Poll of the Day > I found out the city I live in has a really dirty water supply.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Now I can't help but try to recall all of the times I may have ingested it, indirectly or otherwise. I used to wash the bags I bought my oranges in after accidentally getting them dirty sometimes. I remember stuffing the aforementioned bags into my fridge after washing them. Now I can't stop thinking about how my fridge is dirty and may need to be cleaned. I've cleaned my rice cooker pot using the tap water here even though I usually boil my rice with bottled water. I've also cleaned out some of my bowls using tap water sometimes. I can't stop thinking about if I've suffered any adverse health effects since moving here. The people in this city are so stupid; I have to know if the water supply is to blame. In short, I'm not really having such a good time right now. I feel like I could curl up in a ball and die. I'm trying to figure out a way to leave the city. But I'm not exactly employable enough to secure employment elsewhere --- which is part of the reason why I chose this city to live in after my relocation to begin with.

How dirty is it?

You can have it tested to find out how dirty it is. I don't think it's even that expensive to have done.

EclairReturns posted...

I've also cleaned out some of my bowls using tap water sometimes.

... How do the rest of your dishes get cleaned? Do you just throw them away?

SinisterSlay posted...

You can have it tested to find out how dirty it is. I don't think it's even that expensive to have done.

Some cities do it for free.

I'm sorry but "I'm trying to recall all of the times I may have ingested" tap water is an objectively funny thing to say. Like, if the answer to that isn't "all the time", then I'm wondering why you were already using bottled water so much before you actually knew your water was possibly bad.

you're not really offering any relevant details to understand what is dirty about the water

ReturnOfFa posted...

you're not really offering any relevant details to understand what is dirty about the water

There are very specific guidelines for potable water supplied by cities or counties.

We definitely need more details.

Where did you learn this info?

Could be worse. You could have tap water that wasn't Kosher...

https://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/31/drink-up-nyc-meet-the-tiny-crustaceans-not-kosher-in-your-tap-water/

You could install a whole house filter. If the water is merely cloudy or has sediment, a simple particulate filter will do the job. If it's chemically contaminated, a charcoal filter will take care of most of the contaminates. Just make sure you change the filters regularly.

"According to blog Gizmodo, copepods are added to water to eat mosquito larvae, keeping water sources clear."

That's cool, and I am entirely cool with it. A bit of weirdness like that is immaterial compared to combating mosquito populations. As for offending certain religious populations that might be bothered by it, I'll count that as a bonus. That aside, it must eat them at a pretty early stage, maybe as eggs or hatchlings, as the mosquito larva I'm familiar with are a lot bigger than something that's invisible to the naked eye.

Being a germophobe is such a stressful life, I thought millenials eliminated this kind of thought during the posterior dining age.

https://youtu.be/psIuidkkLjI?si=_Tw2wqGYLvv04Daf

Bought a filter years ago, best investment I've ever made.

I have a private well. The household water supply has a spin-down filter that captures most of the sediment, a combination particulate filter and water softener, and a carbon filter that also catches whatever particulates the softener missed. And just to be on the safe side, there's another carbon filter/0.01 filter on the kitchen sink, AND most of the water I actually drink/cook with goes through a Costco clone of a Brita filter, which is probably overkill, but I've got a whole box of filters.

captpackrat posted...

I have a private well. The household water supply has a spin-down filter that captures most of the sediment, a combination particulate filter and water softener, and a carbon filter that also catches whatever particulates the softener missed. And just to be on the safe side, there's another carbon filter/0.01 filter on the kitchen sink, AND most of the water I actually drink/cook with goes through a Costco clone of a Brita filter, which is probably overkill, but I've got a whole box of filters.

Didn't know they had one. Does it fit the brita tap filter? That's what I use, my rural House has three taps at everything. Hot, cold and drinking.

SinisterSlay posted...

my rural House has three taps at everything. Hot, cold and drinking.

explain

To save the filter when you aren't drinking/cooking/brushing with the cold water maybe? I kind of doubt they're on "everything" though since a washing machine or shower does not need drinking water

SinisterSlay posted...

tested

Definitely a viable option. While I'm at it, I might bug the technician with the queries I presented here. <<';

Clench281 posted...

rest of your dishes

I usually eat out of bowls. I wash the rest of my dishes using the sink, though, yes.

bachewychomp posted...

why you were already using bottled water so much

Force of habit from my life back in Hawaii.

ReturnOfFa posted...

relevant details

https://imgur.com/a/U7Sdv6S

Snoregasm posted...

stressful life

Tell me about it. ><';

bachewychomp posted...

shower

That reminds me: My lips and my skin have generally been drier ever since I moved here, and I have to wonder if that's due to the dry climate here or if it's due to the current source of anxiety for me at the mo'.

Does your water supply have a bunch of industrial runoff or something? That's a lot of contamination wtf

That's just for the city I live in; I'm not too sure about the water in the house.

EclairReturns posted...

Definitely a viable option. While I'm at it, I might bug the technician with the queries I presented here. <<';

I usually eat out of bowls. I wash the rest of my dishes using the sink, though, yes.

Force of habit from my life back in Hawaii.

https://imgur.com/a/U7Sdv6S

Tell me about it. ><';

That reminds me: My lips and my skin have generally been drier ever since I moved here, and I have to wonder if that's due to the dry climate here or if it's due to the current source of anxiety for me at the mo'.

aight cheers, those are...indeed details. There's not much use worrying about the small amounts you've indirectly consumed - while all those numbers are indeed high, they're high in comparison to the allowed levels are absolutely miniscule. It's unlikely that it would've affected your health unless you were consuming it in large quantities daily. It's good you're aware now though. Still, rinsing stuff with it is probably not going to pass much of that contaminant on to you.

Might be worth getting a filter and getting it tested at home?

ConfusedTorchic posted...

explain

One cold line goes through the water softener, the other does not.
Softened water tastes kind of bad. So sometimes you want to normal water, sometimes the softened.
As for laundry, it's attached to the bathroom sink and uses the normal water. And right next to it, hot and cold to the garage, so I wash my car with hot water.
All bathrooms and kitchen have all 3. All the exterior water is untreated so you don't use all your salt watering your grass.

The water in the city I live in is not safe to drink unfiltered, but its fine for washing stuff and fine to use in cooking if its going to get boiled, so stuff like rice cookers are fine to use tap water in.

this dude has three faucets

For Flint's sake I feel like they should have included Lead levels on that list of details.

SinisterSlay posted...

Didn't know they had one. Does it fit the brita tap filter? That's what I use, my rural House has three taps at everything. Hot, cold and drinking.

It's made for the Brita pitcher

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2f3b9e64.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/95213e05.jpg

captpackrat posted...

It's made for the Brita pitcher

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/2/2f3b9e64.png
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/95213e05.jpg

Ah ok, won't help me then.
I have to drink 3 litres of water a day, so I go through a lot. I have the on tap filter instead. Lasts about 6 months.

EclairReturns posted...

https://imgur.com/a/U7Sdv6S

It doesn't look like any of those have come close to exceeding the legal limits, even if they're well over EWG guidelines, so it's unlikely that you'll be facing any serious medical issues. None of that is likely to be bad enough to cause issues using it for cooking, cleaning, bathing, or other uses that don't involve ingesting it. For drinking, it might not be a bad idea to get a filter moving forward (choose one that covers the contaminants that most greatly exceed the guidelines), but there's no need to stress out over occasionally having drunk some in the past.

hockey7318 posted...

For Flint's sake I feel like they should have included Lead levels on that list of details.

That list is just the ones that exceed the guidelines. It looks like there's another tab for other detected contaminants.

Wow that makes the water sound really toxic

Oh yeah I didn't really notice the legal limit parts, just the gigantic 540x numbers. Dumb of me not to look closer. I don't even know who EWG is but it looks like they're one of those fear-mongering "everything in modern life that's not natural is killing us" type of organizations. Anti-GMO, anti-vaxx, etc.

bachewychomp posted...

Oh yeah I didn't really notice the legal limit parts, just the gigantic 540x numbers. Dumb of me not to look closer. I don't even know who EWG is but it looks like they're one of those fear-mongering "everything in modern life that's not natural is killing us" type of organizations. Anti-GMO, anti-vaxx, etc.

It's good to have both, legal limits are usually wrong.
The legal limit is based on the governments projected cost of cleaning the water vs handling your declining health and early death. It's one of the reasons lawsuits exist, to fuck that math formula to make it way more expensive to not act.

SinisterSlay posted...

It's good to have both, legal limits are usually wrong.
The legal limit is based on the governments projected cost of cleaning the water vs handling your declining health and early death. It's one of the reasons lawsuits exist, to fuck that math formula to make it way more expensive to not act.

Yep. Legal limits established by the same government that's responsible for meeting those legal limits should always be taken with a grain of salt because there's an obvious conflict of interest there. Other guidelines should be examined in more detail to see what their basis is and make sure they aren't something like "this is 10% of the smallest value that's ever been observed to possibly be correlated with health issues, just to be safe" but if you're seeing something like 700x the other guidelines being only 10% of the legal limit, odds are the actual threshold for concern lies somewhere between those two points.

bachewychomp posted...

Oh yeah I didn't really notice the legal limit parts, just the gigantic 540x numbers. Dumb of me not to look closer. I don't even know who EWG is but it looks like they're one of those fear-mongering "everything in modern life that's not natural is killing us" type of organizations. Anti-GMO, anti-vaxx, etc.

Ah probably anti fluoride too. Everything is always a conspiracy with those kind of weirdos.

So I'm strongly considering throwing out a few containers that I washed using the tap water here. Which of these do you think I can just wash with the filtered water and be done with it?
- Rice container
- Glass tupperware

Unless there's an actual formal advisory that your tap water isn't safe to use for cleaning, everything you washed will be fine and will continue to be fine to wash using tap water moving forward. At this point, you haven't even been formally advised that it's unsafe to drink, and there's a major difference between "don't drink this" and "this isn't food safe." There's absolutely no reason to jump from "there's some stuff in your water that you might want to filter out before drinking it but you'll probably be fine even if you don't" to "I should throw out everything that has ever been touched by tap water."

EclairReturns posted...

So I'm strongly considering throwing out a few containers that I washed using the tap water here. Which of these do you think I can just wash with the filtered water and be done with it?
- Rice container
- Glass tupperware

Throw them all out. They are all unsafe to use now.

A little bit of arsenic never hurt anyone.

this is some absurd hypochondriac reactions

https://i.imgur.com/Smuk4Wm.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/a1gmAye.jpeg

So I got my water tested directly this time. What do you think?

I think that you're more capable of reading those indicators than any of us are. If any of them fall into ranges that are identified as dangerous, you should research that risk further and adjust your drinking/cleaning/whatever practices accordingly. If none of them do, you're fine and should go on with your life unless you receive an actual water quality advisory.