have come clear-cut forests, mega-project dams, and rivers confined into canals. They all tamper with the circulatory system of the planet. Having interfered on such a monumental scale with the hydrological cycle, we suffer the effects of disastrous floods, droughts, and other extreme weather conditions. In addition, ever-increasing human population, industrial wastes and agricultural chemicals are contaminating our water sources. We dump our trash in huge landfills, some of which leak toxic chemicals into water tables below. Farmers rely all too heavily on herbicide and pesticide sprays and nitrate fertilizers to get maximum productivity out of their land, and the subsequent runoff pollutes our lakes, rivers, and underground aquifers. Our fondness for meat and dairy products also leads to the contamination of groundwater. The millions of tons of waste produced by the farm animals that provide our beef and pork and chicken and eggs and milk are a big contributor to increased water toxicity. A Time Magazine report stated that “over 4000 chemicals have already been found in drinking water. All levels of government have been slow to act. Meanwhile, more and more chemicals are showing up in the water supply of America's cities and towns.” In addition, over 18 billion pounds of pollutants and chemicals are released into the atmosphere, soil, and groundwater. Of the thousands of chemicals found in the water, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets safety levels for only 60. Even with those 60 standards, the EPA reports almost half of all municipal water supplies in the U.S. annually violate Federal health standards. What that means is millions and millions of people in this country have been and are continuing to be exposed to potentially toxic and hazardous substances just by using the water that comes out of their kitchen and bathroom faucets.

The Dangers of Chlorine

What can we do to combat this armada of dangers that face our water supply? In this country, cities attempt to purify drinking water by using processes such as sedimentation, filtration, ion exchange, and disinfection. Disinfection uses ozonation and especially chlorination in order to kill disease-causing microbes. Chlorine, which was instrumental in the past century to control cholera, typhoid fever, and other water-borne diseases, is now viewed with much more suspicion. It may actually pose greater long term dangers than those for which it was originally used to eliminate. Scientific studies have linked chlorine and chlorination by-products to cancer of the bladder, liver, stomach, rectum, and colon, as well as heart disease, atherosclerosis, anemia, high blood pressure, and allergic reactions. There is also evidence that chlorine can destroy protein in our body and cause adverse effects on skin and hair. Scientists have learned that chlorine combines easily with other chemicals and naturally occurring organic materials to create potentially carcinogenic substances known as organochlorines. We have come to learn that 96 percent of agricultural chemicals used today contain chlorine. Even taking a shower is not as beneficial as it seems because the amount of chlorine absorbed by your body in a 10-minute shower equals about two gallons of tap water consumption! Taking showers, and to a lesser extent baths, lead to a greater exposure to toxic chemicals contained in water supplies than does drinking the water itself. The chemicals evaporate out of the water and are inhaled as the hot water steams. They can also spread through the house and be inhaled by others. Since chlorine is required by public health regulations to be present in all public drinking water supplies, the most effective line of defense against those chemicals is to install point-of-use shower filters.