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by nate·6y ago·view on hn ↗
I'd also just filter/test your water everywhere :( I'm in Chicago, and my daughter and I decided to test some public water fountains near the city zoo for lead. Thought it would be an interesting way to expose her to more science. I also had a suspicion of water fountains I've been finding now "capped" and no longer working. One of the fountains we tested with a home test kit from Home Depot came up positive for lead. Luckily I know some folks in the city we reached out too about our test and now that water fountain has been capped too.

This has made me super paranoid now of all water everywhere.

2 comments
There's also an epidemic of cyanobacterial (also known as blue green "algae") contamination around the US.

We've traveled all over the country and have personally encountered it everywhere -- from Oregon to New York to central Florida...it's all over the midwest, in the Great Lakes -- seems to be anywhere there's farming.

I'm not sure what you do for that, though -- not sure it can be filtered, and boiling just makes it worse as it's toxic when it's dead. I'm honestly more terrified of cyanobacteria than PFAS, and it's everywhere.

It's cumbersome, but I think you can use something like Steripen for that (UV).
That might kill the algae but likely won't destroy most of the toxins in the water that the algae produce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotoxin
Do the toxins get carried on along with distillation as well?

That's ridiculously energy-intensive and you'd probably have to re-mineralise it before storage or consumption to be on the safe side. Cooking might actually be the worst issue here, low-mineralisation cooking water would leech minerals out, leading to lower nutrient intake (unless yo keep the cooking water for drinking).

Distillation would make the water safe, reverse osmosis should also work. You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water and you don't need to worry about leaching your pots and pans.
> You don't need to remineralize water, you get minerals from food not from tap/mineral water

That's exactly the issue I'm pointing out in using distilled water from cooking, you will lose those minerals in the food to cooking water unless you drink it, so a normally proper died would not be anymore.

I doubt it, tap water and distilled water are both substantially lower in minerals than food, effectively 0 in comparison, I suspect if you boil your foods in either water the mineral content of the resulting food will be roughly the same.
The trick with algae is to stop it before it happens, which mostly deals with agricultural runoff.
Herbicides, specifically (https://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/news/2009/fe052/researchers-stu...). The stuff has adapted to eat glyphosate like candy. Makes sense when you see where it flourishes (like wheat and sugarcane-growing areas -- The Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Okeechobee releases fuel the blooms on the west and east coasts of Florida).
FWIW I witnessed a tweaker perched on top of one those public water fountains on the LFT, washing his bottom. I'd need to be nearly dead from dehydration to drink from one at this point.
Yeah. I’ve been running 10 miles now at a time and I still refuse to use those things. I’m thankful the zoo has vending machine that that Apple Pay :)