Dirty Water

 2nd January 2024

      Dirty water

  In the UK we are fortunate enough to have an important piece of legislation, that is based on one crucial principle. Access to safe, drinkable water is critical to sustaining life. This might not sound like much. If you think it doesn’t apply to you, YOU’RE WRONG! Those without access to clean, safe water are no longer third world nations. Take a closer look at that basic necessity, you assumed was, and always would be safe… it’s not quite as certain as it might have seemed. 

  All Brits pay water charges. But even if those go unpaid, no home can be deprived of the water supply while it’s inhabitants draw breath. It’s not like there’s another option and you can pop down to the canal and take a bath, fill up a jerry can and not end up sick.

  With an extensive network of purification plants, sewerage system and delivery pipes, every home can be reached. Recently, all the lead pipes got an upgrade. They can’t be replaced without our streets collapsing. After so long, they are just a part of the land we live on. How is the problem resolved? Every lead pipe has been threaded with safe plastic piping, providing a public health solution for the ages.

  Yet there are people who still complain about “undrinkable” water. They’re terrified by the fears they’ve acquired, largely from social media, initiated by places with legitimate cause for concern. A small amount of chlorine added at the source, soon becomes nothing more than a residual quantity. And fluoride hysteria forgets the far larger presence naturally occuring in the earth. That which actually reaches them is nothing in comparison. Regulatory bodies inspect records, but more importantly, tested repeatedly at the source, as it leaves the supplier and at the tap, those results are there for everyone to see by right.

  Variations in taste are either due to changes in equipment, distance from the source. Chilling and allowing a jug of this water to stand is usually sufficient although at no point is it ever a risk to health. The biggest causes of noticeable variations in taste, are due to consumers moving between places supplied by different sources, often unknowingly. But also, the effect of other factors, such as smoking, diet, health, dehydration, other drinks such as tea, coffee and carbonated beverages, on the function of the taste buds. The impact of which, I could never have comprehended a couple of years before.

  The biggest complaint is about so-called “hard" water. Nothing more than magnesium and calcium from the rocks in the land, a crucial feature that has contributed to natural filtration for centuries. Something, endangering only the life of the kettle, required to eliminate the issue completely. What petty and entitled whingers such privilege has made of us.

  Instead the mythical belief in the quality and health benefits of bottled water has persisted. There simply is no such thing as clean bottled water. Whether it’s the impurities in the contents, the unfathomable mark up on something being stolen from a finite source intended to support the life within the vicinity, the environmental impact or the knock on effect to those less fortunate, if you could see the dirty tricks and human cost, nobody would touch it.

  Having some health issues, I made a resolution to give it a try and stick to the best possible water and nothing else. Being as I was paying for it anyway, I was going to drink what is lovingly known to us as “council pop". The results were astonishing. Almost every aspect of my health improved rapidly. Suddenly people would comment on the clarity of my eyes and I was spending less time in the consulting room. As time went on, I reacquired the use of my taste buds to the point where I could no longer use metal cutlery as that’s all I could taste. Even my thinking became clearer.

  As a child, I recall my father telling me “it’s the things you CAN’T see in water, you need to worry about. Try taking a bottle of water and evaporating it in a regular saucepan. Do the same thing with the same quantity of tap water and there’s a visible result. So, that can’t bode well.

  I would see outraged comments about the developing world and the need for untainted water on social media. Scrolling to the bottom, it’s the work of the bottled water industry. Something just doesn’t add up. Being familiar with the value of investment in infrastructure, the industry is nothing but a thief, sneaking in, draining the reserve intended for the local inhabitants, making a horrible mess, selling it back to them with a lot of empty promises and escaping before the damage can be assessed.

  Meanwhile, there are no requirements for the people getting fat from the dirty water tricks, to disclose the ingredients of their product either on the bottle or otherwise. Using the old name change switcheroo, it was one of those cases where you know something isn’t quite as it seems. But you can’t work out it is and somehow there’s a funny stink. Then you spot the Nestlé brand. Bingo! A leopard doesn’t change it’s spots. Being familiar with their track record, gave me an idea of what to look for. It’s not their self interest to GIVE their product away. But this is the same players who got the third world hooked on baby formula. So there’s always something being concealed, usually at the expense of someone with no voice.

  Let’s start at the source. Nestlé are known for setting up shop in economically depressed areas with lax water laws. They often pay nominal charges, like the municipal extraction fee of $200 they paid in Flint, Michigan. They notoriously sold $343 million worth of product, leaving the area’s supply contaminated and genuinely undrinkable. A single plant produces 3.5 million bottles a day, eating up vast amounts of a dwindling energy supply and pumping great plumes of toxic gases into the sky. It may sound familiar. Flint is among the most deprived communities in North America. This is a routine business plan for one of the most despised, monopolies in the world.

  But don’t imagine choosing another brand eliminates this factor. For example big players Danonê buying up Evian was no accident. People have such a vast exposure to branded products, their trust is easily abused in the knowledge, the majority either don’t care, don’t want to know, don’t have the time or energy to find out or have no option. Companies don’t spend billions on advertising because it doesn’t work. The very fact that someone maintains they’re not influenced by it indicates it’s done the intended job. You’re supposed to want it without knowing why. Selling a product for exorbitant profit depends on nobody finding out the true cost.

  Fertilizers, pesticides and nitrates, even arsenic leeches into the water table. Their ridiculous claims of technologies that have no value at this scale, such as reverse osmosis and distillation are laughable. But even if they could (or would) use large scale purification processes, there’s the other effects on the environment too. It’s impossible to miss the great chimneys that release the very gases we have worked so hard to eliminate in a bid for our very survival. And when the argument of chemicals from the plastic bottles leeching into the bottles arises, notice how “scientists” (have a guess who’s paying for this study), say that they’re stable unless temperatures fluctuate. Anyone who has ever worked in a warehouse will be familiar with the searing heat during the day and freezing nights. That’s without accounting for seasonal and regional variations.

  While our waterways yield the results of the industrial waste spilling out. Killing fish, creating mutations like spinal curvatures and even sex changes. If it’s doing that to fish, how long before it reaches us? Remember the old canary in the coal mine? When it keels over and drops to the floor, you don’t have long.

  But there’s even greater profit to be found in the export market. Nestlé started selling water in Lahore, Pakistan in 1998. Locals could still turn on a tap and get a clean glass of water. Fast forward 20 years and instead of asking to buy a bottle of water, they are asking for a bottle of Nestlé. Infrastructure has broken down and there is no longer any choice. Suspicion leaks out occasionally, but biased “experts" coincidentally always appear with some way to subdue the issue if only for sufficient time for people to lose interest.

  You can’t water parched arable farmland with a bottle of Nestlé. Neither does it treat raw sewerage and industrial effluent from some of the countries with the fastest booming economies in the world, built largely at the expense of the desperate poverty right next to it. The textile industry is notorious for the disastrous ethical cost to those who are worst off.

The pandemic has caused panic and chaos on a global scale, but 3,575,000 die annually due to lack of access to untainted water. If we had to choose between giving our children poisoned water or nothing, would it be allowed to continue?

Nestlé have publically announced that safe water isn’t a human right. By falling for their dirty bag of tricks, and filling their bulging pockets, we’re silencing.

  A whole range of diseases are found in untreated water around the world, from Malaria, Cholera, Hepatitis A and Amoebic dysentery to parasitic infections, Trachoma, the majority of which affect children. In countries battling epidemic levels of HIV/AIDS, it’s the last thing you need with a weak immune system.

  With the market for export bottled water growing, the question of finding an uncontaminated source is getting closer to home everyday. Isn’t it time we stopped kidding ourselves and allowing what is ours to be taken out of greed?

  Bottled water is no solution for this problem. It’s just a band aid at best. But, where it detracts pressure from those responsible for provision and upkeep of crucial infrastructure, the only humane resolution, it’s actively worsening matters. There’s nothing that could convince me that replacing the linguistics for a basic element required for life, can be acceptable.

  This is a much more pressing public health issue than recent events. Legislation, planning and the development for the essential works required, doesn’t happen overnight.

  The notion of bottles of water being “convenient” is nonsensical, when it can be as simple as the touch of a button. And flavoured waters are nothing more than a tool to add to the blood money on the hands of big water.

  In San Bernardino, California, Nestlé pays $524 annually to extract 30 million gallons of water, come fire or drought. How does that add up in anyone’s mathematics? If those in power allow such a trade off, even providing generous tax breaks, you can guarantee something is not being said. Ask the people of Mecosta, Michigan and neighbouring Evart about the cost of having Nestlé come in and pump your water. Years of wrangling, secret deals and desperate fundraising, by those with the least to give and the most to lose, for an idea of dirty water tricks.

  Nestlé will quickly deny any involvement in profiteering from public scandals such as those faced by Flint. But years of dependence on bottled water by citizens, hasn’t hurt their business. Once they’re done abusing the public’s lack of recognition that this resource is theirs, they’ll be onto the next opportunity. Selling a product for 10,000 times the price is grotesque. There’s more to it than simply what’s needed to drink. Simply bathing in tainted water can be extremely dangerous. There’s absolutely no way they are capable of removing some of the chemical contaminants, especially. There are no requirements for bottled water to reveal the contents. A single plant pays $200 producing 3.5 million bottles a day. Filling the ocean with plastic, pumping toxic gases in the sky. fertilizers, pesticides and nitrates, even arsenic, leeches into the water table. These resources are finite. 

  In Lahore- Pakistan, 20 years ago, they could get a glass of clean water from a tap. Now they ask to buy a bottle of Nestlé . It’s not even called water anymore. And in this time, infrastructure has broken down. You can’t water a farm with a bottle of Nestlé.

  I only know this because we have very tight restrictions on tap water in the UK. Tests are mandatory at multiple points and times- publically available with suppliers being accountable. I literally weep, when I look to the United States, a nation admired for the virtues of justice and public health. The ease with which this vital resource, for the wellbeing of themselves and future generations, is dismissed as a priority. Simply because there is an all prevailing culture of entrusting corporations in matters that cannot ethically be a question of profitability. Until it’s too late and everything goes horribly wrong. Revealing no protections for the citizens. Only a series of corrupt decisions and shady deals by those responsible for “guard duty”

  When they turn up pumping your water supply, maybe the shine of bottled water won’t seem so attractive. If the money spent on bottled water was in the right hands, everyone could have access to the highest standards of clean, life saving water. What has the world come to, that the most basic needs are sold to corporate predators?

  How long before the suffocating man gasps “give me some Nestlé?

  I brought a bottle of water over 5 years ago, refilled it from the tap in the kitchen until something better came along. It’s filthy!

Useful links:

🔗https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles

🔗https://www.foodwatch.org/en/new-revelations-health-risks-of-nestles-bottled-water

🔗https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/oct/04/ontario-six-nations-nestle-running-water

🔗https://actions.eko.org/a/nestle-water-pakistan

🔗https://mronline.org/2022/04/13/the-horrific-scam-that-water-billionaires-are-running-on-poor-countries/

🗣️Leave a comment. I read every one and will reply if requested to do so.

2nd October 2024.

Update.

Last week this was published in SciTechDaily. What the heck is wrong with people? Can nobody think beyond their own immediate needs? No wonder this planet is purging itself of the parasitic disease that's steadily but surely killing it as if they had planned it all. 

This is stuff you learn before the age of 10 as a rule-evaporation tests etc. In the UK -now this could have a lot to do with it- there's a tendency to look at social media and assume anything that's said applies to you, forgetting it's a global affair. Just as Britain has NEVER had vaccine mandates, we have some of the most rigid controls and regulations regarding the distribution storage, treatment of water and processing of water, whereas bottled water, (frequently precisely the same stuff) has none at all. All the road works and temporary traffic lights causing mayhem nationwide? That's your waterboard. 

Our water supplies and sewerage systems are so ancient that they're part of the landscape. To remove them could lead to subsidence, pot holes,crevices and chasms appearing.. so instead of replacing lead piping, every water pipe has had durable plastic piping threaded through it manually.  If you're unhappy with the water you've paid for, , just get onto the computer via their website or the old fashioned way.. give them a call! Then again, I suppose they would need to find something else to moan about 😠

🔗https://scitechdaily.com/ditch-bottled-water-now-hidden-health-risks-and-environmental-damage-uncovered/