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UK Against Fluoridation

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Unfiltered fervour: The rush to get off the water grid

 by Nellie Bowles Waterloo Region Record
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Mukhande Singh, founder of Live Water, at Ukumehame Beach Park, near Lahaina, Hawaii. Singh, who believes public water has been poisoned, started selling spring water from Opal Springs in Culver, Ore., three years ago, but it was a small local operation until this year. - MARCO GARCIA,New York Times


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Unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water flows into a bottle at Opal Springs Water Company in Culver, Ore. - LEAH NASH,New York Times


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A refrigerator door dispenses water from a Zero Mass Water system, which extracts moisture from the air and stores the water, at a home in Oakland, Calif. On the West Coast and in other pockets around the country, many people are looking to get off the water grid, and start-ups have emerged in the last few years to deliver untreated water on demand. - JIM WILSON,New York Times

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SAN FRANCISCO — At Rainbow Grocery, a co-operative in this city's Mission District, one brand of water is so popular that it's often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as "raw water" — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.

"It has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavour profile," said Kevin Freeman, a shift manager at the store. "Bottled water's controversial. We've curtailed our water selection. But this is totally outside that whole realm."

Here on the West Coast and in other pockets around the country, many people are looking to get off the water grid.

Startups like Live Water in Oregon and Tourmaline Spring in Maine have emerged in the last few years to deliver untreated water on demand. An Arizona company, Zero Mass Water, which installs systems allowing people to collect water directly from the atmosphere around their homes, began taking orders in November from across the United States. It has raised $24 million in venture capital.

And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a "mineral electrolyte alkaline" drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon.

Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the "water consciousness movement" grows.

What adherents share is a wariness of tap water, particularly the fluoride added to it and the lead pipes that some of it passes through. They contend that the wrong kind of filtration removes beneficial minerals. Even traditional bottled spring water is treated with ultraviolet light or ozone gas and passed through filters to remove algae. That, they say, kills healthful bacteria — "probiotics" in raw-water parlance.

The quest for pure water is hardly new; people have been drinking from natural springs and collecting rainwater from time immemorial. The crusade against adding fluoride to public water began in the 1950s among Americans who saw danger in the protective measures that had been adopted over decades to protect the populace from disease and contamination........................

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