Drinking water throughout the day is essential for maintaining your overall health. It keeps you hydrated, helps regulate your body temperature, ensures proper kidney function, improves your skin’s appearance, keeps your joints and muscles healthy, and so much more.
It’s not just the act of drinking water that matters, though. What also matters is the quality of the water you’re drinking. Contaminants could pose many different issues. Here’s what you need to know about what’s in your drinking water.
What’s In Your Water?
In West Texas, we often find dangerous substances in our groundwater, including Radon, Arsenic, and various pesticides. The Brazos River (particularly in the upper part of the watershed) contains a high amount of salinity due to naturally-occurring underground salt deposits. We often encounter brackish water in the Permian Basin (Midland/Odessa).
Effects of Contaminants In Your Drinking Water
Contaminants in your drinking water have several undesirable effects, including:
- An unpleasant taste or smell
- Stains on your glasses and dishes
- A cloudy appearance
- Build up in your pipes that impedes water flow
One of the most significant effects of contaminants in your drinking water is the negative impact they can have on your health. Unsafe levels of these (and other) pollutants can contribute to gastrointestinal issues, chronic diseases, nervous system or reproductive complications, and more.
Isn’t Drinking Water Already Treated?
If you receive your water from a public or municipal water system, it’s regularly tested for various types of contaminants. What’s important to note, however, is that the water test is done at the source. Its quality doesn’t measure the quality of the water you pour into your glass from the faucet. It has to travel through pipes to reach you. These pipes age over time. Unforeseen occurrences could result in a breach of water treatment or delivery facilities, which result in alerts to boil your water.
One way water treatment facilities address the potential for contamination during delivery is to treat the water with chlorine. While it’s effective for killing all kinds of pathogens and neutralizing odors, chlorine causes its own set of problems, including serious health issues.
If your water comes from a well, it doesn’t go through any treatment process. It goes straight from the well to your tap. As such, it could contain various contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, algae, and microplastics (to name a few).
Improving the Quality of Your Drinking Water
Whether you get your water from a public/municipal source or you have a well in your back yard, the best way to improve your drinking water quality is to have it tested. A water analysis will tell you what’s in your water, enabling you to implement the best solution based on the results. You can take charge of your water with a Kinetico city water treatment or well water treatment plan. With the right strategy, you’re better equipped to remove the contaminants and health risks that concern you most, leaving you with nothing but fresh, clean, healthy drinking water.
If you want to find out what’s in your drinking water, Kinetico of West Texas is here to help. We’ll perform a free water test, and we can recommend the best water treatment solutions based on the results. For more information, contact us today!
