Trouble on tap? Murky waters lurk at home. (food).(health risks of chemicals added to tap water)(Brief Article)

Water is well-known as a keystone to better health. After all, how many times have you heard the proverbial "drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day?" Yet, increasingly, the quality and purity of ordinary drinking water is becoming cause for concern.

For decades, scientists have known of the dangers of contamination from lead water pipes, which were finally banned by the federal government in 1986. There's also the possibility of groundwater contamination from petroleum, pesticides and other environmental toxins--especially in rural communities where the majority of drinking water is supplied from wells.

Bacteria, on the other hand, are seldom a worry in America's municipal drinking water. Municipal water also tends to be "cleaner," since it's run through purification systems and monitored by government agencies. Yet many experts caution against consuming too much tap water. Why? Because there's a growing body of evidence that some of the very chemicals added to water to guard your health--especially chlorine and fluoride--may be doing more harm than good.

chlorine

Chlorine is added to drinking water to keep it bacteria-free. But it also reacts with organic material creating chloroform, trihalomethanes (THMs) and other chlorination disinfection byproducts (CBPs) that are all strongly linked with cancer.

A 1998 position paper released by Health Canada (the Canadian equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration) states: "14 to 16 percent of bladder cancers may be attributable to water containing CBPs. There is an urgent need to resolve this. CBPs [may be] the most important environmental carcinogens in terms of attributable cancers." The study, Safe Drinking Water: A Public Health Challenge, also links CBPs with spontaneous abortions, birth defects, respiratory problems and spina bifida.

In 1992, the American Medical Association published statistics showing nearly 28 percent of all cancers of the intestines and 18 percent of all cancers of the bladder can be traced to chlorinated water. More than a dozen subsequent studies confirm this finding. In 1998, for instance, the journal Epidemiology published a study showing that men who drink chlorinated tap water for more than 40 years face double the risk of bladder cancer compared to men who drink non-chlorinated water.