Water

A few years back I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.  I wish I could say it is to be read purely for historical interest--it was one of those books (Sinclair's The Jungle also comes to mind, and that one you should read just for fun) that catalyzed an entire movement--but the problem it documents, namely the pervasive presence of pesticides, is at least as great a concern now as it was back in 1962.

I've recently come across http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/ (and here's another one).  Few surprises here, though I was pleased to see that, aside from a bit of DDE, pork fat is usually relatively uncontaminated.  The key lesson, it seems to me, is that if you are concerned about pesticides (and if you're not, can you please explain to me why not?) then organic food is a must.

But one thing really did surprise me:  how bad the water is.  I've long had a strong bias against bottled water.  It simply offends my Yankee spirit to suggest that we should waste plastic, transport energy, and money rather than drinking the all-but-free and incredibly convenient tap product.  I am aware that some homes suffer from questionable piping, but in such a case the cost of replacing those pipes would surely, later if not sooner, be outstripped by drinking water trucked in from upstate, and besides, why should you trust a bottler over your own local utility?  The latter cannot choose to change markets or businesses in a bid to shed a damaged reputation.  No, the people responsible for your tap water have to get it right.  But apparently they don't, or at least not always, or even, if we are to believe PAN, not often.  In fact, PAN's figures show little difference between tap water and untreated water in terms of pesticide levels.  But they do show a big difference between either tap or untreated and what the bottlers produce:  the latter is generally free of pesticides.  Hmmm.

Aside from making me admit the ol' Yankee prejudices can sometimes lead one astray, this information also makes me want more data, specifically about my water.  I drink a lot of it, mainly in the form of barley tea as you may recall, and so does Felix (Talia less so:  her Soda Club machine is still in transit so it's all Calistoga for her).  Obviously, if it's laden with pesticides then all of that organic shopping is to a certain extent an expensive joke.

So I did some research.  The basic report on our local water supply does not offer actual measurements of atrazine or 2,4-D, or any of the other chillingly-named poisons our drinking glass may hold, it simply repeatedly assures the reader that "no contaminants associated with this activity [i.e., farming, recreational use, etc.] were detected in the drinking water."  This leaves (a slightly paranoid) one to wonder if there were contaminants not associated with these activities that were.

I feel a bit ridiculous testing water that comes from such a seemingly pristine source as that pictured here (I mean the reservoir, not Felix).  I feel ridiculous because I find the ever-increasing "hardening" of modern life deplorable--the marginal increase in safety is often not worth the inconvenience, the expense, or the undermining of a social sense of trust generally--and yet here I am, preparing to engage in it.  I'd give up a lot of modern life's conveniences not to have to think about this sort of thing.

UPDATE A MERE FEW SECONDS LATER:

So, having posted this, I took a break with the New York Times, only to find, there on its first virtual page, an article on exactly this topic.  Better still, I was able to surf from that to the Marin-specific data I was looking for.  Answer?  Pesticides are not a problem:  no atrazine, no 2,4-D (despite a golf course in the area), none of a couple of hundred other baddies.  More radon than one might like, but otherwise only a handful of ppb contaminants, most of which enter in the disinfection process and are, I believe, well studied.

I'll still check for lead, but on the whole I feel better.  On the whole, but not wholly.  I can't help but think of E.B. White's thoughts on the matter:

 I think man’s gradual, creeping contamination of the planet, his sending up of dust into the air, his strontium additive in our bones, his discharge of industrial poisons into rivers that once flowed clear, his mixing of chemicals with fog on the east wind add up to a fantasy of such grotesque proportions as to make everything said on the subject seem pale and anemic by contrast. I hold one share in the corporate earth and am uneasy about the management. Dr. Libby said there is new evidence that the amount of strontium reaching the body from topsoil impregnated by fallout is ‘considerably less than the 70 percent of the topsoil concentration originally estimated.’ Perhaps we should all feel elated at this, but I don’t. The correct amount of strontium with which to impregnate the topsoil is no strontium. To rely on ‘tolerances’ when you get into the matter of strontium 90...is to talk with unwarranted complacency. I belong to a small, unconventional school that believes that no rat poison is the correct amount to spread in the kitchen where children and puppies can get at it. I believe that no chemical waste is the correct amount to discharge into the fresh rivers of the world, and I believe that if there is a way to trap the fumes from factory chimneys, it should be against the law to set these deadly fumes adrift where they can mingle with fog and, given the right conditions, suddenly turn an area into another Donora, Pa.

E.B. White, “Sootfall and Fallout,” Essays of E.B. White (New York:  Harper & Row, 1977; 1956), 92-93.