Facts about Tap Water

tap water

The water that I drink at home is not directly from tap water. I bought it at a nearby water refilling station. 4 gallons of water cost P28 (half-dollar). It comes in 2 kind of plastic containers: one rectangular one with faucet attached and one circular one that you put in water dispenser.

The internet is filled with scary information about tap water. They say tap water contains chemicals that can cause cancer. They say that pesticides used on farms and lawns near water sources leak to our bodies. They say water contains bacteria that produce water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

But all the sites that give these scary information end with offers of their products: home filtration and purification systems. It makes me wonder if they didn’t manipulated the facts a bit so that people will be scared to drink tap water and buy their products instead. I wasn’t able to find any article about tap water that is not written by people who have interest in selling their products. Well, that’s the internet.

Is Manila tap water safe to drink? If only I can find dependable facts: people who are actually drinking from their tap water, then I’ll do away with my purified water from the water refilling station. It is cheap, yes, but aren’t we paying for water bills so that we can have potable water at home?

This is another reason why TODAY is the best time to go green: because greening means having clean water bodies that are the sources of our tap water. How? We’ll tackle the way in my next articles.

Thinking about Water

In our place at Makati, we enjoy continuous supply of water. The building where I live has a water tank in the rooftop so water for washing and bathing are not a problem here. We also don’t have any problem with the drinking water. We buy purified water at a nearby water-refilling station.

What piques my curiosity is this thought: how come there are thousands of families here in Manila who don’t have faucets at home. They have to get out with their pails and get water from a water pump that the whole community shares.

I saw a long queue once while I was in a taxi stuck in traffic. It was a different sight for me because the people in line have different kinds of water containers with them. Do they fall in line everyday so they can have water for bath? I just find it a little ironic because Manila is surrounded with water. Heck, the whole Philippines is surrounded with water. Not to mention, the amount of water that frequent typhoon brings. There are even areas submerged in flood water the whole year. What is ironic is that there are many Filipinos who do not have clean water at home.

I have not always been a “conservation-conscious” person especially with water. Water conservation is pretty new for me. Water is just around us, it’s not like oil which is a limited resource. Besides, water is very cheap.

But the sight of the long queue of people getting water for their morning bath is a learning experience. It makes me think about my faucet in the kitchen which I always forgot to change because it was dripping. I let the water dripping for days before I was able to go to the hardware store and buy a new faucet. It made me appreciate my daily morning bath. Yeah, it made me think about the importance of water conservation.

In the Philippines, there are people who get too much and people who get nothing. It is also true with clean water.