June 1, 2010 New York, USA
By Joe Kemp and Jonathan Lemire
NY Daily News Staff Writers
Nearly 75 Queens elementary school students
were hospitalized Tuesday after getting sick from
drinking contaminated water, authorities said.
Dozens of children complained that their
stomachs hurt after sipping from water fountains
in a new wing at Public School 20 in Flushing,
the officials said.
Students noticed pink water in toilets and
fountains, the result of a chemical dumped into

the water supply by a worker fixing the school’s
air conditioning system, officials said. Propylene
glycol is a sweet-tasting substance used in
nontoxic anti-freeze.
“Probably because [the chemical] was sweet,
they kept drinking the water,” said Dr. Glen
Asaeda of the FDNY.
SOURCE: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/
education/
2010/06/01/2010-06-01_more_than_80_queens_kids_i
n_hospital_after_drinking_contaminated_pink_water_at_
p.html

Technorati Tags: atmospheric water generators

Check out the Cannes Young Lion 2010 Ad

competition for WaterAid.org.  The Ad

competition set very few parameters around

the submissions to keep creativity at a

maximum level and perhaps get a new youth

perspective. There were many entries with various

degrees of “polish” and certainly several new

ways of looking at the water crisis, some serious and

some  useing humor. Young film makers from around

the word gave their take on the world water crisis.

This is my favorite:

Technorati Tags: Pure Drinking Water

By: Natural News

(NaturalNews) A University of Washington research team recently released the results of a study it conducted on contaminant residue in the waters of Puget Sound in Washington State. Various spices, flavorings and other substances are being identified as making their way out of water treatment plants and back into the world’s water supply.

Winter holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas bring extra amounts of cinnamon while chocolate and vanilla are especially popular on the weekends. Likewise, caramel corn residue and waffle-cone pieces are particularly excessive around the Independence Day. The most popular contaminant found in the sound is artificial vanilla flavor which is found at an average of 14 milligrams per liter of water.

Around the world, scientists are finding all sorts of things from pharmaceutical drugs to illegal drugs in water supplies despite rigorous efforts to remove them at water treatment facilities. Piggy-backing a report from last year that found trace levels of pharmaceutical drugs in most U.S. water supplies, this report highlights even further how easily water is being contaminated by various human elements.

While spices and flavorings may not inflict any noticeable harm, the concept that traces of everything flushed end up in the water is what researchers wish to convey. Contaminant byproducts, also known as metabolites, regularly make their way out of water treatment plants back into natural waters. Experts hope that awareness of this will encourage people to be cautious about what they flush and engaged in working toward a solution.

Illegal drugs have become a problem in many water supplies where the residue is toxic to both animals and other humans. A 2008 study found that 92 percent of water samples at a Spanish treatment plant contained trace elements of cocaine. Italy’s longest river, the Po River, is also said to carry daily noticeable levels of the narcotic through its waterways as well as 44 pounds of daily pharmaceutical drugs which are also highly problematic.

Of notable concern is water contaminated by perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel and fireworks that inhibits the uptake of iodine. Iodine is vital for proper thyroid gland function, and without it serious diseases like hypothroidism run rampant. Perchlorate is currently unregulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Current EPA guidelines require that more than 90 known contaminants be removed from water supplies, but the introduction of new chemicals as well as the use of ones that are not completely filtered out are becoming troublesome. Awareness of the issue will hopefully drive the effort to remedy the problem.

Sources for this story include: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/…

Technorati Tags: Pharmaceutical Contamination

Technorati Tags: Atmospheric Water Generator

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn’t as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name “vitaminwater” suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it’s actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with “deceptive and unsubstantiated claims.” In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, “At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” Noting that the soft drink giant wasn’t claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, “Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.”

I still can’t get over the bizarre audacity of Coke’s legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn’t a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn’t false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that’s why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you “healthy as a horse,” and will bring about a “healthy state of physical and mental well-being.”

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

Here’s what I suggest: If you’re looking for a healthy and far less expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up, try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.

If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or attaches to the tap.

And it’s probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need far more reliably, far more consistently — and far more honestly.

To learn about inexpensive and healthy foods and beverages, and practical steps you can take toward greater quality of life and economic freedom, read John Robbins’ critically acclaimed new book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. For more information about his work, or to sign up for his email list, visit johnrobbins.info

How long this had been going on, was uncertain. But one thing that is certain is this- With prescription drugs in the drinking water being discovered in many major cities public water supplies, drugs such as estrogen, sex hormones, radiation or chemotherapy prescriptions, painkillers, mood stabilizers, heart medicine and others, it’s a wonder everybody isn’t carrying eggs or worse, not just the fish.

The case of a Nebraska feedlot, where cattle are given time-released steroids through an ear tag, when a water supply stream was tested near the feedlot, the chemical tests came back 4 times higher downstream from the feedlot, than upstream above the feedlot. In addition, the fathead minnow, native to the stream, was found to have low testerone levels and small heads downstream, and more normal levels and the fathead they are named for upstream from the feedlot.

What does this mean? Over some period of time, the chemicals in our water supply can affect the natural evolution of fish, earthworms, and it’s too soon to tell about humans. The same types of drugs that are in the water supply stream are also the same type of drugs in the drinking water that could be coming from your public water supply.

Bottled water companies are not governed by any regulatory source, as long as it is bottled water, it can even come from a tap, as bottled water, is just that-bottled water.

Presently, the EPA admits that there are no treatment plants for the prescription drugs in drinking water. This would be too costly to do on a large-scale basis. Reverse osmosis and household filtration systems can remove virtually all traces of prescription drugs in drinking water, but this has to be done on a household level at this time.

Many public water supplies add chlorine for purification, which can make some chemicals, (such as those found in prescription drugs), more toxic. Many Americans think that the government, EPA and other agencies are looking out for this danger.

While the Safety Water Act was designed for the public’s safety, presently the only drug tested for is nitroglycerin and that is because it can be made into explosives. They do not test for any other prescription drugs in the drinking water at this time.

Many Americans, hospitals, and treatment centers dispose of, through waste into the public sewage systems, (which are now reclaimed, distilled and recycled due to water shortages and droughts), many cancer treatment chemotherapy and radiation drugs, angina and heart medicines. Now is the time for your own home water treatment options if you are concerned with drugs in the drinking water.

Technorati Tags: Pharmaceutical Contamination

Chances are you didn’t say water. But that’s the right answer.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have shown that ordinary water – without any additives – does more than just quench thirst. It has some other unexpected, physiological effects. It increases the activity of the sympathetic – fight or flight – nervous system, which raises alertness, blood pressure and energy expenditure.

Dr. David Robertson and colleagues first observed water’s curious ability to increase blood pressure about 10 years ago, in patients who had lost their baroreflexes – the system that keeps blood pressure within a normal range.

The observation came as a complete surprise, said Robertson, professor of Medicine, Pharmacology and Neurology.

“We had to unlearn the idea that water had no effect on blood pressure, which is what all medical students had been told until the last couple of years.”

Although water does not significantly raise blood pressure in healthy young subjects with intact baroreflexes, the investigators found that it does increase sympathetic nervous system activity and constrict blood vessels (which prevents pooling of blood in the extremities).

These findings prompted the American Red Cross to conduct a study of water drinking as a method for reducing fainting responses. The study found that drinking 16 ounces of water before blood donation reduced the fainting response by 20 percent.

“This response to water may turn out to be very important for retaining blood donors,” Robertson said. “If you pass out after giving blood, you pretty much never give blood again. If we can reduce fainting by 20 percent, we can reduce the unpleasantness of passing out and really bolster the number of people who can continue to be blood donors.”

Julia McHugh, a student in Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program, tackled the questions of where water is acting, and how, in a series of studies in mice. The team’s latest findings are reported in the June issue of the journal Hypertension.

McHugh and colleagues found that water introduced directly into the stomach or duodenum (the first part of the small intestine) raised blood pressure, which ruled out an oral or esophageal mechanism for the response. They also tested a similar volume of saline (salt-containing solution). This did not raise blood pressure, which suggested that stretch of the tissues was not part of the mechanism and that perhaps water’s lack of salt might be important.

The investigators ultimately determined that water dilutes the plasma in the blood vessels leading away from the duodenum and that this short-lived reduction in salt concentration (hypo-osmolality) is responsible for water’s blood pressure-raising (pressor) effect. They implicated a protein called Trpv4 in the mechanism: mice lacking the Trpv4 gene did not have a pressor response to water.

While it is clear that water evokes a pressor response, the normal role for this physiological system is not certain.

Because it raises sympathetic nervous system activity – and consequently energy expenditure – it does promote weight loss, Robertson said.

“I calculated it might be as much as five pounds a year if you drank three 16 ounce glasses of water a day and nothing else changed. This is not going to be the answer to the weight problem in the United States, but it’s interesting that activation of the sympathetic system is enough to do that.”

McHugh said she found it fascinating that mice and humans share “such a primitive system, and yet we don’t know why it’s there or what beneficial effects it might have.”

The newly discovered system and its molecular mediators – such as Trpv4 – may be targets for blood pressure regulation, particularly in situations of low blood pressure and fainting, the investigators said. The findings also suggest that investigators who use water as a control substance (a “non-drug”) in studies may need to take water’s pressor effects into account.

Robertson is the Elton Yates Professor of Autonomic Disorders. The National Institutes of Health provided funding for the research.

Contact: David Robertson, david.robertson@Vanderbilt.Edu

Technorati Tags: Atmospheric Water Generator

by Jasmin Malik Chua, 07/23/10
filed under: Design for Health, Water Issues

UNICEF, Dirty Water Vending Machine, clean water, public health, humanitarian design, New York City, Manhattan, public art

As far as stunt activism goes, dropping a dirty-water vending machine in the middle of Manhattan during World Water Week is one helluva attention-grabber. For UNICEF’s Tap Project, however, it also distilled the global water crisis in a way New Yorkers could not sidestep: by bottling and selling “Dirty Water” for a dollar a pop. Available flavors? Typhoid, malaria, cholera, or hepatitis.

UNICEF, Dirty Water Vending Machine, clean water, public health, humanitarian design, New York City, Manhattan, public art

It’s good for a laugh, sure, but if you’re one of the 1 billion people around the globe without access to clean, safe H2O, the waterborne disease is a clear-and-present reality. In fact, 4,200 children die of water-related diseases each day—the second highest cause of childhood deaths in the world, according to UNICEF.

Selling the water did more than draw attention to the millions of consumers of the tainted “product.” The effort also raised funds for UNICEF’s cause, with every dollar donated going toward safe drinking agua to 40 children for a day.

+ Dirty Water

Via CSRwire

Read more: UNICEF’s “Dirty Water” Vending Machine Offers 8 Flavors of Disease | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World

Jean Hill, 82, proposed the ban at a town meeting in April and although officials allegedly have hinted they might not strictly enforce the ruling some from the bottled water industry are threatening to sue when the ban takes effect Jan 1., The New York Times reported Wednesday.

“It’s a completely legal commodity, and to ban it runs afoul of interstate commerce considerations,” Tom Lauria, a spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association, said.

Hill’s drive to banish plastic water bottles from Concord began when her 10-year-old grandson told her about the Pacific garbage patch floating between California and Hawaii allegedly made up primarily of plastic water bottles, the Times said.

“The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us,” Hill said. “We’re trashing our planet, all because of greed.”

For the critics who dismiss her as being just an old woman with too much time on her hands, Hill dismisses that.

“Oh, I know,” she huffed, “this little old lady in tennis shoes butting into everyone’s business. It’s annoying and it’s not true. I’m not meddling; I’m trying to accomplish a legitimate goal.”

Technorati Tags: plastic water bottle pollution

Atmospheric Water Systems of San Luis Obispo has released their Dewpointe® Atmospheric Generator, a device that taps humidity in the air to provide a steady source of clean drinking water. The unit is about the same size as a standard water cooler (44.5″ tall), has on-demand hot water, is CE and WQA certified, runs quietly, and is capable of producing enough drinking water for an entire household even in desert climates (maybe)!

For about $1595.00 any home or office can have access to the 3.1 quadrillion gallons (a fair amount) of water in the atmosphere. The device first filters the air and then the water is filtered again before leaving the spigot and entering your cup. Because the source is the air, the many heavy metals, pesticides, toxics, pharmaceuticals and microorganisms that are rife in our reservoirs and even in bottled water are a suddenly a non-issue.

In optimum conditions (70º F and 50% humidity) the Dewpointe® will easily pump out the maximum 8.4 gallons a day. In other conditions production may drop off.

Hook one of these badboys up to some solar panels and viola, you’ve got an instant well. A lot of the products we review on Inhabitat are still in the testing or development phases, but they still get us excited. When something really innovative and special comes along and it is ready to buy, we get stoked! The units have hit the streets and are already hosting water cooler conversations in offices around the world.

Read more: Tap the Air With an Atmospheric Water Generator! | Inhabitat – Green Design Will Save the World

Technorati Tags: Atmospheric Water Generator, Atmospheric Water Systems, dewpointe, green design, sustainable design, water