Here are a couple of comments I received in response to the last post about reducing toxicity.

I feel these are fairly representative of two prominent schools of thought regarding the issue.  I have also included my own reply.

Comment:

Great article to warn people of toxicity, a vital issue to note if we
want to live longer lives!

Cheers,
Ray

Reply:

Hello Ray,

Thank you for the comment.

I agree that examining the filter used for water purification is
absolutely important.

Regarding dissolved chemicals that are not easily filtered, yes, this
is a real danger.  However, I still feel strongly that a good filter is
the best option for the average consumer and would offer a giant step
up for health.

There are two general alternatives to filters in the consumer water
treatment industry: distillation and deionization.  I do not recommend
either of these processes.  Both produce very pure water, which is
exactly the problem.

Distilled water is stripped of everything, including minerals which in
turn will either strip your body and/or your food of those same
minerals leading to potential health deficiencies.  Furthermore, water
distillation has a few additional inherent problems.  The scaling
(water deposits) resulting from distillation is often removed
chemically, and creating potentially harmful byproducts in order to
have pure drinking water might be self defeating.  Then there is the
issue of the amount of energy involved in purifying the water.  Home
distillers are generally powered by electricity and unless your home is
running on green energy, this is also adding to the overall carbon
footprint of the purification process.

Deionized water, on the other hand, strips water of minerals but does
not remove organic materials that do not have a charge.  For this
reason, many home units will combine an additional filtration step. 
Ultimately, we are left with same issue as distilled water in that the
deionized water is stripped of necessary minerals.

The issue of healthy drinking water is important.  As of now I’m not
certain that there is a perfect solution, however, filtration is a
excellent first step.

In Health,

Nhan-Esteban Khuong, L.Ac.

Comment:

I do some work with the American Chemistry Council and I can promise
that chlorine is not harmful — In fact, if we didn’t have chlorine,
Western civilization probably could not function.  It kills the
bacteria and organic material that cause diseases and U.S. cities have
been using it for over 100 years because it’s safe and effective.

Reply:

Hi There,

Thanks for the comment.

There is no doubt that chlorine has definitely made a significant
impact on modern civilization.  I also have to say that I have a bit
more faith in human ingenuity to believe that Western civilization
would not function without chlorine.

As for its safety, such an active oxidizer that kills bacteria and
destroys other organic material has that very same potential with
humans.  The only difference being, that we are larger than bacteria
and thus feel the effects at a lesser level.

Chlorine is essential to life as we know it, but it is not something we
should be consuming outside of natural food sources.  The harmful
effects of chlorine based sanitation products are too numerous to
mention and so abundant that I won’t explain in detail.

I hope you change your mind about chlorine, because it won’t change its
effects on you.

In Health,

Nhan-Esteban Khuong, L.Ac.

I mentioned the distillation and water deionization processes mainly because the first commenter also runs a health blog, however he advocates distilled water.

In Health,

–
Nhan-Esteban Khuong, L.Ac.
www.SGVJeetKuneDo.com