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Whether it's bottled or
tapped,
water is liquid life for humans
BY GLENN GASLIN - LOS
ANGELES DAILY NEWS
QUICK QUIZ: List everything you know about water.
It's wet. Got it.
Its chemical symbol is
something like H2O. Right.
The stuff makes up about
two-thirds of the planet. You should drink eight
glasses a day. Some guy brings it to your house or
office in 5-gallon bottles and turns them upside
down.
And on and on.
What there is to know about
water probably wouldn't even fit into the Atlantic
Ocean.
But it even seems that - could
it be? - there's more of that abundant clear stuff.
Some of it's caffeinated. Some come in tiny blue
bottles. Some strap to your back and can be sucked
through a straw.
It may even be an exciting time
to look into the substance that, up until two years
ago, remained the most popular beverage on Earth.
People are drinking twice as much bottled water as a
decade ago, some tap water tastes better than ever
and, chances are, you're still not drinking enough.
And a few more things you don't
know about water.
1. Water is not water:
Water-simple, pure, unsullied
water - is exactly two parts hydrogen molecules and
one part oxygen molecules. You know,
"H-two-oh." But the slippery substance we
know as "water" is hardly ever simple or
pure
"When you really get into
it, water isn't water," says Dr. Bruce Fowler,
director of the toxicology program at the University
of Maryland.
The clear liquid you drink may
contain any number of substances, some added by
nature, some added by man, some tasty, some
dangerous. When you pour yourself a glass of water,
either from the tap or a store-bought bottle, you
might need an ingredient label.
There could be minerals -mostly
sodium, potassium and calcium - that get picked up
from the soil and provide what pure H2O
lacks, a taste. Maybe there's fluoride, which is
added by some municipal water sources to improve
public dental health. Some old house pipes might seep
lead into tap water. Spring water may bubble and
sparkle with carbon dioxide. Tap water will have some
chlorine, which is added by treatment plants to kill
bacteria. And, the thing that worries Fowler (and the
two congressional commissions on which he serves)
most, are the possible chlorination byproducts.
The chlorine, necessary to
prevent disease, might react with one of the 70,000
known commercial chemicals floating around the world.
Fowler studies how they react with the invisible
contents of water.
"If you're sitting in a
high-tech office building with synthetic carpets and
things on the walls, those will give off gas,
especially if they're new," he explains.
"It's the combination of things that are coming
out of those products that's dangerous."
2. You are water. So are aliens:
The human body is a big
chemical soup. We're essentially bags of water,
hosting millions of little chemical experiments. All
life in the known universe takes place in water
solutions, explains Taeboem Oh, professor of organic
chemistry at California State University, Northridge.
"We living things are just
a bunch of chemical reactions," he says. Water
is the media that allows chemical reactions,
and life, to occur."
Even in the world's most
desolate locations, even in Death Valley or
underneath the Arctic Circle, there is water, and
there is life. Indeed, astronomers jumped up and down
a few months ago when they discovered water under the
surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
3. Eight glasses a
day is just the beginning:
The problem with being 65
percent water and living on dry land is that you have
to drink. A lot. Parts of you just seep through your
skin and vanish.
Conventional wisdom says that
you should drink eight glasses, or a half gallon, of
water a day. But that's if you're standing still. You
can sweat eight glasses in an hour on a hot day.
"Thirst is not an accurate
indicator of when you need water," explains Dr.
Robert Hosey, who works with UCLA's sports medicine
division. "You don't actually become thirsty
until you lose 1 percent of your body weight in
water."
He suggests 4 to 8 ounces (half
a glass to a full glass) every 15 minutes during
exercise and then, afterward, two glasses for every
pound you lost to sweat. (He suggests weighing
yourself before and after).
The best way to tell if you're
drinking enough, says Eric Malone, director of
Pacific Crest Outward Bound School in California, is
to check your urine.
"You know you're
hydrated," he adds, "when your pee is
clear. Copious and clear."
4. Caffeine sucks
water out of you:
You can drink all the soda and
coffee you want, but you'll still be thirsty.
Caffeine forces your kidneys to create urine
prematurely, draining your body of much needed water
before your intestines absorb it.
"People say they're
thirsty and they drank, what, four cups of coffee and
two Cokes?" says Malone, the wilderness survival
guide. "Duh, you're thirsty!"
5. All bottles are
not created equal:
Two kinds of people have helped
double the bottled-water industry in the last decade,
says Jennifer Levin, spokeswoman for the
International Bottled Water Association: those who
want less in their water and those who want more.
Whether clear, ridged,
blue-tinted or whatever, these bottles have muscled
more supermarket shelf space, springing from 1.2
billion. gallons in 1986 to 2.9 billion last year.
While the majority of people still reach for the tap
when thirsty, Californians drink the most bottled
water per capita, downing an average of 20 gallons
each year.
The brands, too, have become a
part of mainstream culture, showing up on sitcoms and
movies.
6. Water created Southern
California:
If you were thinking about
moving to Los Angeles in the late 1800s, the place
looked like a tropical paradise. Even though the city
and surrounding valleys resembled arid deserts, the
literature used to promote Los Angeles' image to the
world had a more lush look, says Jennifer Watts,
curator of photographs at the Huntington Library in
San Marino.
7. People still love tap
water:
Like most people in Southern
California, Herb Conrad drinks the water. The average
household drinks between 1.4 and 2.9 gallons of water
a day, according to the Department of Water and
Power.
8. You have seen the
words "Reverse osmosis," and you don't even
know it:
In the past year, stores have
popped up around the Valley with names like
"Water" and "1 Water" and
"Aqua Water," and all they sell is,
basically, water. For 25 cents a gallon.
9. Just because
you're near a mountain and a spring doesn't mean you
should drink the water.
Sure, nothing could be more
natural than water. But you don't necessarily want to
drink what you find in the wild.
The bacteria can cause diarrhea
and other nastiness, so campers and hikers should add
iodine drops or tablets to water found in the wild.
1O. Southern
California water tastes great!
That's according to a national
taste test in Berkley Springs,. W. Va., a town famous
for its water and annual festival devoted to the
liquid.
The world's largest supplier of
treated water beat beverages from exotic locales such
as Bluefield, W. Va.; Pittsburgh; Hendersonville, NC;
and Baton Rouge, LA.
"It's no surprise that
American manufacturers of municipal water make the
cleanest city water in the world. Atlantic City,
N.J., won three years in a row," says festival
director Rone. "Of course, you're bringing your
water right out of the mountains in California.
You've got pretty clean water to start with."
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