How Did Arsenic Get in My Organic Rice

I just spent an obscene amount of time sifting through material to purchase a water filter.  I wrote about it here, in my post 5 Steps to Find a Water Filter.  One of the contaminants that we are looking to remove is arsenic.

There are 2 forms of arsenic
Pentavalent and Trivalent - Pentavalent arsenic is listed as being taken out by most RO filters.  Trivalent needs a special filter or free chlorine to convert to the 'easier to filter' pentavalent.

Now what does this have to do with aresenic in rice.  Or your organic leafy greens.  Or your kid's organic apple juice.  WTF.  How did this happen?

Well let's think about this a second.  I buy a water filter, and so many people do, to filter out arsenic.   And it is expensive.  But are the farmers growing our food filtering their water for the crops?  Probably not.  So the food we eat drinks the water we filter - unfiltered.  Then we eat the food.

Huh.  What's one to do?

We need to go back.  We've become so accustomed to this idea of just taking out the things we don't like or don't need - because we can have it 'our way.'  That we've forgotten sometimes the best thing to do is not do it to begin with. 

There is this looming threat that making industry clean up its filthy act is somehow going to cause an economic meltdown.  We'll be out of jobs, have no access to credit, less food, or God forbid - no television.  We walk around ignoring, shrugging our shoulders.... 'oh well, I gotta go to work now.... nothing I can do about it.... hey did you see the new iphone...'  Not a care in the world.  We'll just filter it out of our water.

But there's a huge flaw here.  There's a kind of fantastical denial of reality here.  It's like the revelry in the city at carnival, in the small, yet hugely populated, city - while the vast land that supports the city is raped to the point of death - where a handful of years later - even those in the city will feel it's suffering.  When the poisons of industry have been so thoroughly spread across the Earth that there will be no pristine corner left. 

I don't know, I'm on a rant.  I go to work too.  I work for a man on a quest to get rich at all costs.  He doesn't care who he screws - as long as his sports car is shined, his wife quaffed, his kids equiped with the latest gadget.  He's a nice guy - you know - he'd buy you a beer and chat you up with jokes.  But he will not tolerate anyone playing with his road to riches.   He is an industry man.  He's the kind of man whose sold us a vision to suit his purpose.

It's sad, but we've been hypnotized into believing that we need all this crap... so much so that we've allowed a handful of pied pipers to lead us like sheep to slaughter.  We've handed over the keys to our homes, our children, ourselves - for tech gadgets, sexy handbags, and martini bars. 

Health is politics.  And until all of us pursuing health, stop looking for ways to undo the damage - and start looking and engaging in ways to stop the damage to begin with - our health will teeter in perpetual turmoil.

So how did arsenic get into your rice?  rice milk?  rice formula?  potatoes?  leafy greens?  you?

We let them put it there.  We sat back, we are sitting back - as we all contribute to our own demise.  We're creating a world where future generations may not live longer, or even as long, as past generations.  But 'hell,' we say 'at least they lived fast.'  Yes, fast, cheap, and out of control.   Trading our health and life for cheap disposable shit. 

5 Steps to Finding a Water Filter

First off let me say that this is the beauty of our system.  We allow industry and such to pollute our air, water, food - and enable a few to get rich beyond comprehension - while we all then pay to remove what the profiteers put in.... namely poisons.  I will try not to get political, but I find that more and more health, food, clean air and water are all political.  And sadly, I observe oblivion until faced with the cliff.  Meaning, I see so many people just brush it off as 'oh well,' until they have cancer and are getting dropped from their insurance, or blocked from treatments that their insurance won't cover.  Then suddenly, they're interested.  At any rate, I could go on and on.

The Best Water Filters

Is this even possible.  And if it is - where does one begin?

5 Steps to finding a water filter:

1. Review your city or municipality report.  Now bear in mind,they only report on chemicals that are mandated by the EPA (politics & health).  So you can look at the EPA water regulations here.  Here's where when Congress gets together and talks about cutting funding for regulations - to save a handful of jobs and really just a couple fat profiteers - it affects our lives.  You will see - and these are just regulated chemicals (here's a list of unregulated chemicals that show up in our water everyday) - a list of effects from exposure include:  increased risk of cancer, kidney & liver damage, increased cholesterol, increased blood sugar... Hey do any of these effects sound like the landscape of current chronic and exploding illnesses.  But hey, it's the sacrifice we give for 10 jobs and a CEO/owner/shareholder who makes a 6-10 figure salary - untaxed.  Seems like a good trade.

2.  After you've looked at your city report, I'd also recommend looking at the Environmental Working Group's site - they simplify it visually.  They're research is a couple years old - but we all know things are getting worse on that front - not better.  So it at least will give you a sense of what the numbers were.  Also, I think it's hard when you look at your city report - to take 3ppb (3 parts per billion) as a serious threat until you see that the health limit is 0 or 1 ppb.  Bear in mind, if you are anything like me, fix yourself a cocktail before looking, because you will be ANGRY.  The one hugely insane aspect is that health limits are usually about 1/10th the legal limit.  So you'll probably see a lot of exceeded health limits tests - but no legal ones.  'How can that be?' you ask.  What a-hole established a legal limit that is 10x beyond the health limit.  Oh, yes all the a-holes we supposedly elected to establish laws that protect our lives.  I've pulled an example from Environmental Working Group's site - EWG.org.  This chemical is awesome - because the health limit is 0ppb, but the legal limit is 80ppb.  Ok, what ass made this regulation!?!?!? Let's hope he's getting his full dose of the crap daily and then some.

The first column is chemical, the second column is average levels found 2/maximum level found underneath, the 3rd column is has the health limit been exceeded (yes/no) and the health limit (here is 0ppb), the 4th column is has the legal limit been exceeded (yes/no) and what is legal limit, last column is test dates (yellow means health limit violation).

Bromodichloromethane

7.38 ppb 12 ppb

Yes MCLG: 0 ppb

No 80 ppb

3.  Now comes the hard part.  Figuring out which filters actually take stuff out.  Again, this is partly regulatory because thanks to lax legislation there are legal limits of poison.  Go figure.  But I eventually ended up here, at the NSF site.  This is not the National Science Foundation - this foundation is separate.  At any rate, they have a searchable, if clumsy and eye-crossingly designed database.  You can compare then contaminants and water filter systems.

4.  Prepare for mass confusion and more anger.  Most of these chemicals are not pronounceable - let alone removable.  I was recently disturbed to find that there were health limit violations in our water system for halocetic acids.   Which according to the super helpful woman at the NSF International place - some are removed as VOCs and others - well they haven't found a way to effectively remove them.  So, you can wipe some of these puppies down, but not all.

5.  Prepare to bust your budget.  Now, I will not necessarily list which filter I'm going to use - but I can say it's not a 3M or GE product.  These are the same cats putting the chemicals in the water.  It's genius really, make stuff, pour chems in the water, sell that stuff, fight regulation, and then make & sell filters to take some of the stuff you put in the water back out so people don't fall over and die too soon.

I now understand why Gerson recommends that cancer patients not drink water.  Although, I think it's mainly since they are drinking so many juices on his protocol.  And he was working nearly 60years ago.  But still, it makes sense even more nowadays.  Although, lest we forget that same poisonous water is used to water our crops that absorb the contaminants.  For me, best solution - don't let industry dump shit into the water in the first place.

I also think that - this does remind me of the Epidemic of Absence book again.  Some of the contaminants are biproducts of disinfection.  Not that I want antibiotic resistant bacteria in my water, but I'm still less concerned about some bacteria than chemicals.

Anyways, hope this helps.  Post your healing adventures.