Water Purity: Well vs Spring vs City Tap (organic, gas, pollution)
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I've thought for the longest time that in general well or spring water are way purer and healthier than city tap water. Less pollutants, chemicals, peoples' medicines, etc., shared with way fewer people, cleaner, purer, fresher, healthier for skin and hair and absorbing and drinking. Have really enjoyed stays at several homes with well or spring water.
Though seems important to test the well or spring water, though unsure how often.
(One farm I stayed at had so much lime in its well water the sinks, shower, and toilet had so much deposits from it and I noticed its residents complained of health issues that are a symptom of limey water and when I showered there my hair always felt like it was getting damaged. They were too poor or uninterested in testing it unfortunately.)
Lately though I am hearing people disagree with this theory that well or spring water are generally healthier than city tap water.
*sigh* Infowars is a less reliable news source than a squirrel. The thread title you quote is pure crap designed to inflame. Let that poster just hook the drain from his toilet to his kitchen sink for a month and maybe it'll cure him of the terminal hyperbole he seems to have caught from being around too much crappy reporting. At a minimum, it'll lower his water and sewage bills.
If there is going to be a thread on the subject in this forum, stricter rules apply.
Some municipal systems get water from springs. A lot get water from wells. Some get water from lakes and reservoirs. Some home wells are shallow and prone to particular types of contamination. Some are deep and pure, some deep and mineral laden. Stereotyping doesn't work.
*sigh* Infowars is a less reliable news source than a squirrel. The thread title you quote is pure crap designed to inflame. Let that poster just hook the drain from his toilet to his kitchen sink for a month and maybe it'll cure him of the terminal hyperbole he seems to have caught from being around too much crappy reporting. At a minimum, it'll lower his water and sewage bills.
If there is going to be a thread on the subject in this forum, stricter rules apply.
Some municipal systems get water from springs. A lot get water from wells. Some get water from lakes and reservoirs. Some home wells are shallow and prone to particular types of contamination. Some are deep and pure, some deep and mineral laden. Stereotyping doesn't work.
Interesting! This water thing isn't something I've ever really researched much. Am open to keep learning more about it...
Water quality greatly varies from location to location even within a relatively small area.
Lakes, rivers or reservoirs can have contaminants in them from farm runoff, pollution or stormwater runoff. Well water can be contaminated and excess mineral deposits can make it undesirable for drinking or washing with.
Tap water is treated and tested for contaminants. Utility companies put these reports out periodically and they can be viewed so you know the quality of the water you have coming from your tap. If you use well water or spring water you can pay to have that lab tested.
You covered well, spring, and tap, but you forgot #4: Rainwater. Distilled water and rain water are essentially the same thing- water that has been converted into a gas and recondensed into a liquid and losing it's impurities along the way.
Of course it's not completely pure because our air isn't completely pure, but just like we can filter air, we can filter the impurities it imparts into water out very easily.
I tested our catchment water and it's more "pure" than bottled water.
Well water can be polluted and so can spring water. It depends on the aquifer - some places require the driller to not tap into the top most aquifer in order to avoid water that is contaminated with agricultural runoff. They drill into a deeper one and line the well to prevent the upper aquifer from leaking into the lower one. Spring water of course is coming from an upper aquifer so is more likely to be polluted than a well into a deep aquifer.
Municipal water may come from a well in which case all of the above would apply. So there is no hard and fast rule that all well water is better than any municipal water.
If you're willing to pay for a high quality filtration system, any water can be completely purified.
I've thought for the longest time that in general well or spring water are way purer and healthier than city tap water. Less pollutants, chemicals, peoples' medicines, etc., shared with way fewer people, cleaner, purer, fresher, healthier for skin and hair and absorbing and drinking. Have really enjoyed stays at several homes with well or spring water.
Though seems important to test the well or spring water, though unsure how often.
(One farm I stayed at had so much lime in its well water the sinks, shower, and toilet had so much deposits from it and I noticed its residents complained of health issues that are a symptom of limey water and when I showered there my hair always felt like it was getting damaged. They were too poor or uninterested in testing it unfortunately.)
Lately though I am hearing people disagree with this theory that well or spring water are generally healthier than city tap water.
What do you all think and know about this debate?
That it isn't really a debate. Every single source of water has what it has in it. Well, spring, city, pond, tap, stream, river, rain off the roof, whatever it happens to be. The only way to know how "pure" it is is to test it. Once you know what's in your particular source and to what level, you can decide what you want to remove and apply the appropriate filter.
Think about it; to some, naturally-occurring lime is a contaminant. To someone else, lime is what gives the water its crisp "snap". Some don't care what a house water softener might add to their tap water, others go off the deep end about it. Natural iron for some is anathema, but not for others. Some people feel municipal tap water that passes some city/state requirement is perfectly safe. Someone else assumes they're being slowly poisoned.
You can buy various filters like a water pitcher with a charcoal filter or a filter that looks like an oxygen tank and can be installed under the sink. For $1000+ you can install a whole house filter. All of these systems need to have their filter changed often enough so that they don't spew the contaminants right back into your water. You sort of have to guess and go by the guidelines that come with the filter and add that to how contaminated your water is. (Look up your town online to see.)
Some things cannot be filtered. I found out the hard way. The town was using water from a few different wells and one became contaminated by TCE, which is some sort of chemical degreaser, I believe. The levels were over federal limits but the town appealed to the government to allow them to use the contaminated water--and the town won! So for several years, we had higher than acceptable TCE in our water. Come to find out, there is no way to filter it out as it is a volatile organic, something like a gas. It will go right through a filter.
The only way to deal with it would have been to buy a water distiller or maybe it was reverse osmosis. Expensive and very slow and cumbersome. People say it removes some of the good things in water too, some minerals. In my case at least the town was required by law to build a new water filtration plant even though it took a few years. If this happened to your own private well, you would be up the creek (sort of a pun, lol). YOU would be responsible for getting your water tested and you'd better be rich. They charge quite a bit to test for each individual contaminant. You would be paying many hundreds of dollars or more and you'd still never know if maybe there was some other contaminant you should get tested.
Also, a private well can run dry and then you pay big time to have people come and drill you a new one. THEN you start paying big bucks to get the water tested for contaminants.
The safest thing, I think, is to use the town water because it's required to be tested, the results are online, and it is required to meet certain standards. Then, because the standards are not really good enough, people filter that water themselves with a water pitcher for drinking or a tank for filtering it at a sink or an expensive whole house filter. BUT you must be sure to change the filter every few months. That is what I learned from my experience living with contaminated water. I do not trust any water, anywhere and had a brother in law who worked testing water for the government who said that is correct. The days of pure, clean well water or spring water are long gone, apparently.
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