15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Will Never Look at Water in the Same Way Again!, September 4, 2007
In my life I have drunk water from a lot of sources. At one point when I was a teenager we discovered water bugs flowing out of a tap in Arizona! We were drinking nearly untreated river water! From then on my mother added chlorine to our drinking water and her treatment was worse than any city supply! I have drunk water from a spring in the mountains (delicious I must say) and (using a filter) from Mexican city taps. So far I am still here, but the message of the "The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water we Drink" by Robert D. Morris, is that I have been very lucky.
Water is an absolute necessity and the modern water treatment plant is our defense, however tenuous, against epidemic diarrheal disorders, including the granddaddy of them all- cholera. Still diarrheal diseases are one of the major killers worldwide, ranking with malaria and AIDS. It is especially hard on children. We in the developed world have become so used to having a "safe" water supply that we don't even think about it. But safe water is one of the many unexciting aspects of necessary infrastructure (like bridges and levees) that are closer to the breaking point than any of us want to contemplate. Morris (who is a medical researcher and teacher) has done us all a great favor by pointing out the precarious position that we are all in.
He starts with the history of the famous removal of the Broad Street pump handle in London in the mid 1850s. This removal apparently stopped an epidemic of cholera cold. He points out that even this step was controversial, with "sanitarians" not convinced of the connection between water and disease. Microorganisms had yet to be directly connected to disease in humans and many thought the problem lay in the miasmas the emanated from the swamps, sewers and cesspools in and around the city. The sanitarians solution was to wash all the waste into the river, thus creating more epidemics of diarrheal diseases, including cholera.
We have come a long way since the days of the Broad Street pump, but only in the developed world. In most of the planet, drinking water is not safe and in some places, such as the war-torn Congo, drinking any but bottled water may be a death sentence. Even bottled water, as Morris points out, is not safe as there are no standards and some is simply high priced tap water. Beside, the plastic is dumped back into our landfills and its safe production takes more water than a bottle holds!
Morris has a number of recommendations that should be followed, if we are to secure our drinking water. He also points out that we ignore the Third World's water problems at our own peril, as diseases seldom stop at borders. This is a must read book for anybody who drinks the stuff - i.e. all of us!
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27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW!! Be Very Afraid, Your Drinking Water is NOT Safe, August 21, 2007
I get hit on a lot by authors and publishers, and one out of a hundred "leads" is actually worthwhile. This is such a lead. The author called me (the dumb ones send their stuff to create landfill) and I was absolutely interested in this topic. I list some other books below.
There are two bottom lines to this book:
1) Chlorine cannot kill all threats and causes its own damage. It specifically cannot kill cryptosporidium, which can quickly sicken tens of thousands and kill hundreds.
2) Your drinking water is not safe to drink, there are some things you can do, but on balance, the Nation needs a *major* campaign to salvage its entire drinking water and sewage treatment system.
I really, really, like this book. The author is gifted at presenting important information in an easy to understand and almost poetic manner. He really puts life into history, and urgency into current concerns.
I have a note: 5 stars. Truly EXCITING, gripping at every point.
He taught me the value of meta-analysis, and I am going to migrate that to the EarthGame that we are building with Medard Gabel, the brilliant cohort to Buckminster Fuller, whose forthcoming book, Seven Billion Billionaires, I strongly recommend.
Although I have read and strongly recommend
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy, the author does an excellent "snapshot" job of alerting us to the dangers of chlorine by pointing out that Chlorine Gas killed tens of thousands, and that as late as 1974 there was no real understanding of its pathologies, and as recently as 1996, there was no real program to address the many deficiencies of our drinking water supplyl.
I draw from this book early on the importance of NOT privatizing water services. Corporations seeking profit cut corners and are most definitely not interested in reducing the risk of death if it impacts on their bottom line. Throughout the book, one finds that BOTH the corporate sector AND the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are in a sympiotic relationship intended to increase profits, lower costs, and kill Americans lightly.
The book provides a number of eye-opening facts, a few of which I list here:
1) Cholera is unique to humans and so tests on animals yield nothing.
2) Safe water is not an end but a constant process.
3) Chicago "yards" are the ultimate poisoneer--manure into water is our death bell.
4) As of 1992, USA water distribution is a disaster waiting to happen.
5) Usefully documents how denial and incompetence increased the death tolls time and again, around the world. Hamburg took 33 years to finally realize that it MUST filter its water.
6) I now understand the value of Environemtnal Epidemiology and will try to factor that into the EarthGame. This author does a superb job of making statistics exciting and meaningful.
7) He tars the EPA and other US Government elements for consistently lying to the public for reasons of money and politics. He makes the case for HONEST SCIENCE. See
The Republican War on Science8) He documents the need for real-time data. I am a proponent of 114 and 119 numbers, and believe that all citizens should be able to call in medical symptoms to a central database, e.g. dial 114-D for diahrea, 114-V for vomit.
9) The author is utterly compelling in describing how very hard it is to track down waterborne diseases, this is literally the needle in the haystack problem, where one might find 10 oocysts in a litter of water--ten *transparent* oocysts.
10) Katrina shut down 1200 water treatment plants and 269 sewage treatment plants.
11) Drinking water distribution is every city's weak link; Al Qaeda has studied US water distribution systems (remember, Bin Laden was an engineer), and they KNOW that enough bags of manure into the system post-filtration will do a great deal of damage.
12) Home filtration systems are ESSENTIAL to guarding against contamination, and boiling water is ESSENTIAL at the first sign of a bio-chemical attack through the water distribution system.
13) The author provides a heart-rending account of how cholera killed 60,000 in Zaire in one week, with corpses piled up 2-3 deep along the road, and the feces from the weak survivors running down the hill into the lake to contaminate that water so that many more might die.
14) The USA has up to TEN MILLION cases of waterborne disease each year.
15) The inter-state and inter-agency process related to water (and I surmise, to every other topic) is completely broken.
16) Washington "action" is "a glacier on steroids."
17) 861 BILLIOIN gallons of SEWAGE go into US rivers in any given year.
18) Bottled water is not only NOT safer or cleaner than tap water, but it costs one thousand times as much, and the water needed to create the throw-away plastic bottle is GREATER than the water contained in the bottle.
The author ends rather quietly, suggesting that dialog, no secrets, and research are needed, and he provides several meritorious recommendations at the end, but I put the book down feeling that my best defense is localized resilience. Neither the federal nor the state not the local governments can be trusted. They have all been corrupted. Until the public realizes that it is drinking poisoned water, one is best off not drinking the water at all.
SUPERB BOOK!!!!! Bravo. See also:
The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and DevelopmentBetrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public HealthDiet for a Small Planet
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