Go to: OVERVIEW (SaveOurCounty) DETAILS (listener) PLANNING SCHOOLS ENVIRONMENT EROSION     Report corrections & broken links to Webmaster Get updates on local issues

Measuring Effectiveness of Home Water Purification

http://www.bionewsonline.com/s/what_is_water_purification.htm

Environ Technol, 2002 Jul, 23(7), 781 - 90
Removal of arsenic from groundwater using point-of-use reverse osmosis and distilling devices; Lin TF et al.; ... Experimental results of the three RO systems using synthetic ground water showed that only one system had good removal efficiency for arsenic . In subsequent experiments using real ground water with 0.7 mg l(-1) arsenic, only one RO system was able to meet the drinking water standard after producing about 1,000 l of treated water .

For the distilling systems, 99% of the arsenic was removed from both synthetic and real groundwater . The arsenic concentrations in the finished water of both distillers were all below the standard for drinking water .

Although systems with higher arsenic removal efficiency seemed to have better removal of total dissolved solids (TDS), no correlation could be found after analysis.

http://nobledreams.co.uk/viewtopic.php?pid=7341

with the distillers, you do have to worry about the VOCs present in the water.  the solution to this problem is to have a cheap brita charcoal filter attached to your sink and use that water in the water distiller so that the VOCs are already prefiltered before you distill the water. 

VOCs evaporate at a lower temp so they are actually released before the water reaches distillation point.  so essentially they are going into your container before the distilled water and therefore you're not getting rid of them; only transferring from one container to the next.

Published by USGS 9/14/09
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2305

Scientists found intersex fish in about a third of all sites examined from the Apalachicola, Colorado, Columbia, Mobile, Mississippi, Pee Dee, Rio Grande, Savannah, and Yukon River basins. The Yukon River basin was the only one where researchers did not find at least one intersex fish.

Although intersex occurrence differed among species and basin, it was more prevalent in largemouth bass in southeastern U.S., where it occurred at all sites in the Apalachicola, Savannah, and Pee Dee river basins, said Jo Ellen Hinck, the lead author of the paper and a biologist at the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center. The researchers also documented intersex in channel catfish for the first time.

“Although the USGS has already documented the severity of intersex in individual basins such as the Potomac, this study reveals the prevalence of intersex is more widespread than anyone anticipated, said Sue Haseltine, associate director for biology at the U.S. Geological Survey. “This research sends the clear message that we need to learn more about the hormonal and environmental factors that cause this condition in fish, as well as the number of fish afflicted with this condition.”
-----------------
published by NIH 7/30/09
http://www.loe.org/images/090904/lowdose.pdf

The core assumption of regulatory toxicology is that experiments using high doses will reveal potential effects of low doses... it conflicts directly with... decades of research in endocrinology and clinical medicine showing that hormonally-active compounds have dose-response curves in which low-doses can cause effects opposite to effects at high doses...

Very low doses can stimulate the production of more receptors (called receptor up-regulation), resulting in an increase in responses, while higher doses (within the typical toxicological range of chemical testing) can inhibit receptors (called receptor down-regulation), resulting in a decrease in responses...

Biomonitoring studies have established that many of these contaminants are widespread in people... This disconnect with current science pervades virtually all regulatory agencies responsible for chemical safety around the world, and it means that many regulatory decisions are highly likely to have underestimated risks...

the range of health conditions now plausibly linked to endocrine-disrupting contaminants, including, but not limited to,

prostate cancer (Chamie et al. 2008),
breast cancer (Soto et al. 2008),
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Ishido et al 2004),
infertility and
both male and female reproductive disorders (Hauser and Sokol 2008; Swan 2008),
miscarriage, and most recently,
hyper-allergic diseases,
asthma (Bornehag et al. 2004),
obesity (Hugo et al. 2008),
heart disease and
type 2 diabetes (Lang et al. 2008)

makes it imperative that the clash between endocrinology and regulatory toxicology is resolved in ways that reflect modern scientific understanding.