Clean Water – We’ll All Drink To That
“All hail to the ale, Adam’s Ale” that key elixir of life so promoted as the wellspring of life in Biblical traditions. Water was picked up more recently in that Otis Redding classic “you don’t miss your water – til your well runs dry”. Quite, but Otis left out one vital word that’s needed nowadays and that’s ‘clean’. Sadly, Flint, Michigan, has become a byword for a failed system of accessing clean water – so poisoned has the water supply become, by lead contamination. The crisis began in 2014 with environmental tests showing unacceptably high levels of lead from the changed water supply of the Flint River. A Federal State of Emergency was declared in January 2016.
Despite remedial acts to clean the water, a lead pipe replacement programme won’t be completed until 2020, while the residents are instructed to use only bottled water til then. But, as is often the case, a community ‘setback’ kicked the fundraising machine into top gear raising millions to make some restitution – a true testimony to People Power with many, personally touched, ‘taking command’. Films, books and music fundraising have all played their part in highlighting the problems and the lessons we can learn. That there has been no new water purity regulations by the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in over 20 years should ring alarm bells elsewhere. More so, as some pretty ‘fancy’ manufacturing processes have become industrial norms since then.
Water a Carry On
So just what’s so spesh about water: agua, aqua, l’eau. Well, it’s vital in us too, hiding in every cell and keeping our body hydrated ensuring the blood is naturally thinned and suitably a flowin. The wet stuff is chemically a bit of O and two bits of H, but in a covalent hexibondy, molecular type way (I made the hexibondy bit up). Without a few ‘buckets of water’ in your body, after three days in the desert de scorchio we’d all be as wrinkly as a year old prune and fully doomed to die. Soon we’d be marked by a pile of stones and a name plate – water sure does matter and it sure trumps food – that, we do know. So essential is it to full body functioning and brain signalling that without it we go into full on, “don’t look Ethel”, delirium. As water is depleted in the body, the kidneys don’t flush (though the face might) – and urinary tract infection can take hold, usually resulting in full blown ‘delirium on steroids’.
Keep It Clean, Now!
In Cornwall in 1989, hundreds of dead fish were found in the water, overnight. Turns out Fred The Filter Man was asleep on his gig in Camelford and local folks more than the hump, rightly. They also got a nasty dose of some serious side effects, as 20 tonnes of aluminium (not a word found in a Bill Gates spell checker) was tipped into the local water source. That’s more than tripping over the cat, that’s a human poisoning of near elephantine proportions. Recently in thousands of samples, undertaken across US water utilities, testers found nearly 300 contaminants in the ‘fresh’ water. The most (in)famous of which was Chromium 6 made notorious in the film Erin Brockovich. But surprisingly there are no federal regulations for that known carcinogen. Chromium 6 was detected across all 50 US States, so clearly: no child, no adult, no cat, nor dawg was ‘left behind’ – nor was a ‘gold’ fish, but maybe it is now more of a silvery shade of aluminum (“thanks, Bill”).
Fake and Plastic
Micro plastic particle contamination is rampant, sneaking into cosmetics to impregnate the skin with micro beads – usually to exfoliate the face and forehead. What’s so wrong with a wire brush? it always worked for my Granny. But, the Guardian had other ideas and in a September 2017 their article stated: we live on a Plastic Planet with US ‘fibre’ contamination reaching 94% in samples taken, while in the EU we didn’t fare much better with plastic contaminants finding their way into 72% of the samples. Apparently a ‘fleecy’ top sheds 250,000 fibres per wash – so there you have it, best stay smelly, spare the water and become a: Planet Saving Fashionista – all in one.