Ozone & Chlorine/ Purifiers or Poisons

[Guest guest]

Ozone & chlorine/purifiers or poisons

 

by Dan Loehndorf

 

 

Poison is flowing from our taps like water. Sediment, lead, acid

from rain, pesticides, chlorine, various bacteria, viruses and other

pests have made a trip to the sink a sometimes fatal hazard.. Ozone

has the potential to purify our water of pathogens and replace

chlorine, the most pervasive water pollutant of all. Yet certain

groups seem to have a stake in keeping Ozone under wraps.

 

Ozone has been around as long as nature. Essentially, it is

electrically charged oxygen, or 03 and is produced naturally by

lightning, waterfalls, breaking waves and the action of photons

striking ambient oxygen floating high in the earth's atmosphere.

 

Across North America, water quality is on the decline. A Canadian

Ministry of the Environment report released in the spring of 1992

stated that " failure to protect water resources from further

contamination would be an unmitigated disaster. " In the United

States, the disasters have already started. In 1993, in Milwaukee,

over 40,000 people contracted a water-born disease known as

cryptosporidium. Over 100 of the infected (those with compromised

immune systems) died within a year. Since 1993, authorities in

Canada have been monitoring cryptosporidium outbreaks and found them

growing in number all across the continent.

 

The common solution to the problem is simply to add more poison-

specifically, a poison known as chlorine. Giardia, or " beaver

fever, " is resistant to low levels of chlorine and has prompted

cities to increase their chlorine content over the past few years.

Chlorine, however, is useless in preventing cryptosporidium

outbreaks, as intolerable amounts of the toxic substance would have

to be added to the water to reliably cleanse it of the bug. Giardia

and cryptosporidium are resistant to chlorine because they leave the

body of their host by riding in feces, balled up in little shells,

or cysts, that protect them until they are consumed by another

victim.

 

Feces-contaminated water is an international problem. Environment

Canada reports that, worldwide, there are over 34,000 deaths daily

from feces- and sediment-contaminated water. There is speculation

that extensive environmental degradation of the watersheds has

allowed excrement from farms and wild animal habitats to leak

directly into municipal water supplies and eventually to your tap.

 

Ozone is the perfect answer to the global clean-water crisis. The US

Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency

found that ozone effectively destroys 99.9992 per cent of pathogens,

including giardia and cryptosporidium. The American Water Works

Association did research in 1991 that found ozone effectively

neutralized viruses, bacteria, amoeba, protozoa and spores in

municipal water supplies. At the Second International Symposium on

Ozone Applications in 1997, WJ Masschelein, honorary president of

the International Ozone Association, summarized some of ozone's

other benefits as a water purifier:

 

" Ozone is now used for taste and odor control, removal of iron

manganese....biodegradability of dissolved organic substances,

ability to cope with parasites and alone or with synergic procedures

[to remove] very refractory compounds like chlorinated pesticides. "

 

Ozone has no known toxicity. Many people even inject it directly

into their bloodstreams for its therapeutic benefits. The father of

naturopathy, Dr Benedict Lust, was a proponent of ozone for the

treatment of various illnesses and ozone therapy is a certified

naturopathic technique today. Freshly ozonated water is one common

therapeutic modality. The ancient Greeks called ozone " the breath of

God, " in reverence for its healing properties.

 

Even ozone for water treatment is not a new idea. The first ozone

generator was invented in 18S7 by a German named Werner von Siemens

and it wasn't long before the first ozone water treatment plant was

up and running in Ousbaden, Holland in 1893. Today, over 3,000

cities use ozone to purify their water, including Montreal, which

has the world's second largest ozone water purification plant,

purifying over a million cubic metres of water per day. But many

municipalities have been slow in catching on. Milwaukee only

recently began using ozone to clean its water, and only after

intense pressure from 40,000 cryptosporidium victims.

 

In Vancouver, when a citizens' committee was formed to decide on

water treatment alternatives, they were instructed by city officials

that ozone was more expensive than chlorine and that cryptosporidium

was not a problem. When concerned parties discovered that the

chlorine plant had doubled in size to accommodate increased demand

before the committee had even made its decision, suspicion was

aroused. It was discovered that not only was cryptosporidium a

problem in Vancouver, but in the long term ozone would be

considerably less expensive than chlorine. Last October, the City of

Vancouver was pressured into accepting the ozone water-treatment

alternative.

 

Most major cities still do not ozonate their water. In 1989

Environment Canada commissioned a report which showed increasing

rates of infertility, birth defects, chronic neurological conditions

and increases in cancer incidence in wild animals exposed to

chlorinated water. Environment Canada's Science Advisory Board

concluded that " the concentrations of organochlorines in ... wild

populations are in the same general range as those found in human

populations. Because of their short generation times, populations of

fish and wildlife may be showing effects that will appear later in

human populations. "

 

Other studies have shown that humans are already suffering from the

same effects experienced in wild animal populations. Perhaps the

most insidious of all chlorine's effects is that it kills plankton,

zooplankton and other microorganisms, effectively wiping out the

lowest level of the earth's complex food web, upon which all other

life on our planet depends.

 

Meanwhile, certain government authorities would have the public

believe exactly the opposite of the truth: that chlorine is safe and

that ozone is a dangerous pollutant. In 1994, the Canadian Ministry

of the Environment announced a ban on many chlorine-based products,

but continued to allow it to be added to drinking water, claiming

there was not enough evidence for an " outright " ban on chlorine.

According to the Ministry, chlorine is dangerous in paints and

pesticides, but is safe in drinking water!

 

 

 

 

From the Tap to the Womb: Chlorine Contamination

by Peter Montague

 

A study by the California department of Health published in March,

1998, tracked the drinking water consumption and the pregnancy

outcomes of 5,144 pregnant women in a prepaid health plan during the

period 1989-1991. The drinking water consumption of the women was

ascertained as soon as their pregnancy was registered in the study's

database. Later, the outcome of their pregnancy was compared with

the amount of water they drank and the total amount of

trihalomethanes (THMs) they received from water treated with

chlorine (information received from the water companies).

 

The researchers found that 16 per cent of women drinking five or

more glasses of water per day containing more than 75 ppb THMs had

miscarriages, 1.8 times more often than women with low exposure.

Furthermore, spontaneous abortion occurred, on average, a week

earlier among women with high exposure (10.2 vs 11.2 weeks of

gestation). The researchers also compared women who filtered their

water or let the water stand before drinking it with women who drank

water straight from the tap. (THMs are volatile and will slowly

leave water that is allowed to stand.) The results were consistent

with THMs causing spontaneous abortion.

 

 

Dangerous Exposure

 

Last January, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

published a case-control study showing that serious birth defects

(spina bifida or neural tube defects) are associated with THMs

ingested in drinking water. (Neural tube defects are serious birth

defects in which the spinal cord is not properly enclosed by bone.)

 

This statewide study in New Jersey found a doubled risk of neural

tube defects among those with the highest exposures to THMs in

drinking water. This study also pointed out that flushing toilets,

showering and washing dishes and clothes can inject THMs into

household air, exposing residents.

 

A previous study of 75 New Jersey towns by Frank Bove had examined

80,938 live births and 594 fetal deaths that occurred during the

period between 1985 and 1988. This study examined public water

company records and compared pregnancy outcomes to the amounts of

THMs delivered to the home in drinking water. It did not examine the

amount of water ingested. The study found no relationship to fetal

deaths, but the likelihood of neural tube defects was tripled by

exposure to THMs at levels exceeding 80 ppb.

 

Neural tube defects are known to be associated with vitamin B12

deficiency. Studies show that vitamin B12 use by the body can be

disrupted by chloroform, one of the four main THMs in chlorinated

drinking water.

 

 

An even earlier case-control study reported on pregnancy outcomes

among women who delivered babies at Brigham and Women's Hospital in

Boston during the years 1977-1980. Indicators of water quality were

taken from public water supply companies. No data were available on

the amount of water ingested. The water quality indicators were

compared among 1,039 cases of babies born with birth defects, 77

stillbirths and 55 neonatal deaths (babies that died within a week

of birth) vs 1,177 controls. Stillbirths were 2.6 times as common

among women exposed to chlorinated surface water, compared to

controls whose water was disinfected with chloramine instead of

chlorine.

 

More recently, a study of drinking water and pregnancy outcomes in

central North Carolina reported a 2.8-fold increased likelihood of

miscarriage among women in the highest exposure group for THMs in

drinking water.

 

Very recently, a second study from the California Department of

Health has shown that, in one area of California, women who drank

cold tap water had nearly a five-fold increased risk of miscarriage,

compared to women who drank mostly bottled water.