I figure it is time for a change of pace
post on this blog. For the last little while I have gotten into some relatively
heavy technical stuff that has scared some of my most faithful readers
(including my mom) away. Today I am going to discuss something that is much
more approachable and applicable to our daily lives in a post about water
quality. The idea for this post comes from an unexpected visit I had this week from
a salesman for a water treatment system company. The visit started with
mis-direction, was filled with mis-information and ended with me realizing how
easy it is for someone using the right combination of words to scare families
into buying an expensive system they simply do not need.
The visit was preceded by an official
sounding telephone call. Months ago my wife got a telephone call from someone
purporting to be associated with the Township (we live in the Township of
Langley) who asked her a bunch of questions about our water. Tuesday night we
got a follow-up call from a woman who said she was following up on the survey.
She talked to my wife and made it sound as if the Township had hired their
company to come out and sample our tap water. There was no indication that this
was a sales call but rather she made it sound like we were being asked to do
our civic duty by allowing their professional to come into our house to do some
testing. Since it was a rare night when we didn’t have any children’s sports
scheduled, and I was going to be home, my wife suggested that they come that
night and we scheduled a time. At the end of the phone call my wife was asked
our occupations (purportedly for demographic purposes), she said she was a teacher
and I was a Chemist. Now any sensible company would have had red flags flying
upon hearing my profession (like the lawyer in the jury pool who gets tossed
without any other consideration) but maybe the woman thought I was a pharmacist
so who knows.
At the scheduled time a gentleman arrived
at our door. He was soft-spoken and wearing a pair of khakis, looking every bit
the part of an environmental technician (and I should know) with a clamshell
briefcase full of supplies. He gave me a card with his company’s name (for the
purpose of this blog I am not going to use the company or tester’s name as the
point is not this person in particular but the approach in general) and we
welcomed him in. The card indicated that the company was a “Gold Seal Approved –
Canadian Water Quality Association Member” which sounded sufficiently official
to belay our concerns. He efficiently set up his testing station and cleaned
his supplies with a bottle of water marked as “reverse-osmosis water” (ROW) all
the time chatting about water. I moved back to give him space (I didn’t want to
interfere with his testing) and instead he invited my wife and I forward. First
he pulled out a hand-held total dissolved solids (TDS) meter. A TDS meter
measures the level of TDS in your water and is a pretty straightforward tool.
He first measured his ROW water and got a reading of 4 parts per million (ppm)
which is a very low reading consistent with a distilled/RO water. He then
measured our tap water and got readings a reading of 14 ppm, he then re-filled
the water and got a 21 ppm and started tut-tutting. At this point I started to
tweak into the fact that this was not a Township water test as he didn’t have a
notebook and wasn’t recording anything anywhere. Now as a Chemist who used to
do this type of testing for a living (I now have technicians who do my testing
for me) I can say TDS values from 14 to 21 from our tap is absolutely
tremendous number. The Canadian Drinking Water Guidelines are 500 ppm (ref)
and at 21 ppm I am almost ready to retire my Brita. The tester however was
quite concerned and pointed out how our value was “elevated” I almost chocked
when he used the word “high” at one point. He pointed out that the water system
he uses can get your number down to single digits (as low as 1) which he made
sound pretty significant. At this point I smiled to my wife as we knew this was
no water test and we got ready for the sales pitch.
The next test was the addition of a single
drop of “Agent #5” (I admit I might have the number wrong) which turned the
water purple. Our water was darker purple which he informed us was a bad thing.
He then cleaned his glassware and re-filled the two beakers (one with his water
one with ours) and added two drops of our dish soap. He shook the two beakers
vigorously and lo-and-behold his had more suds. He added two more drops of our
soap to our water and shook it and the suds were still not as fluffy. He
attributed this to the TDS in the water. In this he was almost right in that
one benefit of reverse osmosis is that it softens water a tiny bit and anyone
who has dealt with water softeners knows, the softer your water the better your
soap bubbles. That being said, if your water is too soft it can seem almost impossible
to wash the suds off your body. So now we have had three tests none showing
anything slightly wrong with our water. He then moved to our soap pointing out that
our dish soap was not organic and likely had sulfonic acids in it. How he knew
is an interesting question as our dish soap is from a container without any
labels, but even then sulfonic acids are a feature of detergents that are
completely unspectacular. Soaps need surfactants to deal with oils and it is
just one of many alternatives. It is like being made to fear your vinegar
because it has acetic acid in it...for the non-chemist vinegar is simply a mix
of acetic acid and water. He then informed me that the chlorine in municipal
water mixes with sulfonic acid to make mustard gas, which of course, is
chemically impossible.
His next line of discussion was the
chlorine in our municipal water and how this chlorine can make people sick. He
pointed out that when we shower we are exposed to chlorine gas. This is a
common ploy and one that while chemically true is completely deceiving. I
discussed the concept in detail in an earlier post: How
Big and Small Numbers Influence Science Communication Part 2: Understanding de
minimis risk how minimal concentrations of compounds are essentially
ignored by your body. Except in exceptional cases, like when the municipality
is flushing the lines with chlorine (which they announce in the papers), the
amount of chlorine gas in your shower would not harm a fly, let alone a human.
At this point it was clear to him he was losing us. I kept turning and smiling
to my wife when he said something chemically impossible/improbable so he cut to
the chase and informed us that he was a representative of a water treatment
company and provided us with a quotation for a system at our water intake and a
second system by our kitchen sink, total cost only $8000 and as a bonus they
would supply us with all the soap (organic soap he said) for 5 to 7 years....I
never figured out why it was such an imprecise number. He showed me the soap
samples and the ingredient list looked no different from the list from your
grocery store...although one of the soaps did include goat milk? He then told
us about a recent stop where he had visited a $5 million mansion with a reverse
osmosis system treating well water that had TDS levels of 140 ppm...for
shame...for shame...and that he was going to convince them to buy a better
system from him. As I mentioned above the water quality guidelines are 500 ppm
so 140 ppm from well water is pretty darn good. After this discussion it was
time to thank the representative for his visit and welcome him to leave.
Once the representative was gone, I had a
sit-down with my wife who asked me about all the things she had been told.
Having lived with me long enough, she knew that much of what he had said was
wrong but did not know in what way. It struck me that this gentleman’s
scientific sounding patter would likely sway the uninformed and could convince
someone that they needed a water treatment system when all the data he
presented proved that we had no use for such a system. A Brita water system
would get our drinking water as clean as theirs and frankly leaving a pitcher
of water in the fridge does just as good a job at getting rid of chorine as
either their system or a Brita. We live in a society where we are constantly
informed that everything around us is unsafe. Chemicals are not scary things,
they make up everything around us. For a really easy read on the topic I would
direct you to a post at “the Logic of Science” titled
5 simple chemistry facts that everyone should understand before talking about
science. As for your drinking water? If you live in the British Columbia lower
mainland and get your water from the Metro Vancouver water system then no you
don’t likely need a reverse-osmosis system costing $8000 when a $1.50 water
pitcher you leave in your sink will give you essentially the same quality water.
I'm going to use this opportunity to point out I live in an area with "hard water", we have a small reverse osmosis unit under the kitchen sink we use to cook and drink. The thing cost €150 and has worked fine for three years. But the filter company technician we used quit, and I hear the new guy tries to peddle a membrane replacement every time, when most homes here only replace the two front end filters once a year. $8000 Canadian for a water unit sounds obscene. Do people really buy those? Why would they?
ReplyDeleteApparently they do as the gentleman who visited us claims to have sold numerous units, none to my immediate neighbours thankfully as our water is very good (as I discovered).
ReplyDeleteMy parents used to live in the East Kootenays and their well water was ultra-hard. They had a water softening system that they had to re-load with water softening salts about every other month. It made their water so soft I would struggle to get the soap off myself when I showered during my visits.
What do you think about mineralized alkaline water treatment? I bought such a filtration system last week and haven't opened it because I wanted the sale price and to research at home if my choice was good enough to use it (or return it). I picked it up for less than $200 at a local health store, as I had been thinking about our water for a while (how sometimes it tastes strange) and wondered what bad stuff is in it (recently saw build-up residue effects). Also, my hubby is a cancer survivor, so I thought the alkalinity and mineralization would benefit. We live in North Langley. You said a pitcher would do (my hubby thinks so too), but will this filtration system's beneficial effects make enough of a difference to our water drinking to keep it?
ReplyDeletePeople who do not know are often the ones who suffer. There is a saying that people perish for lack of knowledge. It is so true. That man is not representative of the entire industry but unfortunately, there are people out there who use misuse scientific facts. While water treatment is indeed important, they should also be economical for the consumer.
ReplyDeleteLovella Cushman @ Perfection Plumbing
I like the valuable information you provide in your articles.
ReplyDeleteI’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently.
I am quite sure I will learn lots of new stuff right here!
Best of luck for the next!
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