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Archive for the ‘Water News’ Category

Plastic, Plastic Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Spare

Posted by Rayne Water

We have all done it. Drank a bottle of water or a soft drink, and when we think no one is looking, thrown it away in the garbage, left with a twinge of guilt. On the other hand, many households attempt their hand at recycling, which in many cases also leads to plastic waste somewhere along the lines. If you have ever felt the guilt of wasting this plastic, you are not alone.

Ok, so what are a few bottles tossed away here or there? It may be adding up to more than we think. According to an article from MSNBC, the EPA said that only 7.1 percent of our plastic waste was recycled in 2008. And according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, over half of Americans drink bottled water, making it a billion dollar market each year. So while your couple of bottles may not seem so bad, imagine how many other people have done the same. It adds up. Plastic waste can lead to toxins dissolving into the ground, blocking drainage systems, causing environmental and even harmful health effects.

There are so many brands of bottled water and flavored water, but the truth is, buying bottled water and the dangers of plastic waste don’t compare to the affordability and the safer options you can find with a water filtration system. Don’t fall into the marketing scams created by many of these companies. Bottled water doesn’t prove to be safer than tap water. Filtrated water is safe, cost-effective, and responsible. You can drink as much as you need and not feel guilty about any lack of recycling.

Rayne provides these solutions and can eliminate the plastic waste in your household, as it already does for thousands of others. To read more about plastic waste in America, click here.

National Protect Your Groundwater Day 2010

Posted by Rayne Water

National Ground Water Association with the hopes of making the public more aware of the quality and quantity of water that we use and have available.
We often take clean water for granted in America because our municipalities test, treat, and provide a seemingly unending source of water. Because of that, Americans use more water per person than any other country in the world! We should be careful though, because the testing and treatment comes at a cost and the supply is limited. So, let’s think beyond our kitchen sink for just a moment. Where does the water come from? 95% of all available freshwater comes from underground aquifers – groundwater. That’s a huge percentage, and we’d have a really tough time coming up with an affordable and reliable replacement source if those aquifers were badly contaminated or depleted.
So, as part of Protect Your Groundwater Day, let’s take action in two different ways – let’s prevent contamination and promote conservation. Contamination doesn’t just occur because of human action, it’s also a daily occurrence in nature as water is exposed to microorganisms, radioactive compounds, and heavy metals. As individuals, we have little control over naturally occurring contamination, so that means we need to be extra diligent in preventing the contamination that we can control! Conservation is also something we have direct control over. We can choose to shut off the faucet while brush our teeth, we can choose high-efficiency appliances, we can plant geographically appropriate landscapes.
Here at Rayne Water Corporation, we promise to do our part. We recently introduced the Rayne Evolution Drinking Water System with LINX Technology, which is a drinking water system that uses a fraction of the amount of water as a traditional reverse osmosis system. We also offer our water softener customers Exchange Tank Services, so that no salt is used or discharged from our customers’ homes. We do the regeneration process in a controlled environment so that water is not wasted and salt is not flushed down the drain.
Let’s all make a commitment to keeping our groundwater safe, not only for today but for generations to come.
To watch an interesting video about where our water comes from, click HERE.

Climate Change = Water Change

Posted by Rayne Water

Is it global warming? Or El Nina? Or La Nina? Or is it just a change in weather patterns? Regardless of our school of thought, there does seem to be a change in temperature, precipitation, and weather patterns. In a recent Science Daily article, it was said, “The term ‘global warming’ does not do justice to the climatic changes the world will experience in coming decades. Some of the worst disruptions we face will involve water, not just temperature.” This article predicts that drought may threaten much of the globe within just a few short decades. Drought, to many of us, is something out of the Dust Bowl of The Grapes of Wrath, or if we have experienced drought, it is always a weather condition that corrects itself within a year or so.

The drought being examined in this article, however, is much more than that. This drought would affect two-thirds of the United States, and several other continents as well. Other parts of the globe, such as Alaska, Northern Europe, Russia, and Canada will see an increase in precipitation. The article did warn, however, “This increased wetness over the northern, sparsely populated high latitudes can’t match the drying over the more densely populated temperate and tropical areas”.

Already, we read often in the news that local lakes and reservoirs are at record low levels, communities facing water restrictions, and aquifers becoming depleted. By the 2030s, scientists are guessing that some regions of the US will be experiencing particularly severe conditions – that’s only 20 short years away. Seeing that these things are coming within most of our lifetimes and to our part of the country, isn’t it time we did what we could to lessen the effects of it?

We think so. That’s why we’ve instigated many of the changes in water treatment technology. Our drinking water systems waste much less water than traditional reverse osmosis systems. Our water coolers do not use bottles that require cleaning and transporting. Our water softeners are offered with portable exchange tank service so that no salt is turned into the groundwater and only recycled water is used in regeneration. We believe that we can make a difference in the years to come and encourage other industries to join in!

Probable Carcinogen Invades Water Sources

Posted by Rayne Water

Sounds like it could be the title of a new sci-fi movie right? A title like this cannot and will not be ignored by American consumers. According to one article, 35 cities in the US have traces of hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen, as is reported in the Washington Post. In 25 of those cities, the amount of the chemical exceeds government goals which were proposed in California. California has been aggressively and quickly trying to reduce the presence of hexavalent chromium in its water supply. This carcinogen was made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich.

The study was done by the Environmental Working Group and is the first nationwide analysis of this toxic chemical. The group found the presence of the chemical in 31 of 35 different tests in those respective cities and as mentioned previously, 25 of those cities had levels exceeding any propositions. The Environmental Protection Agency is still determining if and what levels should be set for hexavalent chromium in tap water. It was determined to be a probable carcinogen in 2008.

It is reported that hexavalent chromium has been known to cause lung cancer for quite some time when it is inhaled, and more recently, evidence shows it is cancer causing in laboratory animals when ingested. It has also been linked to liver and kidney damage, along with leukemia, stomach cancer, and other cancers when tested on animals. Hexavalent chromium was popularly used in industries in the early 1990s, and is still found in industries creating chrome plating or plastics and dyes. It can get into groundwater from natural sources, making it into tap water.

In California, as was documented in the popular movie listed above, Hinkley was the affected town. But as stated in a document by the Clean Water Fund, “according to the Department of Public Health, from 1997 through 2008 chromium VI was detected in 2,208 California drinking water sources monitored for the contaminant. These sources are spread throughout 52 out of 58 counties, impacting an estimated 33 million Californians.” According to Emagazine, Riverside, California had one of the highest levels out there.

The only true way to find out if your local water source has hexavalent chromium is to check with your local public water supplier and request a water quality report with the quantitative analysis of chemicals or other minerals in your drinking water. Taja Marhaba is a professor and the chair of civil and environmental engineering and director of the New Jersey Applied Water Research Center at NJIT. In one interview in regards to this toxic chemical in drinking water, he stated, “the best way to remove this [hexavalent chromium] and other known and unknown contaminants from the water supply to a residence if to install a five-stage reverse osmosis home unit.”

Fluoride, For The Health Of Our Kids

Posted by Rayne Water

Parents will do anything to ensure the health and safety of their children. That’s why we do our best to make sure they’re staying healthy by eating a well-balanced diet and drinking water. But even after many years of pushing the 8 glasses a day routine, new research studies show that all tap water may not be as healthy of a choice as we had thought.

According to one online article, cavity-preventing and tooth-decay limiting fluoride may actually be having harmful effects on the teeth of our children when over the recommended limits, or even the limit set as “safe” by the government. The article states that too much fluoride in drinking water is actually causing spots on their teeth. The federal government, too, is aware of this discovery and has announced a reduction in the recommended levels found in water supplies. It is quoted that “about 2 out of 5 adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of too much fluoride.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the spotty tooth condition, fluorosis, is actually quite common between the ages of 12 and 15 and has increased since the 1980s. Among the other government plans to prevent the condition is their other studies currently in progress which look at the ways Americans are exposed to fluoride and the other health effects it may have.

Fluoride is a mineral that occurs naturally in the water and soil. According to this article, about 64% of Americans drink fluoridated water – either naturally occurring or from a municipally maintained system. And, for those who are not receiving fluoride in their water, doctors have been quick to prescribe fluoride supplements and schools have implemented swish-and-spit programs in the classrooms. In the past, water supplies were fluoridated because studies had shown that people who took in more fluoride had fewer cavities. But now this new research emerges and water supplies must go under new regulations yet again.

Oral health is important and while it may be a benefit of fluoride, knowing too much can harm our families is always a motivation to look into other options like water treatment systems for your residency. These may include water coolers, water filters, or reverse osmosis systems. All are eco-friendly and affordable solutions for eliminating unhealthy minerals or contaminants from the drinking water in your home. Clean and healthy water is not something we need to worry about – it will always keep our families healthy, we just need to make sure that it really is clean and healthy!

Being Green: Why We Do It

Posted by Rayne Water

Saying something is eco-friendly is common in this day and age, but really doing something to reduce energy consumption, reduce your carbon footprint, and follow environmental guidelines is truly being responsible. With so many water treatment options out there, the key is looking into those who are doing just that – going green. Being pro-active isn’t about following in everyone else’s footsteps. It is about being innovative and taking initiative – two important qualities in water systems, which for the most part have not changed very much at all in many decades.

In the past, hard water was fought with one simple solution – purchase a water softener. Hard water is high in dissolved minerals, which leave a film behind. Hard water will also cause buildup on pipes and in appliances, shortening their lifespan and causing financial burdens. Water softeners employ salt ions that change places with those minerals and after the contaminants build up inside the system, traditional water softeners wash out, dumping massive amounts of salt down the drain into what is thought of as wastewater. However, this wastewater is reused in many areas and after time, people realized that the salt was killing their golf courses, crops, and even marine life. Some areas in California put a ban on these traditional water softeners and some water treatment companies took the challenge head on.

Tank exchange services are the latest force in water softening, completely eliminating the salt-discharge. Likewise, these tank exchange services also save a lot of water from going to waste. With environmentally responsible water treatment companies, the tanks are regenerated and reused. When a tank becomes spent, their employees will replace it. The tanks are then taken back to a facility, emptied, and regenerated. The most important step comes next – which companies responsibly get rid of the spent resin and brine, preventing salt pollution and waste water. No salt discharge should be dumped down the drain by either the homeowner or the water treatment company, now that there are better options. If your home or business still uses an old water softening system, it may be time to look into a more eco-friendly water softener accompanied by a tank exchange service. Education, like this video, is the key to maintaining technologically-advanced systems which align themselves with an ever-changing environmentally-friendly world.

So how can water softeners be that eco-friendly? According to one online article, hard water can make appliances less effective and have to work harder, thus putting out more energy. So not only will a quality water softener save you money, it will save you energy and help save the environment. Quite a lot of work for such an affordable product!

Water a New Topic in Environmental Economics

Posted by Rayne Water

It seems everything these days is affected by the latest downturn in the economy. From the housing market, to consumer buying, to environmental and urban economics, the financial crisis has everyone looking for ways to save money in some way, shape, or form. A new article out from Matthew Kahn has those same consumers thinking about water as a basic need – and how it is slowly being threatened.

The Southwest United States is known to be a dry, arid region. Water supplies there are facing droughts, and therefore slowly being threatened of drying up. Water is such an important basic element of life that without the water supplies, the region couldn’t survive in a number of areas. The article discusses the growth in population and jobs in the Southwest. One economist quoted in the article states that “allowing water prices to reflect scarcity would take care of this problem.” The problem he refers to is the diminishing water there. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute says that “green lawns and unlimited swimming pools and inefficient irrigated agriculture can’t be sustained.”

The article states that one way of looking into this problem is to be creative in finding ways to use other water sources. One example would be to re-use wastewater. Other ideas are “policies to encourage more efficient water use” and “efforts to coordinate water policy at local, state and federal levels, and planning to help water utilities adapt to climate change.” The effort to use water efficiently and look into the newest water technologies for home and business may also be key. Raising the price on water will hurt the poor – and everyone needs water to survive. Perhaps the answer would be to better use and conserve the water we have.

One way to do this is to identify hidden – and obvious – water wastes. For example, traditional reverse osmosis systems waste an incredible amount of water for every gallon of drinking water they produce. The important thing will be to find and eliminate these wastes. For example, the Evolution water system can provide drinking water while reducing harmful contaminants. It uses electricity to exchange ions in the purification process rather than chemicals and wastes 90% less water than reverse osmosis. Just by making one pot of coffee, a traditional reverse osmosis system can waste almost 11 gallons of water according to one video. While refilling it’s tank, the Evolution system wastes no water. 90% less water waste is huge and would be a strong beginning to solving the problem facing our region.

Saving water means saving the environment from a threatening predicament. While the article mentioned above focuses on an economic impact from the disappearance of water sources, the health effects are even more worrisome. To read more on this topic, click here.

Study Unveils Natural Gas Drilling Waste in Waterways

Posted by Rayne Water

Most citizens assume agencies are being as careful and responsible as possible when it comes to waterways and water sources and what they are letting in them. Too many times in the past corporations and agencies have either accidentally or quietly disposed of waste into natural waterways. In today’s age, we have too many scientifically advanced methods of caring for our water too let it slip. We can protect our drinking water sources while continuing to pursue advanced experiments.

In one online article we read, Pennsylvania has quite a situation in front of them. The state is at the forefront of the natural gas rush and has recently increased drilling. There is a harsh by-product as a result – a wastewater extremely salty and so polluted with barium and strontium that usually it gets sent down thousands of feet into the earth. This hasn’t happened in Pennsylvania, and instead, the liquid is only partially treated for these substances and are dumped into local rivers and streams. It could potentially be environmentally harmful and these are the very natural water sources where residents get their drinking water. Pennsylvania is the only state who allows this disposal and from hydraulic fracturing or fracking. And with new regulations in place for newer drillers, existing operations continue to be allowed. While the Environmental Protection Agency has begun to look into the matter, residents have to deal with brine leaking into their drinking water and potentially harmful contaminants invading their once-safe water.

Other states have been making similar changes – some to protect residents and others to protect operations. Most of the larger corporations state that they are eliminating most of the waste, but if history repeats itself, we may find more contaminants than we want in the water sources. According to the article, “Fracking involves injecting millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand deep into the rock, shattering the shale and releasing the gas trapped inside. When the gas comes to the surface, some of the water comes back, too, along with underground brine that exists naturally. It can be several times saltier than sea water and tainted with fracking chemicals, some of which can be carcinogenic if swallowed at high enough levels over time.”

With the potential risks and downfalls of fracking in Pennsylvania and several other states in the country, residents are beginning to find alternatives for protecting their family’s drinking water to eliminate potential risks. The top recommended way to keep your family’s drinking water safe is to look into a water treatment system like a reverse-osmosis system, water filters, or water coolers. Each has various benefits that are good for your water and are good for the environment. They are eco-friendly and affordable solutions to remove or provide safe, clean drinking water during times when you aren’t sure it is.

Amoebas? In America?

Posted by Rayne Water

Most Americans like to feel like their drinking water is really pretty clean. That is why each municipality has its own water treatment system to help guarantee the cleanliness of the water. Each water treatment facility also has to do their own testing for certain levels of bacteria, metals, minerals, and other common contaminants. These tests are guarded by the Environmental Protection Agency and their required levels of certain harmful substances. These safeguards are the things we must depend on when it comes to our safety and our drinking water.

It is common knowledge that when traveling to other countries it is best not to drink their water, to buy bottled water instead. This is a common practice among travelers to maintain their health and well being while on vacation since no one wants to spend their entire vacation in some hotel or airport bathroom. These other countries often have small microorganisms found in their water. One of these common microorganisms is the amoeba.

The amoeba is studied across the nation in middle school science rooms under a microscope. What students don’t learn is that this little organism is infesting water across the world – even in America. This little living organism can be incredibly dangerous as well as hardly be noticed at all. It all depends on the host to the organism. This microorganism can bring on disease such as corneal infection causing blindness and even a rapid brain inflammation that can lead to death. In other hosts it can cause far simpler symptoms like diarrhea, cramping, and mucus bloody stools. The really scary thing about this little amoeba though is not in the symptoms it can produce but more in the way it can hide from us.

Amoebas have an evil alter ego: After they infest the body as a dormant cyst and trophozoite (a later form that is motile and active), they travel to the small intestine where they become a Trojan and can carry around harmful bacteria allowing them to not only multiply inside the amoeba cells but also evade disinfection agents at water treatment facilities. An amoebic cyst can resist iodine and chlorine if concentration of these chemicals is too low. The amoeba’s life cycle includes forming a cyst which can be very resilient as the outer shell protects the organism and allows it to live outside the body for long periods of time. The infection is spread in cyst form making it easier for it to infect water supplies. Animals are the most common carriers thus spreaders of the disease.

The best answer to cleaning up this little microorganism is not only by the water treatment plant testing for it, but also by homeowners providing their own filtration system. Because this little organism is in the cyst stage when it is spread, filtration is the most effective water treatment process available today. The amoeba can actually survive boiling water and can live in water treated with certain levels of chlorine. At the current time water treatment plants are not required to test for the amoeba and in most cases are not even fully aware of the threat they pose. In fact, out of 26 studies done in 18 nations all had identified amoebas in some part of the drinking water systems. That is 100% contamination at some point on the way to where people would consume the water. In another group of studies on tap water, in 45% of the cases the amoeba was also found.

The water we drink is supposed to be safe and clean. However, there is only one way to be certain that it is and that is to take action for ourselves. The most important things in life shouldn’t be left to someone else to do for us, it’s up to us. There are home water treatment systems available that can help us guarantee our own drinking water safety. It’s time to do our own homework and see which system would fit our needs the best. Filtering our water can remove so many nasty little bugs and organisms not to mention minerals and metals that our bodies are better off without. Bottled water isn’t guaranteed unless it has been pasteurized, so the best answer remains at our own tap. Filter it, drink it, and appreciate the safety of it.

To read more on this subject, click here.

Pregnant? Watch Out For Lead!

Posted by Rayne Water

Of course we all know that lead is not good for us, but that our bodies can tolerate a certain amount without observable negative effects. If you are pregnant, however, that amount is much, much smaller. A recent headline on Science Daily’s website announced, “Lead exposure may affect blood pressure during pregnancy”.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration have set thresholds for supposedly safe levels of lead at 40 um/dL, but in a study lead by Goldman of George Washington University’s School of Public Health, pregnant women who were exposed to lead had a significant increase in blood pressure at as low of a level as 2 um/dL! Of course blood pressure is typically somewhat higher during pregnancy, labor, and delivery as the heart pumps higher, but sustained high blood pressure during pregnancy (pregnancy-induced hypertension) can lead to preeclampsia and eclampsia, which can be fatal or predispose women to a heart attack in their future.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends that action be taken by women to reduce exposures to lead. According to one medical professional, lead exposure must be considered not only during the pregnancy, but also before conception. “Because lead is stored in bones for many years, even childhood exposure could impact lead levels in pregnancy.” The hope is, this study will help determine a truly safe lead exposure level.

One common place of lead exposure is in drinking water. Even though municipalities test for and remove lead, much of the lead that people ingest comes into their water after water treatment, and more often than not, from the pipes, valves, and solder within our very homes. The solution? A point-of-use drinking water system that has been certified to remove lead. The most thorough of these systems are reverse osmosis or a drinking water system with LINX® Technology. These systems of usually offered as under-the-counter or in a convenient bottleless water cooler.

To read more on this subject, click here.