72 hours: thats about how long youll survive without a drop of water to drink.

Other than
oxygen, theres nothing more important to keeping us alive than clean and pure drinking water. Without
water, none of the important molecules in our body, such as proteins, sugars, and DNA would be able to
function (because they only work when surrounded by water). Its something that we may take for
granted, but its not guaranteedjust look at the chemical poisoning of the water supply in Flint,
Michigan (NBC News, 2016). In fact, there are sometimes so many contaminants in drinking water that
just drinking it in some cities can make a person very ill. According to the World Water Council (2016),
1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water. How, then, can water be made safer to drink? This is
a good question, and it was answered in Food Channels program Good Eats hosted by Alton Brown.

Good Eats explores the world of food and cooking through a chemists eyes, and features the
science behind what we eat and drink and how it is prepared. In the episode Water Works II (Season
10, Episode 6), Alton Brown discusses water, beginning with government standards for public drinking
water and how city agencies meet those standards. In the episode, I learned that even when we think
water has been cleaned and processed by a city, there may still be troubling impurities in it. These
contaminants can either be biological, such as Cholera bacteria, or toxic and unhealthy chemicals like
lead, mercury, and benzene (Brown and Brown, 2006). According to pediatrician Dr. Lawrence Reynolds,
exposure to toxic drinking water containing metals such as lead, will increase the risk of children with
lower I.Q. scores (Baldwin, 2016).

So how can biological threats such as bacteria and viruses be removed from water? In many
cities and counties, local water departments are responsible for removing or killing the vast majority of
pathogens (the biological name for germs that can make you sick). It does this using two main methods:
chlorination and filtering. Chlorination involves introducing bubbles of chlorine gas (or
chlorine-containing chemicals) to the water in very small amounts which are able to kill germs, but
remain harmless to people. This is why tap water can sometimes smell like a swimming pool (which is
disinfected with chlorine as well, but in larger amounts). Filtering is the process of passing water through
a screen or by an absorbing material that allows pure liquid to pass through while blocking solids. The
water utility plant uses what are called sand trap filters, which use a chemical process called adsorption
(this occurs when small particles stick to a material with a very high surface area, such as sand) to
remove these pathogens and other small particles as the water flows through very fine grains of sand.
These grains, because of their microscopic cracks and pits, have a lot more surface area than perfect
spheres of the same size and are thus able to remove a lot of material from the water that flows through
them (Letterman, 1999).

Once water arrives where you live, it should

meet the governments Environmental Protection
Agency requirements. However, it may still contain
some hard-to-catch pathogens called bacterial spores.
According to the CDC (2015), bacterial spores are tiny
and dormant bacteria that can make you sick if they
wake up and begin multiplying. They are small and
tough enough to pass through sand trap filters and chlorination that cities use to clean up their water
supplies. Home filtration systems such as Pur and Brita can act as a second line of defense to catch
these impurities. They contain microscopic metal screens designed to catch the tiny spores that can
make us sick. The best home filtration systems should use screens with holes the size of 1 micron (1
millionth of a meter) to guarantee that spores are filtered out.

Other non-biological contaminants like metal ions and organic chemicals can also pose a hazard
to health and cause a bad taste. In addition to screen filters, home purification systems also use two
other methods to capture these substances: ion exchange and activated charcoal adsorption. Ions are
metal atoms that become positively charged when dissolved in water. Opposite charges attract one
another and can be removed from water by a negatively charged material called an ion exchange resin.
It is an exchange because you cannot simply remove one charged thing without replacing it with
another. Toxic metal ions like lead and mercury are replaced with harmless ions like sodium and
potassium (Zagorodni, 2007). Another way to trap dangerous toxins is through activated charcoal, which
is another material that can be used in the chemical process of adsorption. Activated charcoal is a
special form of pure carbon (made from the same
stuff you use to BBQ) thats been ground down into
grains much smaller than sand and then chemically
modified. In fact, the grains are so tiny and full of
pores that 1 gram of active charcoal has the same
surface area as two tennis courts (14,000 square feet)!
It also possesses a strong attraction for organic
molecules like benzene that can affect safety and
taste. Alton Brown says the best way to continue to
keep your home water supply safe is by using ion
exchange resins and active charcoal in your filtration
system (Brown and Brown, 2006).

Overall, what I learned from watching the Good Eats episode and from my own research on
making water safe to drink was that water has both incredibly important good and bad attributes: we
need it to survive and for our bodies cells to function but it can also make us sick from invisible,
microscopic impurities that can contaminate it. Chemistry has provided us with some answers for how
to make water safe to drink: chlorination, adsorption, screen filtering, and ion exchange. The question
for all of us is, how do we get these filters and processes to the billions of people around the globe who
do not have access to them? At a minimum, we can protect ourselves when we travel by being aware of
potential water contaminants and even bring our own filtration systems along with us.

References

Baldwin, L. (January 20, 2016). In Flint, public trust poisoned by toxic water drinking crisis. Retrieved
 December 14, 2016, from
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/in-flint-public-trust-poisoned-by-toxic-drinking-water-crisis-2
/

Brown, A. (Writer), & Brown, A. (Director). (2006). Water Works II [television series episode]. In D.
Brown
(Producer), Good Eats. New York, NY: Food Network.

Carr/CDC, C. (n.d.). Electron micrograph of spores of Bacillus anthracis, a gram-positive...

Retrieved December 08, 2016, from
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/electron-micrograph-of-spores-of-bacillus-high-res-s
tock-photography/128623441

CDC. (April, 2015). A Guide to Water Filters. Retrieved December 14, 2016, from
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/crypto/gen_info/filters.html

How does it work. (n.d.). Retrieved December 08, 2016, from

http://www.gacfilters.com/how-does-it-work.html

Lead Levels In Flint, Michigan, Water Have Residents Avoiding Tap. (n.d.).
Retrieved December 08, 2016, from
http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/lead-levels-in-flint--michigan--water-have-residen
ts-avoiding-tap-541315651644

Letterman, R.D. (Ed) (1999). Water quality and treatment: A handbook of community water supplies.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Water Crisis. (n.d.). Retrieved December 06, 2016, from

http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/archives/water-crisis/

Zagorodni, A. A. (2007). Ion exchange materials: Properties and applications. Amsterdam: Elsevier.