Thirst for Safe Water

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MICROBES IN DRINKING WATER
Clean water is a basic requirement for public health. And compared to the epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, and cholera that plague many poor nations, here in the US we've pretty much done away with these ancient diseases. But even in affluent America, we still can't turn on our taps without some worry about what comes out.

DISINFECTANTS
Before reaching us, most tap water has gone through treatment plants where it is filtered and disinfected. The process is designed to make the water safe. But, research shows that the most common way to treat water adds chemicals that can get turned into cancer-causing agents.

PESTICIDE RUNOFF
This year in the United States, farmers will apply one billion pounds of pesticides to their crops, and a lot of those pesticides will run off the soil and into rivers and streams that provide drinking water.

ON THE MISSISSIPPI
It's part of Pittsburgh and Denver. It stretches from Alberta to New Orleans. It's the Mississippi watershed, one of the world's great river systems that drains more than a million square miles of forests, farmland, and cities in North America.

BOTTLED WATER QUALITY
For millions of us, the concerns about unsafe water are real and immediate enough to cause us to spend billions of dollars a year on bottled water, and water filters. But are these alternatives really safer than tap water? What are we getting for our money? We thought we'd start our own investigation right here, at our office water cooler.

POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS
In the final installment of our series, Living on Earth's senior correspondent Peter Thomson looks at some of the positive developments in "The Thirst for Safe Water."