Confronting the toxins inside

April 10, 2009

The following is an excerpt from that article:

Living in a $3 million mansion could be killing you softly; but sharing a three-bedroom walkup could actually strengthen your immune system.

I am not talking mortgages or exercise; I am describing the effects of the water flowing from your home faucets right now. Are you protected?

About 60 percent of our body is made up of water! So any toxins lurking in water we drink, shower or soak in, can end up affecting us.

Chlorine, mercury, lead and other heavy metals, hormones from drugs and pesticides and something called perchlorate, a chemical used in air bags, electronics, fertilizers and rocket fuel, are all now found in soil, groundwater, drinking water and irrigation water around the country.

Perchlorate interferes with the ability of the thyroid to get enough iodide, a necessary nutrient that protects against breast cancer. Perchlorate, at higher doses, has also been linked to thyroid cancer and a weakened immune system.

Lacking federal regulations, New Hampshire and most other states still ignore perchlorate levels in municipal water supplies. In 2006, however, Massachusetts passed the strictest perchlorate law in the nation, limiting contamination to 2 parts per billion. (Contact your state representative and say thank you!)

However, chlorine, still used to eradicate dangerous bacteria in most municipal water supplies, was shown in a 1992 Harvard study to raise the risk of bladder cancer by 21 percent and rectal cancer by 38 percent. A 2007 study published in the International Journal of Health Geography also supports this connection between chlorinated water supplies and a significant increase in rectal cancer, especially in areas, such as Cape Cod and Cape Ann, where shallow ground water is the major source of municipal water.

Several years ago, I met a well respected North Shore internist who laughed at the concept of filtering his home water supply.

“The town water is fine,” he told me, when I asked for a glass of water one evening and flinched as I watched him fill my glass from his tap.

“But what about the yucky chlorine taste you get when you make coffee with this stuff?” I asked, as I politely drank the tainted-tasting glass of aqua.

“Oh! I just leave my coffee water out over night,” he said. “The chlorine evaporates by morning.”

But what about the heavy metals, the hormones and the other carcinogens that don’t evaporate? I wondered.

I will never know if drinking that town’s municipal water, unfiltered, for 40 years was a factor, but a few years ago, my 65-year-old physician friend died of pancreatic cancer.