To Your Health!

And in yet another feel-good story about the perils of the world in which we live, an AP investigation has shown that prescription drugs have been found in the drinking water across the United States. In case you missed this story, you can have a look at it here, here, and here.

Lovely. As if it isn't enough that it was determined years ago that there is no longer any truly "clean" air left on the planet, we now have to worry about the effects of residual pharmaceuticals in our drinking water. Nevermind that we've been sold a bill of goods about the toxins that are put into our water deliberately -- flouride, a waste product from the manufacture of atomic bombs and chlorine, which reacts with other naturally occuring compounds to form trihalomethanes (THMs) which have been linked to asthma, eczema, cancer and heart disease.

Is it really too much to ask that my drinking water contain only three things -- two molecules of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen? Apparently it is. No wonder there are more children born with autism, ADD, ADHD and the like -- although I'm convinced that it's as much a result of unhealthy additives in the food as it is toxins in the water supply.

Not surprisingly, the head of a group representing a major California water supplier was quoted as saying that the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed. Really? I think my alarm is more than duly. I'm not trying to crack the Enigma code here. How much interpretation does it take when there are traces of antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones in my drinking water?

Oh, for the good old days back in the Dark Ages. There wasn't much potable water then, so everyone went around in a kind of haze because they were drinking mead. At least you knew what was in your honey wine wouldn't poison you.

When are we, as a race, going to wake up and realize that if we haven't got our health, we haven't got anything? Trite perhaps, but true. How much money and lives could be saved by simply having the "luxury" of fresh air, clean water and pure food? Everyone's howling about the economy like a bunch of scorched cats without understanding that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ecology.

Of course, to actually make these enormous changes for the benefit of mankind would take staggering amounts of money and effort, and that means that many big corporations might have to short-change their stockholders -- and we can't have that. No, the corporate lobbyists are too powerful and most of our elected officials are quite comfortable being in their back pockets, so I'm not holding my breath that much of this will change during my lifetime -- unless it reaches a tipping point that forces us into a last minute reactionary effort trying desperately to fix what could have been prevented in the first place.

But that is a rant beyond the scope of this post. In the mean time, I'm trying to live a healthy lifestyle and my doctor recommends that I drink eight to ten glasses of water a day.

Bottoms up!