by Gary Lewis

Created on: March 26, 2009

I remember hearing a story about a father driving home to his kids the effect of only a little violence and only a little foul language in a movie they were begging to see by baking them a batch of cookies and telling them he had only put a little dog poo in the cookies and to go ahead and chow down. As I recall, the kids declined the invitation and the point was well taken.

It only takes a little dog poo or other substances in the tap water to change the taste. Human taste receptors or taste buds can distinguish various tastes when only a few parts per million of a given substance are present in the water. In some cases only a few parts per billion are needed to alter the taste.

There are five different tastes that can be registered by taste buds, they are bitter, sweet, sour, salty and "Umami" which is a Japanese word translated roughly as "tasty". Combining the taste buds with the Distance Chemoreceptors that detect odors, humans can detect thousands of adverse tastes and smells associated with ordinary tap water. Some information has been drawn from the website of Stars and Seas.

Environmental Working Group (EWG) has a team of scientists, engineers and lab personnel who have identified over 200 industrial chemicals, pesticides and other pollutants in household tap water over 48 contiguous states of America. Arsenic in one compound or another was by their team found leaching into the groundwater from treated wood. Methylmercury was found in the cord blood of newborn babies and in 72 of the 73 people tested. Molybdenum compounds, nickel and nitrate compounds to name a very few others. EWG made a major impact in July 2003 report showing that 7 of 10 farmed salmon were contaminated with Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) at levels that raise concern about cancer risks. They found that 800,000 American adults ingested enough farmed salmon to exceed lifetime cancer risk levels by a factor of 100.

The sensation of taste is altered by this vast cocktail of pharmaceuticals, industrial waste, pollutants, and even dog poo. Cities do care about the health of their citizens in that they run water through purification plants before being piped into homes. There is an overwhelming amount of the above named pollutants to contend with and it's only little quantities after all and are not considered life threatening that make it to the homes.

Subtle taste differences can be sensed by people who consider themselves beverage aficionados. These people brew to a specific taste of the coffee bean or tea leaf. These folks would not consider using any water not purified. Then there are the people who doctor their brew with enough sugar or honey, cream and specialty flavors to mask any adverse taste other than that of the additives. Tap water would be fine here if taste were the only concern. Fortunately we have the knowledge of the hidden health dangers, not ingesting these poisons would be considered a good idea. The added benefit of better tasting beverages notwithstanding.

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