LETTER | The recent statements in the media about whether our tap water is safe to drink needs further explanation and clarification. As a citizen who has studied, investigated and written about this important subject, let me add my two cents worth of view.

Water is a universal solvent. It is a liquid medium to transport waste products such as urea, dead cells and other discharges from the body metabolism via the veins and distributes useful nutrients such as organic minerals, vitamins, antibodies, oxygen and others to the cells via the arteries. Water is not a nutrient and it is just an agent in the circulation system to perform these two functions - discharge waste products and dispense nutrients to cells. Blood is just water to transport its content to the various organs.

We drink about two litres of water a day to replace the liquid we lose through urine, sweat and dehydration of body fluids when we stay in air-conditioned rooms.

Our blood plasma is 55% of blood fluids and 92% percent water by volume. Blood plasma by volume is about 2.7- 3 litres in the human body. Up to 60 percent of the human body is water. Our brain and heart are composed of 73% water and our lungs are 83% water.

Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade. It is very easy to cremate a human corpse as at 100 degrees C, the water evaporates from the body leaving the bones, skin and muscles making them very combustible.

We can die within three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food. So water is very important for our survival. With that as a background, we now can ask the crucial question, how clean or safe is our tap water?

First, our raw water is from rivers and there are all kind of wastes being thrown into the river system - plastic products, dead animal carcasses, human waste products, animal waste, workshop engine oil, urine, agricultural chemicals, construction erosion of soil and earth, concrete and so on.

Indah Water, after the treatment of human waste in the oxidation ponds also discharges treated sewage into the rivers. Our raw water is pumped from the rivers and stored in the reservoir and sent for treatment. The suspended particles in the water are filtered and alum is used to remove much of the suspended particles from the raw water.

It then goes through sand filters and chlorine gas is pumped in to kill the germs and other harmful organisms. The water is then distributed through a series of big and small pipes either of cast iron pipe or heavy duty PVC pipes. It connects to the individual households again using pipes and tanks to store the water.

How safe is the water thus treated? Trace or minute amount of drugs, birth control pills, hormones from chicken meat, soil, earth, dirt and other components are all in the water. I have tested countless samples of tap water from all over the Klang Valley with an electronic total dissolved solids (TDS) meter which measures the amount of solids dissolved in our tap water. I obtained a range of reading from 50-91 ppm. Which means for every one million parts of water, there are various concentrations of undesirable elements in the water.

It is a very good exercise to spend some money and send from your home five litres of tap water to a chemical laboratory to check the quality of your drinking water. The ministry of the environment should do this on and off to monitor the quality of our tap water.

Are we wise to drink this water and trust the word of those in authority?
Can our body immune system such as kidneys and liver detox the harmful substances in the water without getting sick and our delicate health compromised in the long term?

In the Klang Valley, some seven million residents consume this tap water day in and day out for many years now. How are the health conditions of these people? In a survey done many years ago, it was found that seven out of ten residents were diagnosed to have suffered from three of these ailments - diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Water has a lot to do with the health status of these victims of sicknesses.

As for me, I have never trusted in the safety of our water. I distil it and that is the best way to purify the liquid of life. Any other filter system does not work because liquid toxins can never be screened out. They are already in the water. Only solid waste can be filtered out such as sand, mud or suspended particles. What is unseen and invisible is more dangerous than just rust, mud and cloudy, muddy water.

The human circulatory system is made up of 120,000 km of blood vessels composed of arteries, veins and capillaries joined end-to-end. The tap water with all these alien, unknown and injurious dissolved chemicals and minerals from raw water, rusty pipes and contaminated tanks will cause blockage and obstructions to the delicate, sensitive and fragile internal lining of these blood vessels.

Scar tissues form from these persistent long-term damaged blood vessels which will prevent life-giving nutrients from reaching the joints such as cartilage in the kneecap while other smaller joints experience a loss of oxygen supply and other nutrients to repair and regenerate damaged cells and tissues.

Why bother with all the filters to throw out what we don’t want? Distillation is the sensible way was water evaporates at 100 degrees C and transforms into steam and condenses as pure water. The water cycle does distillation for our long-term survival. The sun shines on water surfaces of the seas, lakes, rivers and ponds and the steam rises to form clouds in the sky and it comes downs as dew or rains. Water from the sky is water free from toxins, minerals and other harmful contaminants.

This smoothens the elimination of toxins from your body. The human body needs minerals which are taken care of by the supply of fruits and vegetables which is 100 percent absorbable as they are organic unlike dead minerals from water which cause obstruction to blood vessels.

Clean, pure minerals from sugar cane juice (1,830 ppm) young fresh coconut water (3,940 ppm) and red wine (800 ppm) tea (600 ppm) are all rich sources of organic minerals for human nutrition and health.

The paradox of this water controversy is simple to solve. Just think that if we replace distilled water in a car battery which costs less than RM200 just to maximise the battery lifespan of two years, why do we abuse our immune system and sabotage our life and health by drinking toxic water from the tap? Our body is definitely more valuable and precious than a mere car battery.

Over the many years that I have attended funerals of friends and other people, I often ask this same simple question - what kind of water do the family members drink and the answer is always all other waters except distilled water

Nature has its own supply of pure water from rainwater and waterfall water from my TDS meter has a clear reading of zero minerals content. Water from rock surfaces which are hard and running has no contact with soil or earth and hence is very pure. Unlike reservoir water which is in contact with earth and soil from the retaining walls of the dam. It is stagnant water which has time to dissolve the minerals from the huge dam.

To live without sickness and be free from all non-communicable diseases, don’t use your kidneys and liver as a water filter, use a machine to do the job as it is cheaper and wiser to keep your original body parts. I have kept mine for all these 66 years.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.