Earth's water is constantly in movement. There is no beginning and there is no end. Water evaporates from the earth’s surface into the atmosphere. Eventually it falls back to earth as precipitation. On its way from the clouds to your faucet, rainwater dissolves and absorbs a part of almost everything is passes. The falling rain cleans the air as it falls.

Unfortunately it carries the impurities that were removed with it. As rain falls onto the ground it collects additional sediments like rust, sand and algae. Water eventually finds its way to a surface water supply or percolates downward and collects in an aquifer. As it percolates through the earth, the water can further absorb hardness minerals, iron, heavy metals, radioactivity, organic contaminants and many other complex elements and compounds. Water can also collect numerous harmful, man-made chemical impurities throughout this cycle. These synthetic chemicals are generally odorless, colorless and tasteless and often life-threatening.

The statement, “my parents drank this water for 75 years and it never hurt them,” is no longer a valid excuse to not be concerned with water quality. There has been a massive global increase in harmful chemical waste over the last 50 years. The scientific and medical community has not had time or the ability to study the long-term effects of the more than 70,000 harmful chemicals that can be found in use today. Approximately 1,000 new synthetic chemical compounds are entering the industrial marketplace each and every year. Precipitation falls upon commercial and municipal dumpsites, toxic waste sites, industrial refuse depots, military test sites, leach fields, mining operations and farmer’s fields, where it dissolves minute amounts of toxic chemicals and carries them along. The US Government estimated in 1986 that close to two percent of the nation’s groundwater supplies were moderately polluted by sources such as hazardous waste dumps and leaking landfills. Industrial wastewater is also a major source of water contamination. When certain chemicals come in contact with others, they create new compounds. Chemicals that are considered generally acceptable in controlled amounts may react with other elements and/or chemicals to form new compounds that could be highly carcinogenic. Chlorine is one of the best-publicized examples; it reacts with organic matter in water and forms deadly trihalomethanes (THMs). People refuse to drink their tap water due to health concerns as well as objectionable tastes and odors produced by chlorine and its carcinogenic byproducts. Municipal water treatment facilities are mandated by the EPA to disinfect the tap water to make it safe and potable. In order to meet the standards set by the EPA, our tap water ends up with increasingly higher levels of chlorine and ammonia. Our communities are exposed to chemicals through our tap water.