Pure Water Occasional, December, 2023
 
Happy New Year from Pure Water Products, the Pure Water Gazette, and the Pure Water Occasional.

 
In this end of 2023 Occasional you will hear about the oxygen content of water, an excellent whole house city water treatment, the dangers of rising groundwater levels, the sizing of water pipes, the water requirement of producing foods, river water contamination by pharmaceuticals, water shortage at the Panama Canal, vinyl chloride pollution from plastic water pipes and from slaughterhouses, and, as always, there is much, much more. 

Thank you for reading, and sincere thanks from Pure Water Products for your continuing support.  
 
Thanks for reading!

Please visit the Pure Water Gazette, where you will find hundreds of articles about water and water treatment, and the Pure Water Products website, where there is much information about water treatment and specific information about the products we offer. On both of these information-rich sites, pop-up ads and other distractions are strictly against the law.
 
 

 
 
 
Dissolved Oxygen: An Important Constituent of Water
 
 

Our atmosphere consists of around 21 percent oxygen. Water, however, has only a fraction of 1 percent.
 
Oxygen dissolves into water at the point where water and air meet.
Dissolved oxygen, called DO, is made up of microscopic bubbles of oxygen gas in water. This dissolved oxygen is critical for the support of plant life and fish.
 
According to one authority, “DO is produced by diffusion from the atmosphere, aeration of the water as it passes over falls and rapids, and as a waste product of photosynthesis. It is affected by temperature, salinity, atmospheric pressure, and oxygen demand from aquatic plants and animals.”
 
Dissolved oxygen is measured as percent saturation or as parts per million (ppm) or milligrams per liter (mg/L). As the chart below indicates, oxygen dissolves easily into cold water, not so easily into warm, and not at all into boiling water.

 
In water treatment, a high level of dissolved oxygen can make water taste better, but it can also make water corrosive to metal pipes. Dissolved oxygen is a necessary ingredient of many water treatment processes. The use of catalytic carbon to remove iron, for example, requires a minimum of about 4.0 ppm of dissolved oxygen in the source water. Birm, the popular iron removal medium, will not work without sufficient dissolved oxygen. Other iron removal media require varying levels of dissolved oxygen to be effective. 

Oxygen can be added to water by simple aeration techniques which involve exposing the water to air. Ozone is also used in water treatment to greatly increase the oxygen content of water.
 
 

 
Glasses show how oxygen leaves water. Milky water on the left with high level of dissolved oxygen. On the right, the air has gone back to the atmosphere and the water is clear. Often, a film will be left at the surface or “skin” at the top surface of the water. When cloudy water clears from bottom to top the discoloration is harmless air. Water cloudy from silt clears from top to bottom and leaves residue at the bottom of the glass. It is not uncommon for water from new water filters to appear cloudy because of air being rinsed from the new filter media. The milky color is temporary.
 
 

Our Coconut Shell Catalytic Carbon Backwashing Filter for Whole House Treatment

For City Water Treated with Either Chlorine or Chloramine

 
 
 
We’ve been selling whole house filters for city water for several years in a variety of styles, with different carbon choices and different control valve configurations. The filter on this page is the best backwashing filter we can build for city water users. We present it in four basic sizes, with size recommendations based on family size.
American cities use either chlorine or chloramine as the basic disinfectant. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but it’s no secret that when chlorine or chloramine reach your home they’ve done their job and you will like the water much better if you remove them from water that you bath in and drink. This premium coconut shell catalytic carbon filter is designed for top performance either with chlorine or chloramine.
An issue in filter choice is that although chloramine and chlorine are removed by filter carbon, chloramine is much harder to remove, so a specialty carbon known as “catalytic carbon” is the carbon of choice if your city uses chloramine. The high quality catalytic carbon used in the filters below is Aquasorb coconut shell catalytic. It is excellent for chloramine and much better than it has to be for chlorine removal.  Aquasorb is a hard carbon for long life and it is exceptionally clean carbon that puts few if any carbon particles (fines) into home service lines.
The mineral tank is the water-saving Vortech and the control valve is the SXT electronic version of the tough and reliable Fleck 5600.
 

Unit Description
Tank Black Vortech. No gravel support bed needed. Excellent service flow. Saves thousands of gallons of backwash water over its lifespan as compared with conventional media tanks.  10 year manufacturer’s warranty.
Control Valve Fleck 5600 SXT. Digital version of the old faithful 5600 mechanical timer. Programmed before shipping. Installer has only to set the time of day.
Extras Stainless steel bypass. Flexible drain tubing. Instructions for installation and startup. Support by phone or email.
Media The best carbon available. Jacobi Aquasorb coconut shell catalytic. Extra clean, effective for both chlorine and chloramine plus all the other chemicals that carbon removes. Extremely hard and durable carbon for a long life and minimum release of particles (fines).
Shipping Shipped UPS. We pay shipping. Ships within one or two days of receipt of order.
Recommended media replacement 5 years. This can vary according to use and local conditions.
Note: These filters are for homes with ¾” or 1″ service pipes. Please call for information about equivalent filters for larger applications. These filters can also be installed in parallel to provide twice the service flow.
Part Number Tank Size. Media Load. Family Size Recommendation
BW011 9″ X 48 – 1 cubic foot.
Chlorine: Up to 3 people.
Chloramine: 1 or 2 people.
BW012 10″ X 54″ – 1.5 cubic feet.
Chlorine: Up to 4 people.
Chloramine: 2 to 3 people.
BW013 12″ X 52″ – 2 cubic feet.
Chlorine: Up to 4 to 6 people.
Chloramine: up to 4 people.
BW014 13″ X 54″ – 2.5 cubic feet.
Chlorine: Up to 7 people.
Chloramine: Up to 5 people.
Other Backwashing Filters in This Series. Prices for these units can be seen on this page as well.
Note: This filter is also an excellent choice for removal of iron and hydrogen sulfide from well water. It is especially effective when used with aeration.

 

Rising Groundwater Could Release Toxic Chemicals From More Than 100,000 Contaminated Sites Across U.S.

By Peter Chawaga
 
Editor's Note: There has been much news recently about the danger to drinking water caused by salt intrusion into fresh water supplies due to rising water levels caused by climate change.  The present article points to another threat caused by rising groundwater levels--the release of chemicals from many contaminated sites around the nation.
 
Researchers have uncovered a new climate-induced threat that could imperil thousands of water systems across the country, introducing harsh contaminants left in soil by industrial facilities into the influent that passes through drinking water treatment facilities.
 
 
“A little-known climate threat lurks under our feet: rising groundwater that could release toxic chemicals from more than 132,000 contaminated sites in coastal areas of the U.S.,” Bloomberg reported. “When groundwater rises toward the surface, whether from sea level rise or increasingly intense climate-driven storms, those contaminants can leach into it and spread to other waterways, potentially poisoning people and wildlife.”
 
 
Drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities are no strangers to climate change-induced obstacles. Drier weather has introduced drought conditions throughout the nation, growing wildfires have devastated water infrastructure, and toxic algae is growing in source water at alarming rates, just to name a few.
 
 
Now, highlighting a lesser-known water threat, researchers have mapped the areas most likely to see their groundwater inundated with industrial pollutants as sea levels continue to rise. Making matters worse, the researchers believe some of the volatile organic compounds in the soil can vaporize and enter homes through buried wastewater infrastructure.
In the Bay Area, for instance, pollution introduced by rising groundwater can put thousands of areas at risk.
 
 
“A new report finds that over the next century, rising groundwater levels in the San Francisco Bay Area could impact twice as much land area as coastal flooding alone, putting more than 5,200 state- and federally-managed contaminated sites at risk,” according to Berkeley News. “Many of these sites are near communities already burdened with high levels of pollution.”
 
 
But even as more attention turns to this emerging source of contamination, this climate-driven water issue will have to compete for resources already dedicated to so many others. Even as we only begin to understand the drinking water and wastewater issues this contamination could pose, it’s clear that solving them won’t be an easy task.
 
“Climate-related groundwater rise can scramble the calculus on cleaning up toxic sites,” per Bloomberg. “Rehabilitating these locations can drag on for years, if not decades, and the high cost of removing soil has resulted in it being left in place at many sites, covered by an impermeable clay or concrete cap meant to contain the contamination.”
 
Source:  Water Online.
 
 

 
When Water Flows Through a Pipe, Size Matters
 
Pressure, Flow Rate, and Delta P

 A 2″ pipe is considerably larger than two 1″ pipes when it comes to flow and pressure drop performance. Water does not flow through pipes uniformly. It flows faster in the middle than on the sides. 
 
Pushing high flows of water through a small pipe wastes both energy and money. It can also cause corrosion and shorten the life of the pipe.

Water flowing through a pipe does not flow uniformly from edge to edge. Water in a pipe flows like water in a river, with water in the middle flowing much faster than water at the edges. Flow is fast at mid stream, and the water against the walls of the pipe is scarcely moving.

As water pressure pushing the flow increases, flow within the pipe becomes more turbulent and “thinner.” By thinner we mean that there is rapid flow at the center of the pipe but the areas of relatively low flow extend further out from the walls of the pipe.

Flow with high turbulence requires far more energy than smooth flow. Thus, to double the flow rate in a pipe by increasing pressure, it takes four times as much energy. Therefore, it is important to limit linear flow when designing a piping  system.

There is a general rule that says flow through a pipe should be no more than 8 to 10 linear feet per second.

There is a measurement used in pipe and water filter design called “Delta P.” In general terms, Delta pressure, or delta P, most commonly refers to the difference in pressure before and after a fluid filter which indicates when the filter is clogged.

Most aircraft have “Delta P” indicators to show this condition. With water filters a pressure gauge is sometimes mounted in front of a filter and another after. The difference between the readings of the two gauges indicates the delta P.  If the filter is clean, the gauges should read nearly the same, but as the filter takes on contaminants, the difference between the inlet and the outlet gauges, the delta P, increases.

There is a common misconception that pipe capacities increase in direct proportion to the stated size, i.e. that a 2” pipe has twice the carrying capacity of a 1” pipe, and that, therefore, two 1” pipes side by side would have the same fluid carrying capacity as a single 2” pipe. This is not so. A 2″ pipe actually has the carrying capacity of four 1″ pipes.  The rule of thumb is that twice the diameter equals four times the flow.  See How Many 1″ Pipes Will Fit Into a 2″ Pipe? 

Without getting too technical, consider these examples of how delta P works:

If you put 10 gallons of water per minute through 100 feet of 1” irrigation pipe, the pressure at the end of the pipe will be 15 psi less than the pressure at the input end. That’s a delta P of 15 psi per 100 feet of pipe.

If you put 10 gallons of water per minute through 100 feet of ¾” irrigation pipe, the pressure at the end of the pipe will be 20 psi less than the pressure at the input end. That’s a delta P of 20 psi per 100 feet of pipe.

If you put the same 10 gallons of water per minute through 100 feet of 1/2”  irrigation pipe, the pressure at the end of the pipe will be 35 psi less than the pressure at the input end. That’s a delta P of 35 psi per 100 feet of pipe.
 
 
Indebted to a Water Conditioning  and Purification article, February 2013,  paper issue,  by Chubb Michaud, and to Ryan Lessing and Pure Water Annie, via the article cited above.

 

 

 
 
Water Used in Food Production: 

How Much Water is Really Used in Food and Beverage Production?
 
 

People concerned about their water footprint often make an effort to turn the faucet off quickly, take shorter showers, and cut back on watering the lawn.

While these efforts are important, they ignore one of the biggest water-use culprits found in virtually every household: food and beverages.
The production of food and beverages is a water-intensive process. According to the Water Footprint Network, a single apple requires an average of 33 gallons of water to grow. Here’s what other common food and beverage products cost in terms of water consumption according to the Water Footprint Network.

Beef: Beef is one of the biggest water-use culprits in the food industry, and is one of largest amongst meat products, utilizing an average of 1,845 gallons of water per pound of beef produced. Ninety-nine percent of the water used is for animal feed, with the remaining 1 percent coming from drinking and service water.

Coffee: Another big hitter for water use in the food and beverage industry is coffee.

To create one pound of coffee beans it requires 2,264 gallons of water. This means that the average cup of coffee, using .24 ounces of coffee beans, requires 34 gallons of water to produce.

Pork: The production of meat from pigs uses a global average of 717 gallons of water per pound. From 1996 to 2005 the global water footprint for pigs accounted for 19 percent of the total water footprint of animal production in the world.

Wine & Beer: To produce one gallon of wine requires 870 gallons of water. When looking at this fact from a standard serving size perspective, 34 gallons of water are needed for 5 fluid ounces of wine.  In France, Italy, and Spain, the largest wine producing countries in the world, the average water footprint of wine is 24, 24, and 52 gallons per glass of wine, respectively.

Beer production uses 296 gallons of water per gallon of beer, requiring an average of 28 gallons of water for 12 fluid ounces of beer.

Bread: Bread created from wheat flour has a global average footprint of 218 gallons of water per pound. Most of that water use, about 80 percent, is due to the flour that is derived from the wheat, so the exact water footprint of bread depends on the origin of the wheat and how it was grown. From 1996 to 2005, global wheat production contributed 15 percent to the total water footprint of crop production in the world.

Citrus and Stone Fruits: On average the global water footprint per pound are as follows: 67 gal./lb for oranges, 61 gal./lb for grapefruit, and 77 gal./lb for lemons.  A single orange requires approximately 21 gallons of water to produce. Orange juice comes at a higher water cost, utilizing 122 gallons of water to produce one gallon of orange juice. Plums require 261 gal./lb, apricots 154 gal./lb. and peaches 109 gal./lb. Apples, bananas, grapes, and kiwis all take less than 100 gal./lb. Strawberries, pineapple, and watermelon require less than 50 gallons of water per pound of fruit.

Potato: The global average water footprint of a potato is 34 gallons per pound. China, the largest potato producing country in the world, contributed 22 percent to the total water footprint of potato production in the world.

 
 
 
Pharmaceutical Pollution of the Hudson River

"There is a big universe of chemicals that we just don't know what their impact is." - Dan Shapley, Water Quality Director of the Hudson Riverkeeping advocacy group.

Reprinted from the April 2017 Pure Water Occasional. Slightly Revised.

By Scott Fallon

 
Most treatment plants are unable to filter pharmaceuticals from human waste.
 
 

Scientists are taking samples of the Hudson River this month in an ambitious plan to measure how much pharmaceutical pollution gets washed into the waterway during heavy rains and to pinpoint its source.

Anti-depressants, blood pressure medicine, decongestants and other medicines have already been detected in the Hudson in preliminary samples. The latest round of testing is a larger sweep of the river, including the portion that passes by New Jersey, at a time of the year when pollution overall is washing into the Hudson at a greater rate due to runoff and sewage overflows.

Residue from medicine has made its way into rivers, streams and sources of drinking water for decades, but scientists have only begun identifying it recent years as testing has improved.
Little is known about their health effects on humans, but pharmaceuticals have had a major impact on wildlife. The Hudson study comes on the heels of a federal report that showed male fish in New Jersey’s Wallkill River — a tributary of the Hudson — were developing female reproductive characteristics, mostly likely due to hormone-based drugs that made their way into the water.

“There is a big universe of chemicals that we just don’t know what their impact is,” said Dan Shapley, water quality director of the Hudson Riverkeeper advocacy group. “It took years for us to understand that greenhouse gases change the Earth’s temperature, that nutrients added to water devastates coral reefs. We’re just starting to look at what pharmaceuticals can do.”

Most pharmaceutical pollution is believed to come from human waste, everyday medication that passes through a person unabsorbed. It also comes from people improperly disposing of their old medication in a toilet. Sewage plants are not capable of filtering pharmaceuticals before treated waste is released back into waterways. Other sources of pharmaceutical pollution include street or farm runoff containing animal waste.

The study — by Riverkeeper, Columbia University, Cornell University, CUNY and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — is a continuation of work that began in 2015 to target pharmaceuticals, industrial runoff and other pollution in more than 200 miles of the river from New York Harbor to the George Washington Bridge to Albany.

Water samples taken two years ago found 83 of 117 targeted chemicals in the Hudson, ranging from the anti-depressants to blood pressure medication to the insect repellent DEET.
Researchers hope the latest work will allow them to pinpoint the sources of pollution. And they expect to find much more with samples taken last week, since untreated sewage was entering the Hudson due to heavy rain. Plus the study has expanded to south of the Tappan Zee Bridge, where the Hudson hits New Jersey.

The problem is not limited to the Hudson. Scientists across the globe have found fish, birds, otters and other mammals with significant amounts of over-the-counter and prescription drugs absorbed into their organs.

That was seen in North Jersey two years ago when a study by the U.S. Geological Survey found that male fish in two of North Jersey’s most protected areas — the Wallkill River in Sussex County and the Great Swamp in Morris County — had developed female sexual characteristics. The findings alarmed clean-water advocates, who say the problem may be more widespread, considering that most fish in North Jersey swim in waters that are even more likely to be tainted.

More than 100,000 people in upstate New York get their drinking water from the Hudson, Shapley said. Since no New Jersey community gets water from the Hudson, the most likely human exposure to pharmaceuticals is from eating fish.
New Jersey officials advise against eating more than a minimal amount of fish caught from the Hudson because of decades of industrial and sewage contamination. But anglers, many of them new immigrants, can be found along the riverfront casting their lines from Bayonne to Alpine, especially in warmer months.

Unlike the voluminous data on the health effects of bacteria and other pathogens in the region’s water, the science on pharmaceuticals is in its infancy.

“It’s a human fingerprint that’s more unique, because we haven’t been studying it for decades as we have with other pollution,” said Gregory O’Mullan, an environmental microbiologist at Queens College in New York.
Researchers hope the study will also help pinpoint the origin of the pollution. By measuring pharmaceuticals, scientists will be able to differentiate whether the pollution came from animals, untreated human sewage or a sewage treatment plant.

Animal waste remains a huge problem for rivers and streams, whether it’s from farms or, more likely in the case of New Jersey, from street runoff pushing animal feces into waterways.

 

Most frequently detected pharmaceuticals found so far in the Hudson River:

Venlafaxine: 24 (anti-depressant)
Atenolol: 24 (beta blocker)
Lidocaine: 23 (local anesthetic)
Metoprolol: 23 (beta blocker)
Trimethoprim: 19 (antibiotic)
Pseudoephedrine:16 (decongestant)
Valsartan: 16 (blood pressure)
Theophylline: 14 (respiratory drug)

Source: New York State Water Resources Institute of Cornell University

Source: NorthJersey.com

 

 

Water News — December, 2023

 
The city of Ft. Worth, TX has opted to not participate in a class action suit that would bring in payments from companies that have polluted public water systems with "forever chemicals."  City officials said that the settlement would not cover cleanup costs.  Fort Worth Report 

Because of low water levels, the Panama Canal has become so backlogged that the world’s largest operator of chemical tankers has decided to reroute its fleet to the Suez Canal. The Panama Canal Authority, which normally handles about 36 ships a day, announced on Oct. 30 that it will gradually reduce the number of vessels to 18 a day by Feb. 1 to conserve water heading into the dry season. Panama had the driest October on record due to a drought.  Fortune. 


Vinyl Chloride Under Scrutiny by EPA
 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it’s reviewing vinyl chloride under the Toxic Control Substance Act (TSCA), which could lead to restrictions or a ban on the widespread, toxic chemical.

Vinyl chloride is used primarily to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastics. The chemical is already classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a carcinogen, and is linked to higher rates of lung and liver cancer, as well as liver disease, neurological problems and miscarriage. Billions of pounds are produced annually in the U.S.

It is one of five chemicals the EPA will review under TSCA, which is the primary chemical safety law in the U.S. The other chemicals include acetaldehyde, acrylonitrile, benzenamine, and MBOCA.

“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, EPA has made significant progress implementing the 2016 amendments to strengthen our nation’s chemical safety laws after years of mismanagement and delay. Today marks an important step forward,” assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said in a statement.

Under TSCA, the EPA will examine all exposure routes — including air emissions, drinking water and soil contamination — as well as workplace and accident exposure.  Environmental Health News   

 
Efforts to Curb Water Pollution from Slaughterhouses
 
 

The EPA under pressure from Environmental Groups Takes a Small Step Toward Curbing the Water Pollution from US Slaughterhouses
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December proposed new standards aimed at reducing water pollution from slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. The move is the agency’s first such effort in two decades.

The EPA said its preferred option presented in the proposed rule could eliminate about 100 million pounds of water pollution generated by large slaughterhouses and meat processing plants each year.

The plan would put stricter limits in place for nitrogen in liquid waste that is directly discharged into waterways and would establish limitations for phosphorus for the first time. It would also establish the first pretreatment standards for oil, grease, and certain other pollutants. The standards would apply to about 845 of the 3,879 slaughter and meat processing facilities that discharge waste into US waters.

Full story in The New Lede 
 
 
 
  

 
 


December

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Places to visit for additional information:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks for reading. The next Occasional will show up eventually--when you least expect it.
Pure Water Products, LLC, 523A N. Elm St., Denton, TX, 76201.  www.purewaterproducts.com. Call us at 888 382 3814, or email pwp@purewaterproducts.com.
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