What do you know about your drinking water? What is in it? Any arsenic? Do you test your water? Does your drinking water smell like a swimming pool full of chlorine? Cydian Kauffman from Pure Water Northwest offers valuable insights into our vital resource. 

it is worth the effort to test not guess and find out what's

in your water and decide for yourself.

Is that acceptable to you?

Today is January 26th, and we roll out that green carpet?

Yes, it is International environmental education day a day dedicated to

spotlighting how learning about our planet can tackle worldwide

hurdles for a sustainable tomorrow.

International Environmental Education Day was established from the 1972

Stockholm Conference, and it's all about bonding with Mother Nature through being

informed and championing conservation.

Water is a necessary natural resource.

But what do you really know about your drinking water and

drinking water issues globally.

Engage actively and stay informed

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What's your pi?.

Well, hello everybody.

Today's topic is Sustainable Water Practices.

My guest today cares about the water we drink, not just in

his community, but globally.

He is familiar with environmental protection standards

from United States EPA.

And I am so interested in learning about the myths regarding water, but

very interested in learning the truth surrounding all of the discussion

over these past years regarding polyflor kill substances or some

of us know them as pfas or forever chemicals, and these do not break down.

So what is it doing in our body and in the bodies of our dogs and

cats, and the wildlife and birds who get into our water system what

about the fluoride discussion?

Cydian will also share how water access has a large impact on

gender equality around the world.

I'm so thrilled to have Cydian Kauffman here on your positive

imprint to share water science.

Cydian, welcome to the show.

How are you?

I'm great.

Thanks for having me on.

How did you get involved in water science?

It's funny because I've only been doing it for about seven years.

It's been quite a battle to get past a lot of the myths and the,

the magical thinking around water.

And, to get to some real truth, I, I got into it because I, I did property

management for a long period of time, and some of our tenants would have bad water

and when I would test the water for them, they would be within the legal level.

And we're, we're talking about water that like smelled like rotten eggs

or it was brown in color and just very undrinkable by human standards.

We're still within the legal level, meaning there was no requirement

by anyone to do anything about it.

That smell, it's comes from a gas called hydrogen sulfide.

It's gonna be found anywhere We have decomposing, kind of biological matter.

You could have a well that has dead tree trunks from the, the Neolithic era and,

and, uh, that could be giving that smell, but more commonly it's caused by biofilms.

So bacteria in water will have a biofilm kind of, uh, effect.

Not all bacteria, but a lot of bacteria will create biofilm as

a place for the bacteria to live.

And that biofilm will off gas hydrogen sulfide.

So chlorine is a great way to destroy biofilm, but you have to do it with

enough intensity and for long enough it has to touch everywhere the biofilm is.

So even if you put chlorine in this tank here, if there's biofilms in

your pipes, then , the chlorine is not gonna do anything for the stuff in the

pipes unless it not only sits but has contact time sufficiently long enough

to destroy the biofilm and that will kill the bacteria that's there as well

as the biofilm and get rid of the smell.

Unless it's a hot water only smell, and that can sometimes be the

anode rod from the water heater.

The solution is almost always intense chlorination of the specific

pipes that have the biofilm in it.

You have your company, which is Pure Water Northwest, which is

located in the state of Washington, in United States, Northwest United States.

So if you could talk about that, and then as you are talking about it,

you can bring in these myths and also the information that you have on the

Forever Chemicals and what you know.

Yeah, sure.

And I saw that you have a dog.

You have a dog sitting there back there.

Hello there.

Yeah.

We we have two dogs.

Two dogs.

Yes.

All right.

So quick question.

You own this water treatment company, Uhhuh, do you give your

dogs tap water, bottled water?

No.

No.

, our water has, uh.

Our water comes from two rivers and, , they then are

go through a treatment plant.

The water is actually really good, relatively speaking, but, the reality

is that the water is, uh, uh, when I say relatively speaking, I mean relative

to a lot of other municipalities, there's still some arsenic in the water.

There's still some uranium, sometimes there's nitrates, there's tons of chlorine

and chlorine byproducts in the water.

So, no, I, I actually treat my water with a whole house, uh, semi de-ionizing

treatment system and then reverse osmosis, and that's what the dogs drink.

Why is it important to have osmosis?

Why, why can't we just have the municipal water or the community water that is.

Treated.

I will talk about that.

And that's, that's one of the things where, , we get into some

myths in the other direction,

actually.

Some people think that municipal water is just bad because it has chlorine in it.

And in reality, you don't wanna think of it as a, a binary good, bad.

You want to decide for yourself what your tolerance is for your own self.

The the truth is, , whatever the municipality or water system

filters, they're getting a lot out of it and they're doing a

really good job considering the water they have to work with.

So I, I in no way want to bad talk them.

They are actually doing a really good job all things considered, but anything

that does get through that is not filtered, your body is the filter.

So.

, if we've got arsenic and, and even though they're very low levels, your body is

going to be filtering that arsenic, , di bromo, chloro, methane, chloroforms

Haloacetic acids acids, trihalomethane, those are all chlorine byproducts.

Your body will be filtering all of that if you don't have some sort

of carbon in place to filter it.

So, , the, the reality of water treatment is it's really easy to do.

If you know the water science, it's, it's not, it's not magic.

There's a lot of people that try and make it seem like magic,

but, , there's things that do work.

There's things that don't work.

If you're only worried about chlorine and chlorine byproducts,

carbon is all you need.

It, it solves a lot.

And honestly, carbon is really good with, , forever Chemicals as well.

They're very good at removing PFAS, , and forever chemicals and the like.

If you're trying to remove fluoride, it is hard to do without some sort of,

, strong base anion exchange resin, or you have to do it with reverse osmosis.

So it, it's all a matter of first testing your water or in some other

way, identifying what's in your water.

Then deciding for yourself, what do you want not to be in your

water anymore, and then target the problem with specific solutions.

That's it.

That's basically all we do every day, and that's what, that's the

simplicity of water treatment, honestly.

Uh, that's very interesting.

And why, why on some days we can turn on the faucet in the municipality and it

smells heavy of chlorine on some days.

And on other days it does not.

Is that when we have the heavy chlorine smell?

Is that when they're just starting to.

Yeah,

put the chlorine in.

Yeah.

And when you've got a, , low dilution situation like yours where it's a

community, well, , you know, if, if you have a municipality treating 50,000

people, the people are dosing the chlorine into the tanks or climbing up with literal

bags of powder cor powder, chlorine up ladders , , holding a bag over one arm

and, and climbing a ladder with the other hand, , and dumping it in giant tanks, and

then it's distributing through the system.

So frequently people who are right after those tanks, they can feel

burning on their skin and people are all the way at the end of the line,

they don't get enough chlorination.

And then frequently biofilms can form like your situation and

that, , because the chlorination is weak down near that end of the line.

Yeah, it, it's all about, , dilution as in how much the chlorine is diluted in the

water and therefore how intense or weak it is, and then where someone is in the

line relative to the point of treatment.

So, so even in the big systems, it matters where you are.

It does, yeah.

I have a client who is in one of the richest parts of town, , over in the

Magnolia area in Seattle, they have, , chlorine, bad enough to burn their skin.

, we put a treatment system so they don't anymore, but they had chlorine that was

bad enough that it would burn their skin.

Yep.

Wow.

Oh my goodness.

What do you see for the future as far as not having people at the end of a

line and getting the, the bad end of this, do you see a way to solve that?

No.

, I don't, this is a city planning thing and we have the infrastructure, we have.

I, I do see that, , that in-home treatment will become more prevalent

and that will become more efficient.

Is it gonna be the responsibility of the

homeowner or the landlord?

Yeah.

For a long time.

we have to have a technological leap to change things.

We would have to have UV that was powerful enough.

'cause right now UV isn't powerful enough.

If UV was powerful enough, we could put, you know, UV in spots along the line and

that would be enough to kill the bacteria and then we wouldn't need chlorine.

, ozone is too dangerous , , to have as an uncontrolled, meaning , we

couldn't really distribute ozone.

Plus its ozone dissipates nearly instantaneously.

It does its job to kill everything that it's touching and then it

dissipates almost immediately.

So currently chlorine is our magic bullet

People are working on things that are still bleeding edge stuff.

They're working on , , positive bacteria, , kind of injection

that counters negative bacteria.

There's some people who are working on a kind of a lichen algae filtration.

That stuff is super bleeding edge, that that stuff is a decade, two

decades away before people would, people are gonna start to use that

in their little localized areas.

, like the, the mad scientist types are gonna start using that more

like 10 to 20 years from now.

It's, it's probably 50 years before.

I don't, I don't know that we'll ever use that.

'cause by 50 years we might have a power solution that changes

the way UV works maybe by then.

So I don't, I don't know because power is an important aspect to water.

Water and power are tied together.

You need power for water.

Yeah.

Right, right.

Which is why you'll be talking about it, why there are some communities

globally and in our own country who do not have access to clean water.

Absolutely.

So what about the fluoride?

What are the myths and what are the truths and what do we need to fear, if anything?

Sure.

The truth is that it goes back to the, the old truth of the dose

is what, , creates the poison.

If you, if you drink, I think it's like nine liters of water.

Pure, pure.

The purest water you can get that's very healthy.

Alkali, um, has minerals in it, whatever.

If you drink that, you could kill yourself if you drink that much.

So the dose matters for everything.

, that said, any amount of something, if you don't want it, there's no reason

to be drinking it if, since it's really usually pretty easy to get rid of.

So just remembering that for everything else I'm about to say, the dose matters.

So when they have areas that people are not having good dental outcomes,

and your teeth are incredibly important for, , your survival, teeth lead

to all kinds of major bad outcomes.

, there's all kinds of studies that talk about current studies that talk about

a direct relationship between the number of cavities you get and your,

your chance of getting Alzheimer's.

There's many, many things related to your teeth.

Teeth health is very important, but.

In a society where, , all the toothpaste is fluoridated and you have easy

access to that, it may not be that important to have fluoride in the water.

, in poorer areas where people might not even be brushing their teeth, fluoride can

actually help and has been shown to help.

, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, they don't fluorinate their

water at all and they have better dental outcomes than we do.

Does that give us any evidence given that they also, consume

much less sugar than we do?

It's hard to evaluate that.

A recent study by Harvard and there, and there was a study done about 27 years ago,

, that showed, , that if you give someone too much fluoride, they lo have lower IQ.

, that was poo-pooed because of the amount given.

And as we mentioned, the dose is what matters.

A very recent study by Harvard, which has still not been fully

vetted, , is indicating that even lower amounts can have some effect on iq.

So, , this has led to a lot of people going, I wanna get fluoride

outta my water, which is fine.

Just make sure you're brushing your teeth with fluoridated toothpaste.

, some people though, and this is, this is where we get the reality

of outliers and how we cannot think of anything in binary terms.

Some people, if you take away the fluoride from their water, even if they're

brushing their teeth with fluoride, toothpaste, get worse dental outcomes

than if they had had fluoridated water.

You have spoken about the water access having a large impact

on gender equality around the world.

Learn more about your drinking water next time on part two with Cydian Kauffman.

To learn more about Cydian Kauffman, go to purewaternorthwest.com

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