#64 Aly Cohen, MD: All you need to know about WATER! Sources, Regulations, Contaminants and Chooseing Filters for your Drinking Water

Dr Aly Cohen. MD and environmental health specialist (and very entertaining speaker), gives us the full low-down about our drinking water in the U.S.. She starts out describing how the 160,000 treatment plants in the US make up ~80% of our water sources and are bound only to the regulations, restrictions and testing from the Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974. At that time, and since, it's only federally required to test for 91 known toxic chemicals; 95,000 chemicals have been introduced into our environment since the 1950's, leaving 94,909 untested for in our drinking water, at least 1000 known to be endocrine disruptors (most others are not tested so, for the most part, we don't even know their impact). She reviews some of these in detail (including a review of why endocrine disruptors are called 'disruptors'. What is in our water is cumulative of everything that goes down our drain- pharmaceuticals, metals in pipes, dead animals and literally anything that gets flushed down your toilet or washes into sewers including industrial chemicals and farm run-off. When that is 'purified', it's often done with other chemicals- chlorine or flourine, etc, that often isn't removed after it does its cleansing action. She also notes the variability of the wastewater quality can intimately depend on the day, including any climate events like floods, that also flood the wastewater plants. This is one way that climate change can directly, day by day, impact our water quality. So what to do?!? First of all, avoid chemicals in all ways possible (check out Dr Cohen's website (https://thesmarthuman.com/), TEDx talk "How to Protect Your Kids from Toxic Chemicals" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSCeP0hyuTI), Smart Human Podcast (https://thesmarthuman.com/podcast/) and her Instagram, Twitter & FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheSmartHuman/). We then do the deep dive into water filtration with the highest recommendations for reverse osmosis (including how this is the minimum set standard for dialysis water used with patients). Listen in! It's not an option! This is information that we need to hydrate our bodies & grow & protect our babies' development, and age with grace. It's water!