Are we drinking the Right Thing...?

The other day my brother was telling me about one of his colleagues. My brother found the boy had long nails on his toes. Astonished to see them, he asked the boy why he doesn’t care to clip his nails.

My brother felt sorry to hear the reason. Due to dehydration, the nails have become too hard to clip.

I know there are several places in the world where there is scarcity of water and people are dehydrated. I feel sorry for them. However, I wonder how anyone can be that cruel to oneself to not drink enough water to meet one’s body needs at a place where water is easily accessible. On the top of the fact that he drinks less water than required, he has higher in take of carbonated soft drinks. What a non sense!

At least, I don’t feel sorry for such a person; instead I feel anger. Isn’t it his own fault to keep his body dehydrated to the extent of effecting its physical parts? And what would be happening with his physiology and body functioning only God knows.

Water is the most essential and ultimate source of life on the earth. All the living beings need it to retain their existence in this world. We all know that we need enough amount of water to make our body function properly.

Because water is the most consumed substance by humans, it is crucial to take care of its cleanliness in order to avoid the hazards caused by its contamination.

It is unfortunate that this essential source of life is not being provided to the public in a clean form. Masses utilize it either in the form it is provided by the government or go for purchasing drinkable water from companies.

The water provided by famous brands is quite expensive and out of the range of an average citizen. And what is the guarantee that the water provided by these brands is safer than the tap water?

Personally, I think that it is merely marketing to present the bottled water as a safer alternate. It doesn’t provide any value it claims. Instead, it might be causing us harm because of being packed in plastic bottles.

A study demonstrated that bottled water contained 50% more particles of microplastics as compared to the tap water. The more alarming is the fact that this discovery was not merely about any bottled water but the water from the most famous brands of the world like Aquafina and Evian. In fact, water from these brands had the highest level of contamination among the sampled brands.

The toxicants from these bottled water have been found to be linked with fertility complications, problems in brain development, cardiac issues and development of cancers.

Moreover, the danger caused by the plastics to our atmosphere and environment is not unknown to anyone. I don’t think there is any reason to be fooled by the marketing of a product that might simply be the filtered version of the water we get in our taps.

Instead of emptying our pockets on such a water, it is better to take some DIY methods to ensure the safety of the water we drink.

In our area, municipal water is not readily available. It is delivered after a couple of weeks. The storage tanks are not enough to cater our every day needs for that long a period That’s why we have boring water at our home. So the water that we have in our taps is hard water, too much salty and thus undrinkable.

For drinking, we preserve the municipal water in a tank. Whenever we have doubt on the cleanliness of the water, we use disinfectants. Moreover, we also clean the tank every year.

The above steps are not enough for water purification. Had it been possible for me to install domestic water filter, I would go for it. Nonetheless, we filter the water with the help of a clean fabric.

After filtration, I boil the water in a big steel pan. When it cools down, I fill a pot with water to make the ice from it. Using the ice, we prepare cold water in a water cooler.

I am also very cautious about the cleanliness of the water cooler, bottles and glass. I try my level best to keep the utensils clean especially the corners that are usually missed.

Another safety measure that we take is to cover the left over water in a glass with a lid. If some water is left opened, we don’t use it for drinking purpose.

The last but not the least, I inspect the water in the glass before drinking to ensure that the water doesn’t contain any hazardous entity such as an insect or a reptile. I have heard of cases where this kind of negligence became a reason of taking the person’s life. That’s why I have cultivated the habit in my kids too.

In conclusion, I do not prefer bottled water over tap water but the vice versa. Nevertheless, we take steps to enhance the cleanliness of the water we drink.

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This post is my entry for Hive Learner’s featured contest.

Image from pixabay by qimono