I agree. What's to say your tap water had not run through the $#!+ and poo of numerous creatures as surface runoff before reaching a body of water (where a lot of creatures probably also piss on). Sewage would hardly be any different, only, sewage would also have heavy traces of household chemicals, like soap, detergent and other cleaners.

I don't think it's that disturbing at all, so long as I don't see how it is done. It's kinda the same with meat; if I didn't see how blood-smeared my chicken was, I'd totally enjoy my KFC bucket

 

 

 

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Well i heard that the water here in the UK has on average passed through 7 people, could be a myth but i think we also used recycled water, and either way we are all drinking recycled water as its urified into water and put into rivers and then goes into the ground then wells then lakes then urified again and drunk again. And as said the water you drink has gone through so many things, in resorviors they breed trout and fisermen fish in them so there is bait, dead fish, fish excretions, eggs along with the fishermens spit and god knows what else not to mention the polution and probably toxins like insecticides and fertilizers so we can see that the filtration proccesses are tight and work wonders to give us safe water and they wouldnt be any different if it was sewage being filtered.

Ive seen on TV how sewage is filtered and released into rivers and its a lot of steps from filtering to using coagulant to make fine particles group together and sink, to chlorine etc.. to kill germs and so on... its safe otherwise we would all be very ill

So i have no problem with it either

 

 

 

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True, true. Also, let's not forget that sewage, in most countries, also undergoes treatment before it can be released into the wild as effluent water. By the time it reaches the water distribution plant, it'd have to undergo yet another series of treatment to make it all a whole lot cleaner so we see that it really does go through a lot.

I must admit, though, if we were to immediately use sewage water, we'd need much more stringent measures. As it is, we're still letting nature, "age, mature, clean and ferment" our water for quite some time before the effluent actually reaches the water treatment plant.

One thing I must note, though, why? Why the sudden concern about having drinkable recycled water? At the moment, sewage water, once "cleaned" goes into the ocean, or is used to water plants in the park or whatnot. Anyway, the point is that this water still goes back where it came from; either back to the ground or released back into the water cycle. Sooner or later, it pretty much returns as groundwater, rain or surface runoff, which eventually finds its way back to the water treatment plant.

Pardon the humor but are you guys just in a hurry to drink waste water that you can't wait for the Earth Mother to cleanse it herself?

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i dunno.....i have a problem with trusting the water i drink to some scientist....after all, not EVERYTHING has been discovered yet has it?
and i certainly dont like the idea of drinking stuff that might have been my excrement a few days ago...
and after all, is there any real shortage of water lol? id say there was more water than we want, with the ice cap melting and all...

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True, but that's pretty much what happens in the world today, whether we like it or not. Our crops are fertilized by synthetic substances created by chemists. Pharmacists brew our drugs, meds and even our daily vitamins. The Internet is constantly developing, driven by efforts of computer scientists.

Just because we don't have 100% assurance that something's safe does not mean it is totally unsafe. If, in a desert or in a water-deficient country like India, you were given a glass of recycled water, would you refuse to drink it simply because of the 0.001% chance it contains microbes you are not immune to? I could be wrong but I'm guessing not

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Esp with drugs & so forth.. (the prescribed ones) ordered by the docs and so forth. It seems that things like science does effect things that happen in the world today, esp with the earlier proposal of flouridated water in some areas (which since has been rejected).

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I just read on the newspaper, about a month or two ago, about something I think they called LifeStraw. Basically, it's a tall plastic cylinder you can conveniently wear around your neck. It filters a lot of microbes and nasty stuff from dirty water, rendering it, more or less, potable. Costing a dollar or three, this was to be used so African people can drink from the river without much worry. I hear that water sucked from this "straw" has an iodine aftertaste and that there are certain chemicals it cannot take out of the water.

Still, if these people, who have never seen scientists in their life, could trust their life to a handful of foreigners telling them to suck water through a plastic cylinder, why can't we, citizens of better-off countries trust our own chemists and engineers to know what's good for us? These people aren't even foreigners, they're one of us, our neighbor, friend, employer or possibly a relative of ours. Science ain't all that bad; just because we made the mistake of spraying CFC's on our atmosphere and belched carbon dioxide into the skies doesn't mean all pills from the local pharmacist are poisonous or carcinogens.

In the same way, I don't see you guys having problems with your own tap water. Even my paranoid chemistry teacher contented herself with boiling/freezing water depending on her mood, I guess. (Traditionally, boiling water is the safer method but it does consume fuel. Freezing water, on the other hand, kills some microbes but there are others that survive temperatures well below freezing)

My parents, on the other hand, buy water filters, just like almost everyone in the country (that is, for those who could afford it)

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A few months before I saw in progrm in discovery channel, that somewhere in America a research lab has developed a technology and the equipments for making our urine into drinkable water. The equipment is small and be carried with us. So if you are planning for a long trip around the world, you better get this, you'll neve need to buy bottles of water

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The only problem with drinking recycled water stems from a psychological one i.e. people don't like the idea of drinking water that comes from sewage.

The fact of the matter is, water that you use in your household goes either into a sewage system which is treated somewhat and then dumped into the nearest body of water (rivers, lakes, the ocean) and stormwater (like what runs off the road as well as goes down your bathroom and kitchen drains) gets dumped untreated into the nearest water. So you are already drinking what is essentially recycled sewage and drain water. Then you have to factor in things like runoff from farms, acid rain, algal blooms that proliferate because of biological pollution or how about the fact that whenever you take a nice dip in the sea, part of the colour that water has is faecal matter and biological decay and also the fact that sewage and runoff ends up in the sea, often right beside beaches.
My advice would be, get over it. Astronauts do it all the time. Many people around the world are drinking recycled water and the fact of the matter is EVERYONE is drinking recycled water to some degree.
As for bottled water. Unless you drink distilled water, MOST bottled water is collected from the source (usually a spring) and put straight into bottles. There is no treatment involved. Read the back of the bottle - it will often say "bottled at the source". Tap water is more treated than most bottled water lol. And of course that isn't even taking into account the HUGE impact that the bottles are having on the environment. How's that for your conscience?!
I would rather drink recycled water any day knowing that it is better for the environment than buying bottled water which is 1. taking water out of the ecosystem and therefore disrupting it, 2. untreated anyway and 3. leaves behind plastic which pollutes then environment.

It's not a hard choice.

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Here is an article about recycled water that is an interesting read.

Looks like the future is here already.

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