I have been talking about the use of safe water filters for bathing and drinking for the past year or so but never once have I posted a blog entry about it because I try and keep my business and personal stuff separate. But last week an expat customer, who also reads my blog, asked me why I didn’t post things about water filters and such to my blog if I truly believed in clean water. I thought about it and realized that it was a good idea and it should not be seen as only commercial as I do what I do because I want the community to have the best possible info about things I have learned and I believe my posts on the Shanghai Expat forum reflect this. So this gave me a good reason to collect all the info I have already posted and written in various places and put it in article form so that this blog entry can be a collection of facts I have collected about water in Shanghai as well as about my family’s solutions to the issues.
So, about Shanghai Water:
According to the World Bank and various other UN and international sources:
• 436 of 532 rivers in China are polluted
• 13 of the 15 major cities along the 7 main water source rivers are affected by severely polluted water.
And according to the State EPA in China:
• More than 90 percent of urban rivers are seriously polluted in China
• 75 percent of the lakes are eutrophicated due to fertilizer and pesticide run-off
• The sewers do not match among the vast majority of cities
• In more than 600 cities, only over 270 have sewage treatment plants, but more than 60 percent of these are not running or not used
• 360 million of the rural population having no safe water to drink
• Pesticides, fertilizers and domestic sewage exist almost everywhere thre is water in China. Almost 25 million acres (150 mu) of China’s farmland has already been polluted and out in the countryside, environmental protection facilities do not exist.
How does that translate for us here in Shanghai? Well, the HuangPu River is our main source of tap water here in Shanghai. It and all its tributaries collect water along with pollutants from upstream along the Yangtze River, and all this gets dumped into the ocean. We are near the mouth so near the end of that process. Shanghai is one of the 15 of 17 major cities affected by severe pollution in our water source.
The Good news is that Shanghai DOES have a municipal water system that make tap water essentially Potable, disinfecting the water that services those tapped into its system. If it were not for the heavy metal content, it would be potable and drinkable in many parts of the city.
Another piece of good news is that Shanghai DOES have up to date sewage facilities that pre-treats and treats its wastewater and sewage before dumping it back into the river downstream from the water system in take.
So, the water that comes from the tap here in Shanghai is treated and disinfected typically does not have biological contamination…none that is likely alive anyhow, due to the high chlorination of the water. However, other contaminants still exist, ironically including a common carcinogen, the chlorine used to disinfect the water.
Water for Washing
As more that 80% of household water use is for washing, cleaning and bathing, most water filters found are geared towards getting the water clean enough for those uses. Contaminants such as rust, silt, and sediment are common in Shanghai water but these contaminants do not grossly affect the health of humans when used to wash with. It may not be the cleanest water to do your white laundry in, but it will not affect one’s health.
Ironically, it is Chlorine, the chemical added to disinfect the water, that is easily absorbed by human skin when washing or brushing one’s teeth and is considered carcinogenic. Luckily, there are many chlorine filters available in the market to remove this chlorine from your tap water and your shower water. Bathing and showering in chlorine free water helps keep skin less dry and allows less use of shampoo and conditioners, and in my wife’s case, she realized she was using a lot less body lotion as well as chlorine can really dry skin up. Our solution was the ShowerBaby shower head, which while not the most attractive looking hand held shower head, certainly does its job and is well worth its weight in gold, or at least cost savings of skin and hair products!
A tap faucet version called the Waterbaby does the similar thing and while we initially bought one to basin bathe our son when he was first born, we found washing and brushing with this water was much more refreshing than with normal Shanghai tap.
Water for Drinking
Other than particulate contaminants that are fairly harmless, there are more pollutants to be concerned about when one starts to consider actually drinking the water. Organic and inorganic compounds, spillovers from farming and industry upstream, are certainly a great concern. And of course Heavy Metals, which are not filtered out by the Municipal water system, nor by many local in-home filters.
70% of the world is covered in water, around 70% of the human body is made up of water. One could argue that Water is Life. And yet more than 300 million rural Chinese citizens lack access to clean drinking water. We are quite lucky as actually, Shanghai Municipal water is generally pretty good in terms of being disinfected, as it leaves the plant, but as it travels through the old infrastructure, it picks up rust and other stuff in the pipes so by the time it gets to your home, many secondary sources of pollution and contamination have access to your water so it is best to drink properly filtered water...and a carbon filter is NOT the answer as it does NOT remove heavy metals. A Carbon filter only removes particulate matter, and certain chemicals AND changes the taste, but other chemicals and heavy metals get through. Only a purifier utilising steam distillation or a reverse osmosis filter (commercially available options anyhow) will remove everything including the heavy metals properly for drinking.
Our family’s solution was in fact to install an Atlantis Drinking Water Purifier. It is a 6-stage water purifier designed for the lower quality incoming water from the Chinese tap system. Its SIX stages remove different pollutants in stages, ultimately stripping it clean of almost everything, then reintroducing minerals and softening the water prior to it being dispensed for consumption. We utilize the water from the Atlantis for all forms of consumption including drinking, cooking soups, rice and even pasta, as water is absorbed into these foods when cooking and one would not want heavy metals in any of this food.
Ultimately, a few of my quick tips on this:
• Always drink properly filtered healthy water – that which does not contain heavy metals or organic chemicals or organic pollutants, and that which DOES contain some healthy minerals and is preferably mildly alkaline rather than the acidic water found in many RO systems that do not remineralize.
• If one has a good filtration system, ALWAYS service your filters regularly. Please note that Activated Carbon Filters needs to be replaced every 3-6 months regardless of volume of use as Carbon Filters pick up organic pollutants that can infect the filter and then leach back into the drinking water if allowed to sit too long.
• Boiled Tap water only helps disinfect water but does not remove many pollutants including Heavy Metals. In fact , in most cases all it does is raises the concentration of contaminants as healthy water evaporates in the process.
• If drinking bottled water, please make sure the machine is cleaned and disinfected regularly and that the bottles are finished as close to every 3 days as possible as that is the point which the bacterial level will exceed drinking water standards.
• If you suspect your water quality at all, have your tap water AND filtered water tested. Directway can do a visual test via electro-precipitation to give you a visual of what is in the water. A more detailed lab test can be done by labs such as Pony Test or the official Shanghai Institute of Quality Inspection.
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