I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure-grain alcohol.

/can't let the Russkies pollute my precious bodily fluids

Oh hello, I'm your friendly local water scale. That's right, lead pipes would be covered in scale in no time. So that wasn't it. Oh but lead salts are sweet and they tossed them in their wine. That's the story.

I was expecting an article about the heavy metal we do use; copper.

tl;dr

FTA:"Despite the scourge of discarded plastics and the health risks these substances pose, Halden is optimistic that society can begin to make wiser choices and develop more sustainable products, formed from biodegradable, non-toxic chemical building blocks"

Well golly, then call me when someone has come up with this wonderful biodegradable, non-toxic chemical that has a million uses and is really cheap.

Maybe we can make everything out of play-doh.

I remember going to fill up my clear water bottle at one of the universities water fountains.

The water was colored beige yellow and tasted like metal.

I dumped it and after having it happen again some months later, gave up drinking from that water fountain.

/probably got just as much nasty stuff from the other buildings anyway.
//css - cool story sis.

It wasn't their pipes it was their pans. Not only did they use lead cookware, they actually used the stuff (lead acetate) as a sweetener.

"Two broad classes of plastic-related chemicals are of critical concern for human health -- bisphenol-A or BPA, and additives used in the synthesis of plastics, which are known as phthalates."

Phthalates. Awesome. This is going to be my favorite hangman word from now on.

Ishkur: RandomAxe: The city I live in just replaced the lead water supply line to my house last fall, after that lead pipe had been in use for 100 years. And this isn't the first US city I've lived in where they commonly had lead supply lines to residences.

Problem solved:



/seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

You drink water? Like from the toilet?

I thought the Romans poisoned themselves by accidentally adding lead to their wine.

Ishkur:

/seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

I'm a tap water fan.

At the risk of CSB!, I used to work at this museum: Steamboat Arabia. (new window)

Long story short: a bunch of guys in the late '80s found a sunken steamboat from the 1850s and dug it up, frontier cargo and all.

Anyway, on board were dozens upon dozens of spigots and taps, headed out west for use on barrels and faucets, every one of them made out of solid lead.

Wonder why people were shorter back in the day? Daily lead poisoning in your water could be a start (among various other health-related things).

MaudlinMutantMollusk: This just in: life has a 100% mortality rate

Life for who? These jellyfish beg to differ:

Link

Yeah, it wasn't just their plumbing that had lead, it was their wine too. Heck, it's one of the reasons thought to be partly behind why Caligula was bat**** crazy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula#Health

crap....here it is

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm . html

In the end, liberals will win, because human life will no longer exist or will be unable to exist on earth and it will be the GOP's fault.

Is there anyone in here that does NOT know that, or did I go to exceptional schools?

Seriously.

Ishkur: RandomAxe: The city I live in just replaced the lead water supply line to my house last fall, after that lead pipe had been in use for 100 years. And this isn't the first US city I've lived in where they commonly had lead supply lines to residences.

Problem solved:



/seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

Most of us who aren't pussies drink tap water. There's a reason we have laws regarding the quality of drinking water. It's completely safe.

NEDM: I thought the Romans poisoned themselves by accidentally adding lead to their wine.

FTFY

This explains a lot about the Fark Politics threads.

HMS_Blinkin: Ishkur: RandomAxe: The city I live in just replaced the lead water supply line to my house last fall, after that lead pipe had been in use for 100 years. And this isn't the first US city I've lived in where they commonly had lead supply lines to residences.

Problem solved:



/seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

Most of us who aren't pussies drink tap water. There's a reason we have laws regarding the quality of drinking water. It's completely safe.

I drink tap water. I prefer well water, but that's a rare treat these days.

I just finished reading "The World Without Us"
Plastic will outlive us by millions of years. Apparently the environment is already full of microsopic spheres of plastic from personal beauty products.

Life is a fatal sexually transmitted disease. Nobody gets out alive.

Although systematic poisoning isn't a good outcome for any society, I'd rather live in a world with plumbing than without it, and rather with plastic poisoning than without the other health-related benefits that plastics can provide.

They would be better spending time and money trying to wean us off of fossil fuels, they cause much more directly attributable health costs and that task is more feasible than developing 100% safe replacements for today's plastics.

Ishkur: /seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

We only give our dog filtered water, too.

Our tap water smells more like chlorine than our pool does.

BolloxReader: Life is a fatal sexually transmitted disease. Nobody gets out alive.

Although systematic poisoning isn't a good outcome for any society, I'd rather live in a world with plumbing than without it, and rather with plastic poisoning than without the other health-related benefits that plastics can provide.

They would be better spending time and money trying to wean us off of fossil fuels, they cause much more directly attributable health costs and that task is more feasible than developing 100% safe replacements for today's plastics.

FTFA:"What are the overall effects of the plastics we unwittingly ingest? The literature Halden surveyed is ambiguous on this point, despite more than half a century of study. Part of the difficulty lies in the absence of good controls for studying health outcomes, as plastic exposure is a global phenomenon, and finding unexposed subjects for comparison is nearly impossible."

Perhaps we can see how good the health of those strapping young lads and lasses in the third world that aren't so saturated in plastics are.

whatshisname: I just finished reading "The World Without Us"
Plastic will outlive us by millions of years. Apparently the environment is already full of microsopic spheres of plastic from personal beauty products.

And it wasn't long ago that "the green movement" was telling us to save trees scrub brush and use plastic bags instead.

ChadManMn: whatshisname: I just finished reading "The World Without Us"
Plastic will outlive us by millions of years. Apparently the environment is already full of microsopic spheres of plastic from personal beauty products.

And it wasn't long ago that "the green movement" was telling us to save trees scrub brush and use plastic bags gunny sacks instead.

FTFY

Alacritous: Relatively Obscure: I would choose "be exposed to lead" over "not be exposed to water" any day.

Then you'd become a Republican.. Do you really want that?

Oh that was nice, very subdued, yet totally true.

Fano: ChadManMn: whatshisname: I just finished reading "The World Without Us"
Plastic will outlive us by millions of years. Apparently the environment is already full of microsopic spheres of plastic from personal beauty products.

And it wasn't long ago that "the green movement" was telling us to save trees scrub brush and use plastic bags gunny sacks instead.

FTFY

That came later.

RandomAxe: The city I live in just replaced the lead water supply line to my house last fall, after that lead pipe had been in use for 100 years. And this isn't the first US city I've lived in where they commonly had lead supply lines to residences.

The Romans would've poisoned themselves with something eventually, inevitably. I don't think plastic is our 'lead' . . . but something is.

Heh. Where I live the line to our house is beneath our property, so it's our problem. The municipality does send us plastic jars to take samples of our water every few years though. I guess it is to confirm that yes, there is a crazy high level of lead in the water, just like the last time they sampled it. Just run the tap for a bit and you are fine, or so I'm told. Then again, maybe the lead explains some of my really stupid posts on Fark. It is one of the downsides to owning a very old house.

And there is no chance in hell I am going to replace the line. Do you have any idea how much that costs?

NEDM: I thought the Romans poisoned themselves by accidentally adding lead to their wine.

From what I've read, that's basically it. They drank their wine watered, and the water came through the lead pipes.

NEDM: I thought the Romans poisoned themselves by accidentally adding lead to their wine.

If by Romans you mean Greeks, and by lead you mean hemlock, and my accidentally you mean deliberately, then you'd be right.

And by right, I mean by one example.

Somebody tell Jenny McCarthy the phthalates in her tits made her crotchfruit all Rain Man and whatnot.

ChadManMn: whatshisname: I just finished reading "The World Without Us"
Plastic will outlive us by millions of years. Apparently the environment is already full of microsopic spheres of plastic from personal beauty products.

And it wasn't long ago that "the green movement" was telling us to save trees scrub brush and use plastic bags instead.

That's the problem with so many "grassroots" movements. Remember that campaign against Styrofoam in fast food and convenience joints? Funded by the paper industry... and the waxed paper products substituted are worse for the environment. As reference, Rubbish! by Rathie was the starting point for a lot of my own research in my undergraduate.

However, it often comes down to what we know today to be the most correct scientific information available. There are always new investigations, and every decision made on any policy or trend will have both positive and negative outcomes.

It's a matter of choosing to make the best decision today based on the best knowledge, and understanding that next year you may have to make a different decision based on new information.

baltimoreblonde: They drank their wine watered, and the water came through the lead pipes.

Since my last comment didn't seem to take. It wasn't water, it was defrutum they added to the wine.

HMS_Blinkin: Ishkur: RandomAxe: The city I live in just replaced the lead water supply line to my house last fall, after that lead pipe had been in use for 100 years. And this isn't the first US city I've lived in where they commonly had lead supply lines to residences.

Problem solved:



/seriously, who takes directly from the tap anymore?
//other than dogs

Most of us who aren't pussies drink tap water. There's a reason we have laws regarding the quality of drinking water. It's completely safe.]

Nowadays they are going as far as advising against refilling water bottles due to poison in the plastic...or some such shiat.

forwarded this to Penn&Teller for the next "misleading print" episode.

And plastics and their additives aren't just around us, they are inside virtually every one of us -- present in our blood and urine in measureable amounts, ingested with the food we eat, the water we drink and from other sources.

yes, measureable, we can measure many chemicals in ppT now, thats parts per trillion and it especially helps if we have methods to remove all the actual blood components or negate the main ingredients of urine to magnify the "concentration" of the detected chemicals by ten-thousand-fold.

Measurements from the most contaminated regions of the world's oceans show that the mass of plastics exceeds that of plankton sixfold.

Why, yes, most of the particles are six times the size of plankton and plankton being made mostly of open spaces is very very very light.

In the U.S., the average person produces a half-pound of plastic waste every day.

Mmmhmm, and more than 90% of that is re-used or recycled before it leaves the manufacturer, this is done so in a way that negates waste almost completely. I drink bottled water all day and eat meat from flats and poop like mad all week and it STILL takes me about 10 days to produce a half pound of plastic waste.
I always love being told I'm either not worthy of citizenship or am highly abnormal by writers of articles that are trying to curry my support.

"We're doomed to live with yesterday's plastic pollution and we are exacerbating the situation with each day of unchanged behavior,"

Well, not really. Its the use of the pthalates that gives it away... plastics are biolytic compounds... this means that they can be eaten by bacteria given the right conditions. Not necessarily completely consumed by bacteria but I sincerely doubt the asshole writing the article has considered the research and discoveries of the last twenty years. The plastics are often the second thing in a landfill to convert to combustible gasses. The gas is produced by bacterial decay at an elevated temperature. I've seen bacteria eat plastics out in the open in Florida, it certainly wasn't the sandstorms that chewed it up.

Adverse effects to human health remain a topic

Yup, for at least a hundred and fifty thousand years we've been careful to learn what can kill us. Ever wonder why some people succumb to tiny bits of poisoning where others' bodies negate the chemical completely? Simple: environmental toxicity. If you're consuming only a third of your daily health requirements of water per day, sitting in a closed air conditioned environment filled with smoke, dust, pollen, animal dander, Chinese drywall, ionized air, evaporated copper and constantly eat "foods" which are normally only marginally toxic to the human body (like rhubarb or onions) you're just farking yourself the slow way. Given there is a level of hydration and exercise which leads to longer life there is also a threshold of hydration and exercise below which leads to a shorter life.

Halden explains that plastics are polymers -- long chains of molecules usually made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and/or silicon, which are chemically linked together or polymerized.

Add some aluminum and sulfur, two toxic chemicals, and it becomes dirt... what was the point of listing these? Oh yeah, irrational fear!

whole paragraph about bpa here

Mmmhmm, because I always put soap and a scrub-brush into my water bottle for ten minutes before I drink the water. "building blocks" are toxic? Not really... but wait, if only the "building blocks" are coming out, why are they spouting on and on about the chemical nature of the complete chemical? OH, right, previous paragraph was IRRATIONAL FEAR!

DHEP: "If you're in a hospital, hooked up to an IV drip," Halden explains, "the chemical that oozes out goes directly into your bloodstream, with no opportunity for detoxification in the gut. This can lead to unhealthy exposure levels,

Sure, lets just continuously use IVs for all our nutrition uptake, skip bottle feeding baby, give him a main shunt and a IV dolly to drag around the house. These packages have changed drastically in the last ten years and NONE of these chemicals are anywhere near as toxic or dangerous as the fluoride that seeps down your throat while brushing your teeth.

. Infants and pregnant or nursing mothers are at heightened risk for toxic exposure or passage of BPA and additives like DEHP.

But they already stated the chemicals don't come out intact and in this situation we're talking about dilution more like 50:1 verses bottled water or styro-foam flats for your chicken wings. They don't beat on the IV bags constantly in hot warehouses, they don't expose them to UV radiation and they certainly don't stick a soapy brush up them for a minute or two prior to connecting them to your IV.

Studying the effects of low-dose exposure is tricky, usually requiring a very large number of study subjects

Exactly correct, because more than 90% of the time it's NOT the low-dose chemical that is causing the problem but something else that they didn't take into account. This is why we have "managed risk assessment" which decides things like "infant car seats vs DEHP" and concludes that strapping junior in saves his life better. In order to do low-dose exposure studies you have to go ahead and let people die from exposure, see Link the Tuskegee Study


a final note I'd like to point out is that we already have a petrollium free plastic that can be used for every-day packaging of water and food... it's called GLASS.

Eventually EVERYTHING is shown by science and research and the latest fad (green living anyone?) to be BADBADBAD for you.

Margarine, butter. Eggs. Bottled water, filter water pitchers. You can't win, you can't please anyone. It's all for nothing.

Just give up.

prjindigo: I drink bottled water all day and eat meat from flats and poop like mad all week and it STILL takes me about 10 days to produce a half pound of plastic waste.

Does it look like corn?

That article was awful hard to read this late but I think it said all the people who think they're doing themselves good by drinking bottled water are really poisoning themselves.

Terrx: baltimoreblonde: They drank their wine watered, and the water came through the lead pipes.

Since my last comment didn't seem to take. It wasn't water, it was defrutum they added to the wine.

Thanks for posting the link.

Fascinating!

Link (new window)

A helpful video.

the lead pipes in my old building (and neighborhood) were replaced shortly before I moved out three years ago (after living there ten years)...hmmmm, might explain DC...and me.

And yeah, sometimes I drink tap water, mostly because I'm badass and live on the edge, but also to keep my immunity up from whatever lives in there.