Drinking Water Sources in England Polluted With Forever Chemicals (theguardian.com) 13
Raw drinking water sources across England are polluted with toxic forever chemicals, new analysis has revealed, prompting the water sector to demand that ministers ban the substances and polluters pay for the astronomical cleanup costs. The Guardian: The areas covered by Affinity Water and Anglian Water were found to be particularly badly affected, and experts have said they fear "we are drastically underestimating the size of the problem." There are more than 10,000 PFAS in use, known as forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment.
[...] In an unprecedented move, the industry body Water UK has said it "wants to see PFAS banned and the development of a national plan to remove it from the environment which should be paid for by manufacturers." It described PFAS pollution as a "huge global challenge" and said: "The UK's tap water is rated as the safest in the world, and companies are already taking action to reduce PFAS levels further." In an attempt to tackle the problem, the EU is considering a proposal to regulate all 10,000 or so PFAS together, but the PFAS industry is lobbying against it and the UK has no plans to follow suit.
[...] In an unprecedented move, the industry body Water UK has said it "wants to see PFAS banned and the development of a national plan to remove it from the environment which should be paid for by manufacturers." It described PFAS pollution as a "huge global challenge" and said: "The UK's tap water is rated as the safest in the world, and companies are already taking action to reduce PFAS levels further." In an attempt to tackle the problem, the EU is considering a proposal to regulate all 10,000 or so PFAS together, but the PFAS industry is lobbying against it and the UK has no plans to follow suit.
We need to ban this shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Just stop it's production. Ban it. We lived without them before. We can do so again.
Greenpeace was a letter off (Score:2)
Greenpeace's hyperbole about chlorine is almost true about fluoride chemistry. F-gasses, persistent highly bioactive medicines, PFAS. Fluoride is most often used exactly because they allow you to create forever chemicals. The stability is a double edged word.
Normal (Score:1)
Non-drinking water is polluted with human shit, over 1000 times per day, 400,000 times per year.
Meanwhile, filter your drinking water (Score:2)
I have been using an RO filter with several other stages, including carbon filter, for 15 years. This combo will get rid of PFOA and PFAS. The filters are not free, though. And RO wastes water.
Re: (Score:2)
I have been using an RO filter with several other stages, including carbon filter, for 15 years. This combo will get rid of PFOA and PFAS. The filters are not free, though. And RO wastes water.
Why would you filter with a Ring Oscillator? How does that even work?
British water is shit for profit (Score:2)
Re:British water is shit for profit (Score:4, Informative)
British water companies are (rightly) in the spotlight right now for years of mismanagement, allowed by a regulator with it's eyes off the ball and a market devised by idiots who couldn't commerce their way out of a subsidised parliamentary bar.
British water companies *could* filter all this stuff out, they *could* stop dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea, they *could* provide far better service for less money, they *could* have less than 30% of their water leak all over the place rather than get to customers. They do none of these things because they're too busy skimming money off the company in the form of dividends. They used up all the money, so they borrowed more and more, and now they're in debt up to the eyeballs and would go bust if the government wouldn't help them out.
One water company even "did an Enron". They're owned by another company, who placed an order for a million widgets for (I forget the number, so say) £1bn. The widgets were never intended to be delivered, but the water company used that order as justification for a loan from someone else of (say) £2bn. They spent all that money without doing anything to improve anything for the consumer and now can't pay it back without putting up prices to that exact same consumer. All predicated on a fake order that was never fulfilled from their parent company. You couldn't make it up...
Re: (Score:3)
The culprit? DC seized the word "organic", threatened organic farmers who wouldn't pay them then declared that using municipal sewage waste is organic (keyword: "humanure")and the Dallas waste was full of PFAS.
*Citation needed.
Re:"Organic" (Score:4, Insightful)
Organic doesn't allow sewage sludge and is federally defined.
Your story has been through a lot of games of telephone.
How much dangerous polluted water would you like? (Score:4, Insightful)
"...the industry body Water UK... said: “The UK’s tap water is rated as the safest in the world..."
Those weasel words fail the taste test. "[I]s rated" by whom? The industry body Water UK, no doubt - or someone it paid to have such an opinion. And how would anyone know how safe water is in other countries?
"Water is then treated or blended with clean water to ensure it does not reach taps at this level".
If they have "clean water", why not supply only that? (Obviously because it would cost them more). How much "clean" water must be mixed with a gallon of polluted water to make the whole amount clean? Obviously a whole lot more - so, again, why not supply the clean water only?
"If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel full of wine, you get sewage".
- Schopenhauer's Law of Entropy