The Green Guide has published a cost comparison chart detailing the annual cost for operating various water filters such as the Pur and Brita filters. The companies manufacturing these water filters make the majority of their profits on repeated purchases of replaceable filter elements, of course, so the annual cost of operating such water filters is far more important than the up-front cost of buying them.

So what’s the verdict? The Brita pitcher is the least expensive water filter on this chart, with an annual cost of $27. It’s a gravity-fed filter, however, so it’s a slow filtering process. It also requires the use of a separate container that takes up additional counter space. Read more

The drinking water supply across the U.S. is being consistently exposed to a rocket fuel chemical known as perchlorate at levels dangerous to public health, according to a new report. As a result of the contamination, thyroid deficiency could be happening in more than 2 million women of childbearing age.

According to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis of new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), California health officials will consider a proposed standard for perchlorate in drinking water that the EWG found could trigger thyroid deficiency requiring treatment during pregnancy in more than 272,000 California women.  Read more

Water is absolutely required for health. Water is the beginning of life and without it, we would die very quickly. A French medical doctor, specialising in immunology, has discovered something truly fascinating about water. Dr. Jacques Benveniste has discovered certain scientific properties of water. These properties cannot be explained by conventional physics. He calls this particular brand of science digital biology. And to note: other scientists have duplicated his experiments.

Here are the tenets of his discovery:

1. When a substance is diluted in water, the water can carry the memory of that substance even after it has been so diluted that none of the molecules of the original substance remain; and

2. The molecules of any given substance have a spectrum of frequencies that can be digitally recorded with a computer, then played back into untreated water (using an electronic transducer), and when this is done, the new water will act as if the actual substance were physically present.

Dr. Jacques Benveniste (1935-2004) had proved something quite controversial, which gives concrete evidence to support homeopathy. He reportedly compared himself with Galileo because of his paradigm breaking research findings. He did not win a Nobel Prize but instead won not one, but two, of the satirical “Ignobel” prizes awarded by a gang of Harvard scientists – the 1991 chemistry prize for showing that water has memory, and the 1998 prize for a paper showing that this information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the internet. Read more

The general public is slowly becoming aware of some of the health benefits of antioxidants. Health-conscious individuals have known about their many benefits, which include the ability to fight cancer and heart disease, for a long time now. The good news is that according to a new study by a group of Italian scientists published in the ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, irrigating cherry tomatoes with diluted seawater was shown to actually increase their level of antioxidants.

In this study, the Italian scientists watered one group of cherry tomatoes using freshwater. Another group of cherry tomatoes was watered with a solution of diluted (12%) seawater. The scientists found that the cherry tomatoes grown using the diluted seawater had much higher levels of antioxidants (like vitamin C, vitamin E, dihydrolipoic acid, and chlorogenic acid) than the cherry tomatoes grown using freshwater. Read more

An investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has revealed that the drinking water of at least 41 million people in the United States is contaminated with pharmaceutical drugs.

It has long been known that drugs are not wholly absorbed or broken down by the human body. Significant amounts of any medication taken eventually pass out of the body, primarily through the urine.

“People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that’s not the case,” EPA scientist Christian Daughton said.

While sewage is treated before being released back into the environment, and water from reservoirs or rivers is also treated before being funneled back into the drinking water supply, these treatments are not able to remove all traces of medications. And so far, the EPA has not regulated the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, meaning that there are no laws in existence today that protect consumers from this increasingly dangerous chemical contaminant of the water supply. Read more