If you have a small baby, then you are probably using tap water to make baby formula. I don't mean to alarm you, but before you open that faucet again to fill the baby bottle, I think you should consider the following.
This may be shocking to you, but a large number of independent and government studies about the quality of water that we get at our homes, all seem to agree on the following: We shouldn't be assured that the official reports that are issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the official government body responsible for water quality from public utilities, are reliable.
By the way, in case you are not aware of this, each year your water supplier is obliged to send you by mail a short report which lists the results of a water contamination test. Request it if by any chance you are not receiving anything.
There are three fundamental flaws in the way that this report is prepared:
1. The number of water contaminants that this report covers is much lower than the range of possible waterborne contaminants that now exist. Just to give you the numbers, there are now about 75,000 known toxic chemicals. Of them, only about 90 are covered by the EPA test!
2. Another disturbing fact is that estimation of health risk is based on each chemical separately. In other words, it measures the concentration level of each chemical and if that level is below the MCL (Maximum Contaminant Level) specified for that particular chemical, then it's considered to pose no health risk. What fails to measure is the combined effect of contaminants.
3. The third drawback is of immediate concern to those of you having children in the family or you are using tap water to make baby formula, as mentioned above. The estimation of health risk of the test is based on consumption by a 175 lb. adult. No consideration is given to the dramatic effects that long term consumption of contaminated water will have on children. The general notion that "children are small adults" is far from the truth. The quality of water that they drink is a crucial factor for their healthy development.
To make matters even worse, it is a medical fact that, as a proportion of their body weight, children and infants drink more than two and a half times as much water as adults. The required daily water intake of an infant living only on baby formula amounts to about one-seventh of its own weight!
I don't mean to scare you, but these facts should alert you to reconsider using tap water to make baby formula and take action now to have pure drinking water at your house.
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