How Pollution Affects Drinking Water Sources

By Adriana Noton


If you want to find out if the pollutants in the environment is affecting your health, start with finding out what pollutants are in your drinking water. When the drinking water is contaminated with various types of impurities, illnesses and even life threatening disease such as cancer can develop. For instance, studies have shown that contaminated drinking water in the third would countries are a leading cause of disease and death. In developing counties, there is also a risk of diseases and death caused by contaminated drinking water.

In developed countries, many contaminants have been found in drinking water such as bacteria, viruses, coliform, harmful chemicals, pesticides, and much more. Often this due to pollutants in the atmosphere, groundwater, lakes, rivers, and streams, as well as fertilizer and pesticide run off from big agricultural farms, etc. Even the cleaning methods used to cleanse the water involve harmful chemicals such as chlorine and fluoride. The high accumulation of chemicals in the human body can result in many types of illnesses and diseases. Even though you may live in a developed country, you need to take a number of precautions to safeguard the health of your drinking water.

In short supply clean water sources results in governments using chemical treatments to meet the water demand. They have now allowed a minimum amount of certain contaminates in the drinking water. Overtime, the accumulation of contaminants in the body can result in a chemical overload of the body putting a person at a high risk of getting sick. Just because the water coming out of your taps is deemed safe by the government, it does not mean your water is actually free of contaminants that can cause unpleasant illness over time. In addition, urban water supplies often are contaminated from a variety of sources such as industrial waste discharge, improper sewage treatment, chemicals, leaching from waste dumps into the surface and ground water, and substandard solid waste management.

It has been found that about two-thirds of sewage from densely populate areas is pumped untreated into coastal waters, lakes, streams, and rivers. According to WHO, worldwide, about 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases that are linked to water problems. Water-related diseases include gastrointestinal diseases, schistosomiasis, trachoma, some cancers resulting from chemicals in the water, ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm disease.

Fortunately, homeowners and business owners have a way to ensure they have clean, healthy, and great tasting drinking water. Today, there are different types of water purification systems on the market. Some are designed to remove certain contaminants while others include a combination of purification methods to eliminate a wide range of harmful contaminants from the drinking water. Because there are different types of water purification systems available, it is wise to test your water to find out what contaminants are in the water so that you buy the water purification systems that effectively removes the impurities. Producing clean, healthy, and great tasting drinking water using a water purification system will help you and your family remain healthy.




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