Tap water

For years now, I've had a Brita filter in my kitchen - probably about as long as I've lived in New York City. I started keeping it not so much out of fear of New York City's tap water, which is supposed to be among the best tap waters in the country, but because it was nice to always have a cool pitcher of water waiting in the fridge.  Somehow it seemed so much more appealing than water straight from the tap.

I've never been good at changing the Brita filter on time, though - I sometimes let more than a month slide by after the filter "expires."  I knew this wasn't ideal behavior, but I didn't take the Brita guidelines very seriously.  I figured it was sort of like shampoo, where the instructions are really meant to make you use twice as much of the product as you actually need.

Well, it turns out that I was wrong!  The friend who I visited in San Francisco last weekend is married to a marine biologist, and we had an interesting conversation about the Brita.  They drink their water straight from the tap, as San Francisco water quality is also apparently excellent.  My friend's husband explained that bottled water is actually not as safe as good tap water, because you never know what happened to it during the shipping process - how many times those plastic bottles were exposed to very high temperatures, which could cause the plastic to leech into the water.  That's when I admitted in a very blase way that I use a Brita but do not change it regularly.

"You can't do that!" he said.  "The moment you put a new Brita filter in, it's as though a timer starts and bacteria starts building in the filter.  So by the time you're changing your filter, the filter is probably doing more to put extra bacteria in the water than it is to remove potential contaminants."

Yikes!  I was horrified, and the moment I got home I threw out my expired Brita filter and put the jug in the dishwasher for a good, hot wash.

I decided that I would simply stop using the Brita, and just drink water from the tap, since I seem to be so lazy about the filter.  But then I had a tall glass of water from my kitchen tap, and I have to say that New York tap water does not taste nice to me.  It has a distinct smell of chlorine* - maybe I'm imagining it, or maybe it's just the pipes in my building, but it doesn't have that clean "nothing" taste that I enjoy drinking.

So I'm going back to the Brita, but I hereby declare that from now on I will be RELIGIOUS about changing that filter, as much of a hassle as it seems at times.  And, given the article on the cover of today's New York Times, I feel very lucky that I live in an area where my only complaint about the water is the smell!  It's incredible to me that State governments are still willing to look the other way while corporations poison the public water supply.  It makes me realize that it's all very well to pass legislation (like the Clean Water Act), but the legislation is useless without constant vigilance and enforcement.

* please note that my sense of smell is so sharp that my husband calls it my "mutant power"

Comments

[Melissa]

Gah -- I use a Pur brand water pitcher at home, and sometimes I go *two* months before changing it! And I have to agree with you, I find that the water straight from the tap has a particular taste that I'm not fond of. So I think I will adopt your resolve as well.

Charles Duhigg, the NYT reporter who wrote about the Clean Water Act violations, was also on "Democracy Now!" the day after that story ran: http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/9/14/nyt_investigation_exposes_severity_of_nationwide

(P.S. I did change my water filter recently.)

[Awake]

I'm glad you recently changed your filter - since I recently drank your water!

Thanks for the link!