If you’ve been on the internet this week, you’ve likely seen reports about “raw water” — i.e., water in its “purest” form without any kind of filtration or processing that kills bacteria and adds minerals like fluoride. But drinking it might pose risks, according to experts.
An article from The New York Times published late last year highlighted the trend and companies selling such water. Live Water, for instance, sells this spring-sourced water at $36.99 per 2.5 gallons and charges $14.99 for every refill. The fad is attractive to people who are wary of tap water, according to The New York Times.
But does great purity come with great risk?
“When water isn’t treated, it can contain chemicals and germs that can make us sick or cause disease outbreaks,” Vince Hill, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch, told Time. “Anything you can think of can be in untreated water, really.”
Dr. Flavio Gaudio, an emergency medicine physician from New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, confirmed this to U.S. News, saying that water from natural sources can still contain microorganisms, bacteria, agrochemical runoffs, viruses and fecal matter from human use or nearby large or small animals. Side effects from drinking such water could include gastrointestinal problems like diarrhea, vomiting or developing a fever, but some algae could cause more rare side effects like liver or kidney disease. Gaudio, also an expert in wilderness medicine, thinks you’d have to drink it in large quantities for the more serious side effects to occur.
Dr. Reid Blackwelder, a Tennessee-based family physician, noted that waterborne illnesses are one of the largest sources of problems globally, and that in the U.S. we don’t face that as much as others. Time notes that despite flaws in our nation’s water system, over the last century it’s been a big asset to bettering public health.
“Having a central treatment process of our drinking water and then distributing it out to the individual homes and businesses is a tremendous asset that we, as a country, take for granted,” Kellogg Schwab, a professor of water and public health at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Time.
Blackwelder said his patients were nervous about water safety in the wake of the clean water crisis in Flint, Michigan, where cost-cutting efforts spawned tainted water. Most health departments, he said, run tests on many local water systems, and that people can look to resulting reports for the latest data on water safety and contaminants in water they’re drinking. He recommended investing in a water filtration system on their own if they’re concerned.
Blackwelder noted that this is a generalization but added that the people who are going to latch on to alternative trends might be better off looking elsewhere to get healthy.
“I see a lot of people looking to herbs and living water who really would be better off making some basic changes in their lifestyle and behavioral choices first,” Blackwelder, also the vice chair of medical student education at the East Tennessee State University Quillen College of Medicine, told U.S. News. His “gut impression” is that you’re just taking a risk, though it may be a small one.
So what if you want to drink it anyway? Bottom line: Make sure it’s been tested.
People have been drinking pure supplies of water for centuries, said Gaudio, who assumes people selling raw water are doing their own testing or by trial and error have determined that it’s safe to drink. But he doesn’t think they can claim their water is necessarily better for your health than other water purified conventionally.
Tourmaline Spring, one of the companies mentioned by The New York Times, assures U.S. News they test their water through National Testing Laboratories, accredited by the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program, and adhere to standards set by the Maine Drinking Water program, Maine Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Blackwelder just hopes all this buzz encourages people to drink more water.
“… Drinking more water is a very healthy and good thing and it’s good to ask questions about the safety of anything that you eat or drink,” he said.
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Drink ‘Raw Water’ At Your Own Risk, Experts Say originally appeared on usnews.com
