CON­SUMER INFOR­MA­TION

Is our tap water a healthy water?

Our drink­ing water is increas­ing­ly a top­ic for dis­cus­sion. Although we like talk­ing about “the most mon­i­tored food” – experts warn of new risks lurk­ing in drink­ing water. Even the applic­a­ble lim­it val­ues (‘legal­ly tol­er­at­ed vol­umes of con­t­a­m­i­nants’) need to be viewed crit­i­cal­ly.

Possible organic and anorganic contamination of tap water

High nitrate val­ues in par­tic­u­lar, caused by the fer­til­iz­er meth­ods of con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture, should con­cern us all. The lim­it val­ue for nitrate, a nitro­gen com­pound which the body con­verts to car­cino­genic nitrosamines is 50 mg per litre in Ger­many and 40 mg per litre in Switzer­land today.

In Aus­tria, the lim­it val­ue was revised upwards from 25 to 50 mg per litre in 1995. For the youngest of us, such con­t­a­m­i­nant val­ues are already much too high. The World Health Organ­i­sa­tion (WHO) there­fore rec­om­mends that water intend­ed for babies does not con­tain more than 10 mil­ligrams of nitrate per litre.

PI®-Power Compact removes over 99% of nitrate from your tap water without fail.

Medication residue in drinking water – signs of our modern era.

Cur­rent­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts are reg­u­lar­ly ingest­ed by the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly con­tra­cep­tive pills and antibi­otics. After admin­is­tra­tion of med­ica­tion and release of the actu­al active agent, this is absorbed by the body via dif­fer­ent routes (e.g. lung or intes­tine). Often only a small amount of the active agent is present at the action site, while the major­i­ty is stored in oth­er areas of the body. Thus, the major­i­ty of active agent vol­umes, crit­ics refer to num­bers over 90%, is not metab­o­lized and released into the ground­wa­ter.

The following press reports show that the problem of medication residues reached the consumer long ago:

Der Feinschmecker
The ger­man gourmet mag­a­zine instruct­ed its employ­ees to fill tap water from pub­lic build­ings and pri­vate res­i­dences in lab­o­ra­to­ry bot­tles which were then sent to Tübin­gen for chem­i­cal analy­sis at the Insti­tute of Prof. Dr. Wal­ter Jäger. Result: sur­pris­ing­ly high x‑ray con­trast­ing agent and anti-epilep­sy med­ica­tion val­ues were found in the tap water from the Berlin Reich­stag and res­i­dences in Essen and Dort­mund.
N24
„The hygiene insti­tute at the Med­ical Fac­ul­ty of the Ruhr Uni­ver­si­ty- Bochum took sam­ples from taps on behalf of the WDR. In Essen, there was residue of four x‑ray con­trast agents and in Bochum of two x‑ray con­trast agents. Fur­ther­more, the sci­en­tists in Bochum appar­ent­ly dis­cov­ered residue from epilep­tic med­ica­tion. Although the health of the pop­u­la­tion is not endan­gered due to the small vol­umes, it is obvi­ous that all of the sub­stances do not belong to drink­ing water as stat­ed by Insti­tute Direc­tor Michael Wil­helm.“ (www.n24.de, 26.05.2008)
WDR
„After the inges­tion of med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts, some of the active agents are excret­ed from the body with some delay and are released along with urine into the waste­water. Some peo­ple sim­ply dis­card med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts care­less­ly into the toi­let. How­ev­er, many phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sub­stances are not fil­tered out in the sewage plants, reen­ter thinned the sur­face water again and may even end up under some cir­cum­stances in the tap water. It’s tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble for a long time to fil­ter unde­sir­able sub­stances from the water. How­ev­er, many munic­i­pal util­i­ties lack the atten­dance to invest in new fil­ter sys­tems. For exam­ple a study across Ger­many dis­cov­ered high­er con­cen­tra­tions of psy­chophar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in tap wate. A cur­rent study by the State Envi­ron­men­tal Agency in Reck­ling­hausen dis­closed an extra­or­di­nary con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the water in North Rhine-West­phalia. How­ev­er, there are yet no lim­its for med­ical residues in tap water.“ (www.wdr.de, 14.12.2007)
RTL II
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The con­sumer is urged to a crit­i­cal, self-deter­mined stance in respect to the ‘most con­trolled edi­ble’ due to its poten­tial con­t­a­m­i­na­tion which appears hard­ly avoid­able despite the many efforts of pub­lic water sup­pli­ers.
PI®-Power Compact removes guaranteed over 99% of hormone- and medication-residue from your tap water.

Additional pollutants potentially affecting the tap water.

The most crit­i­cal pol­lu­tants of the tap water are heavy met­als like lead, cop­per, nick­el, zinc, cad­mi­um, man­ganese, thal­li­um and ura­ni­um. Addi­tion­al­ly to those there are the radionu­clides Radi­um 226, 228, asbestos fibres, bac­te­r­i­al con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, med­ica­tion residues of con­tra­cep­tive pills and antibi­otics, chem­i­cal pes­ti­cides (pes­ti­cides, her­bi­cides) from agri­cul­ture. Pub­lic water sup­ply com­pa­nies are oblig­ed by the drink­ing water ordi­nance to sup­ply the con­sumer up to the house water con­nec­tion with a qual­i­ty of water that does not exceed the legal pol­lu­tion thresh­old val­ue. To meet the require­ments water­works use var­i­ous phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal purifi­ca­tion meth­ods like fil­tra­tion, chlo­ri­na­tion, ozone treat­ment or UV radi­a­tion. The house own­er is respon­si­ble for the water qual­i­ty between the house water con­nec­tion and the tap, regard­less of sin­gle-fam­i­ly or mul­ti-storey build­ings. Aged pip­ing sys­tems (more than 30 years old) made of lead are to be han­dled with spe­cial cau­tion. It is not required to meet the 25 micro­grams per litre lim­it, if the tap water flows through old lead pipes. Stag­nant waters in such instal­la­tions can show up to 330 micro­grams per litre. Exces­sive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the drink­ing water with cop­per is con­sid­ered a pos­si­ble cause of ear­ly child­hood liv­er dam­age. Cop­per can get into the drink­ing water as a cor­ro­sive prod­uct in con­sid­er­able amount, espe­cial­ly when it’s idle in cop­per pipes for an extend­ed peri­od. The lim­it val­ue is two mil­ligrams per litre. An exces­sive lead and cop­per con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the tap water is bare­ly pos­si­ble if the require­ments of the drink­ing water ordi­nance are com­plied with and the domes­tic instal­la­tion is exe­cut­ed by a pro­fes­sion­al.

PI®-Power Compact removes heavy metals and radionuclides guaranteed over 99%  from your tap water.

Toxic uranium in tap water.

The heavy met­al ura­ni­um is less dan­ger­ous because of its weak radioac­tiv­i­ty but clas­si­fied as espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous due its high tox­i­c­i­ty. The Ger­man expert for ura­ni­um in drink­ing water, Pro­fes­sor Ewald Schnug from Brunswick Uni­ver­si­ty points out that espe­cial­ly infants and small chil­dren are at high risk, as ura­ni­um affects their still imma­ture kid­neys, lung, liv­er and bone mar­row.

„Even a sin­gle ura­ni­um atom can cause can­cer.“

Prof. Ewald Schnug

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PI®-Power Compact removes uranium guaranteed over 99% from your tap water.