Water Required to Produce These Three Hamburger Patties: 1350 Gallons.

Our Water-Guzzling Food Factory

by Nicholas Kristof

LET’S start with a quiz.

Which consumes the most water?

A) a 10-minute shower.

B) a handful of 10 almonds.

C) a quarterpound hamburger patty.

D) a washing machine load.

The answer? By far, it’s the hamburger patty. The shower might use 25 gallons. The almonds take up almost a gallon each, or close to 10 gallons for the handful. The washing machine uses about 35 gallons per load. And that beef patty, around 450 gallons.

The drought in California hit home when I was backpacking with my daughter there recently on the Pacific Crest Trail, and the first eight creeks or springs we reached were all dry.

The crisis in California is a harbinger of water scarcity in much of the world. And while we associate extravagant water use with swimming pools and verdant lawns, the biggest consumer, by far, is agriculture. In California, 80 percent of water used by humans goes to farming and ranching.

That’s where that hamburger patty comes in.

I grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Ore. I worked for a year for the Future Farmers of America, and I still spend time every year on our family farm. But while I prize America’s rural heritage, let’s be blunt: It’s time for a fundamental rethinking of America’s food factory.

A mandarin orange consumes 14 gallons of water. A head of lettuce, 12 gallons. A bunch of grapes, 24 gallons. One single walnut, 2 gallons.

Animal products use even more water, mostly because of the need to raise grain or hay to feed the animals. Plant material converts quite inefficiently into animal protein.

So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce. A pound of chicken, 468 gallons. A gallon of milk, 880 gallons. And a pound of beef, 1,800 gallons of water. (Of course, these figures are all approximate, and estimates differ. These are based on data from the Pacific Institute andNational Geographic.)

You can also calculate your own water footprint at National Geographic’s website.

Our industrial food system produces food almost miraculously cheaply. In 1930, whole dressed chicken retailed for $6.48 per pound in today’s currency, according to the National Chicken Council; in real terms, the price has fallen by more than three-quarters. And, boy, is the system good at producing cheap high-fructose corn syrup!

Yet industrial agriculture imposes other unsustainable costs:

• It overuses antibiotics, resulting in dangers to the public from antibiotic-resistant diseases. About four-fifths of antibiotics sold in the United Statesare for livestock and poultry — even as 23,000 people die annually in America from antibiotic resistant infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Farming overuses chemicals such as pesticides, some of them endocrine-disruptors that have been linked to possible cancer, obesity and reproductive disorders.

• Factory farming is often based on treating animals, particularly poultry,with ruthless cruelty.

To this indictment, we can add irrational subsidies and water engineering projects that have led to irrigation in areas where it doesn’t make sense. Today, California, despite the drought, is effectively exporting water (in the form of milk, beef, walnuts and produce).

Most of agriculture’s irrationalities aren’t the fault of farmers but arise from lax regulation and mistaken pricing, and that’s true of water as well. Traditionally in the West, water was mostly allocated on a first-come basis, so if you acquired water rights more than a century ago you can mostly still access water for uses (two gallons per walnut!) that no longer make sense in an age of scarcity.

As for the foolishness of agricultural subsidies, until recently, the federal government paid me, a New York journalist, $588 a year not to grow crops in Oregon. I rest my case.

Let’s be clear that it’s unfair to blame farmers for the present problems. We’re the ones eating those water-intensive hamburgers, and we’re the ones whose political system created these irrationalities.

Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.

Maybe our industrial agriculture system is beginning to change, for we’re seeing some signs of a food revolution in America, with greater emphasis on organic food and animal rights. Just a week ago, Walmart called on suppliers to stop keeping calves in veal crates and hogs in gestation crates.

Something good could come from the California drought if it could push this revolution a bit further, by forcing a reallocation of water to the most efficient uses. But remember that the central challenge can’t be solved by a good rain because the larger problem is an irrational industrial food system.

Source: New York Times.

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Rain in North Texas

At Denton’s Farmer’s Market, May 23, 2015, PWP employees, from left, Kristen Lewis, Katey Shannon, Kacy Ewing, and Theresia Munywoki, are pictured just before a rainstorm cut the event short. Click picture for larger view.

Those praying for rain in North Texas have perhaps overdone it. We’re getting flash floods and the wettest May in many years.  To the south of us,  areas that were very dry are now experiencing the flooding of the San Marcos and Blanco Rivers.  Parts of the area have received more than 1-1/2 feet of rain since May 1, six times what it typically receives in all of May.

Flooded San Marcos River, May 24, 2015. Click for larger view.

Full details about May flooding in Texas and Oklahoma.

Fracking to resume in Texas city that banned fracking after state steps in

 More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think

by Aaron E. Carroll

When I was a kid, my parents refused to let me drink coffee because they believed it would “stunt my growth.” It turns out, of course, that this is a myth. Studies have failed, again and again, to show that coffee or caffeine consumption are related to reduced bone mass or how tall people are.

Coffee has long had a reputation as being unhealthy. But in almost every single respect that reputation is backward. The potential health benefits are surprisingly large.

When I set out to look at the research on coffee and health, I thought I’d see it being associated with some good outcomes and some bad ones, mirroring the contradictory reports you can often find in the news media. This didn’t turn out to be the case.

Just last year, a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies looking at long-term consumption of coffee and the risk of cardiovascular disease was published. The researchers found 36 studies involving more than 1,270,000 participants. The combined data showed that those who consumed a moderate amount of coffee, about three to five cups a day, were at the lowest risk for problems. Those who consumed five or more cups a day had no higher risk than those who consumed none.

Of course, everything I’m saying here concerns coffee — black coffee. I am not talking about the mostly milk and sugar coffee-based beverages that lots of people consume. These could include, but aren’t limited to, things like a McDonald’s large mocha (500 calories, 17 grams of fat, 72 grams ofcarbohydrates), a Starbucks Venti White Chocolate Mocha (580 calories, 22 grams of fat, 79 grams of carbs), and a Large Dunkin’ Donuts frozen caramel coffee Coolatta (670 calories, 8 grams of fat, 144 grams of carbs).

I won’t even mention the Cold Stone Creamery Gotta-Have-It-Sized Lotta Caramel Latte (1,790 calories, 90 grams of fat, 223 grams of carbs).Regular brewed coffee has 5 or fewer calories and no fat or carbohydrates.

Back to the studies. Years earlier, a meta-analysis — a study of studies, in which data are pooled and analyzed together — was published looking at how coffee consumption might be associated with stroke. Eleven studies were found, including almost 480,000 participants. As with the prior studies, consumption of two to six cups of coffee a day was associated with a lower risk of disease, compared with those who drank none. Another meta-analysis published a year later confirmed these findings.

Rounding out concerns about the effect of coffee on your heart, another meta-analysis examined how drinking coffee might be associated with heart failure. Again, moderate consumption was associated with a lower risk, with the lowest risk among those who consumed four servings a day. Consumption had to get up to about 10 cups a day before any bad associations were seen.

No one is suggesting you drink more coffee for your health. But drinking moderate amounts of coffee is linked to lower rates of pretty much all cardiovascular disease, contrary to what many might have heard about the dangers of coffee or caffeine. Even consumers on the very high end of the spectrum appear to have minimal, if any, ill effects.

But let’s not cherry-pick. There are outcomes outside of heart health that matter. Many believe that coffee might be associated with an increased risk of cancer. Certainly, individual studies have found that to be the case, and these are sometimes highlighted by the news media. But in the aggregate, most of these negative outcomes disappear.

A meta-analysis published in 2007 found that increasing coffee consumption by two cups a day was associated with a lower relative risk of liver cancer by more than 40 percent. Two more recent studies confirmed these findings. Results from meta-analyses looking at prostate cancerfound that in the higher-quality studies, coffee consumption was not associated with negative outcomes.

The same holds true for breast cancer, where associations were statistically not significant. It’s true that the data on lung cancer shows an increased risk for more coffee consumed, but that’s only among people who smoke. Drinking coffee may be protective in those who don’t. Regardless, the authors of that study hedge their results and warn that they should be interpreted with caution because of the confounding (and most likely overwhelming) effects of smoking.

A study looking at all cancers suggested that it might be associated with reduced overall cancer incidence and that the more you drank, the more protection was seen.

Drinking coffee is associated with better laboratory values in those at risk for liver disease. In patients who already have liver disease, it’s associated with a decreased progression to cirrhosis. In patients who already have cirrhosis, it’s associated with a lower risk of death and a lower risk of developing liver cancer. It’s associated with improved responses to antiviral therapy in patients with hepatitis C and better outcomes in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The authors of the systematic review argue that daily coffee consumption should be encouraged in patients with chronic liver disease.

The most recent meta-analyses on neurological disorders found that coffee intake was associated with lower risks of Parkinson’s disease, lowercognitive decline and a potential protective effect against Alzheimer’s disease (but certainly no harm).

A systematic review published in 2005 found that regular coffee consumption was associated with a significantly reduced risk of developingType 2 diabetes, with the lowest relative risks (about a third reduction) seen in those who drank at least six or seven cups a day. The latest study,published in 2014, used updated data and included 28 studies and more than 1.1 million participants. Again, the more coffee you drank, the less likely you were to have diabetes. This included both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee.

Is coffee associated with the risk of death from all causes? There have been two meta-analyses published within the last year or so. The first reviewed 20 studies, including almost a million people, and the second included 17 studies containing more than a million people. Both found that drinking coffee was associated with a significantly reduced chance of death. I can’t think of any other product that has this much positive epidemiologic evidence going for it.

I grant you that pretty much none of the research I’m citing above contains randomized controlled trials. It’s important to remember that we usually conduct those trials to see if what we are observing in epidemiologic studies holds up. Most of us aren’t drinking coffee because we think it will protect us, though. Most of us are worrying that it might be hurting us. There’s almost no evidence for that at all.

If any other modifiable risk factor had these kind of positive associations across the board, the media would be all over it. We’d be pushing it on everyone. Whole interventions would be built up around it. For far too long, though, coffee has been considered a vice, not something that might be healthy.

That may change soon. The newest scientific report for the U.S.D.A. nutritional guidelines, which I’ve discussed before, says that coffee is not only O.K. — it agrees that it might be good for you. This was the first time the dietary guideline advisory committee reviewed the effects of coffee on health.

There’s always a danger in going too far in the other direction. I’m not suggesting that we start serving coffee to little kids. Caffeine still has a number of effects parents might want to avoid for their children. Some people don’t like the way caffeine can make them jittery. Guidelines also suggest that pregnant women not drink more than two cups a day.

I’m also not suggesting that people start drinking coffee by the gallon. Too much of anything can be bad. Finally, while the coffee may be healthy, that’s not necessarily true of the added sugar and fat that many people put into coffee-based beverages.

But it’s way past time that we stopped viewing coffee as something we all need to cut back on. It’s a completely reasonable addition to a healthy diet, with more potential benefits seen in research than almost any other beverage we’re consuming. It’s time we started treating it as such.

Source: New York Times.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

A Versatile New Water Softener for RV Owners, Car Washers, and More

Although it’s less than two feet tall, this water softener is capable of softening hundreds of gallons on water before it needs regeneration.

Designed primarily to soften all water entering recreational vehicles and mobile homes, our 10,000 grain water softener is portable and easy to apply to other applications such as washing cars, washing windows, rinsing solar panels–any application where hard water causes scale buildup or spotting.

The small but powerful softener prevents hard water spotting on vehicles, dishes, windows, decks and patios.

Very easy to use, it requires no installation and no special tools or skills for operation. It connects with standard garden hoses and washer hoses and is regenerated with ordinary table salt.

This small but mighty softener uses the same cation resin as full-sized residential water softeners and has an initial capacity  to treat 10,000 grains of hardness.  That’s about 1400 gallons of moderately hard water, or 700 gallons if you live in San Antonio, TX.

Here are some highlights:

• Requires no installation. No electricity. No connection to drain. It comes ready to use with garden hoses and washer hoses.
• High flow: handles up to 4 gallons per minute, so it works with pressure washers.
• Regenerates with two pounds of regular table salt. No chemicals required.
• Compact (less than 2 feet tall), easy to store, easy to move from place to place, even when it’s full of water. Stands on its own base.
• One year warranty on the unit. Ten year warranty on the on the mineral tank.
• Comes with hardness test kit to tell you when it’s time to regenerate.
• Made in USA by a leading softener manufacturer.  Replacement parts, if needed, are readily available from Pure Water Products.
• Equipped with a flow restrictor that takes the guess work out of regeneration flow rate.
• No meter, no setup hassles, no counting of gallons, no “sizing” problems. Works on any potable water source.
• Comes with excellent instructions for use and regeneration of resin as well as a hardness test kit.
• Produces instant soft water anywhere there’s a garden hose.

The orange Y fitting allows easy transition from service mode to backwash. The tap at the very top allows easy insertion of table salt to renew the resin. 

Not yet on our website, so please call or email for purchase information:

Pure Water Products

pwp@purewaterproducts.com

940 382 3814

Conservationists have called the use of water in the area a “crime” and “unsustainable” and the situation could become worse as summer approaches.

Under plans recently announced by California governor Jerry Brown the state is trying to reduce water consumption by 25 per cent.

The 400 water companies in California have been ranked on how much water is being used by their customers, and different levels of cuts have been imposed.

Myoma Dunes Mutual Water Company, which supplies Bermuda Dunes, ranked number one, and was told to make the maximum 35 per cent cut.

Two other much bigger water companies which supply larger towns in the Coachella Valley, were also in the top 10 of California’s per capita water users, and were issued with 35 per cent targets.

The state has the power to fine those who don’t meet the targets up to $10,000 a day.

In the Coachella Valley, within striking distance of Bermuda Dunes, there are more than 120 golf courses which attract players from around the world.

Their artificial lakes and green fairways use a quarter of the water being taken from rapidly depleting wells.

Other offenders are the sprinklers used to maintain residential lawns.

According to residents there is still overflow water from sprinklers running down roadside gutters.

Richard O’Donnell, a retired architecture professor who has got rid of his own lawn in Bermuda Dunes, told The Desert Sun newspaper: “The use is obscene. People just don’t have the consciousness of the water and where it comes from. There’s so much apathy about the use of water.”

Water companies have argued that up to a third of their customers own holiday homes in the area, and are only there seasonally, but many leave their sprinklers on while they are away.

The identification of Bermuda Dunes as the biggest per head user of water is part of a new trend in California known as “drought shaming” in which neighbours use social media to criticise water wasters.

Last week the trend extended to celebrities as the New York Post published aerial photographs of their lawns.

A representative for Barbra Streisand, whose lawn in Malibu was featured, said she had already cut water usage by over 50 per cent and “is going to take further steps to conserve water”.

Source: The Telegraph.

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What Are Chlorine Burns?

by Pure Water Annie

Gazette technical wizard Pure Water Annie addresses the perplexing questions about water treatment.

Once a year, usually in spring,  water suppliers that normally disinfect their product with chloramine, a mixture of chlorine and ammonia, perform a cleaning procedure known as a “chlorine burn.”  The purpose is simply to clean out the pipes, ridding the distribution system of film and debris that has built up.

The clean-out is accomplished by simply switching disinfectants from chloramine to straight chlorine for a time, and usually upping the dosage a bit to speed things along. Compared with chlorine, chloramine is a rather weak disinfectant.  Its weak performance allows sludge and scum, bacterial film, to build up in pipe walls and crevices.  The yearly purge, or “burn,” with straight chlorine cleans things out.

Chloramine is substituted for chlorine as the regular disinfectant in an increasing number of city water systems. The switch from chlorine to chloramine has been going on over a number of years as suppliers seek ways to stay in compliance with EPA standards for DBPs,  disinfection by-products, that are produced as a consequence of chlorination. Some DBPs are known carcinogens, and EPA requires suppliers to monitor them.  Chloramine, a weaker disinfectant, does not produce DBPs.

Are chlorine burns a good idea?  Good or bad, they are necessary, since without a periodic cleanout, buildup in pipes would create significant problems for the water system.  The practice does call into question, however, the wisdom of using chloramine rather than chlorine in the first place, since, as many argue, the burn and subsequent purging of pipes creates elevated levels of disinfection by-products in the system and higher than normal chlorine discharge into lakes and streams. In other words, for a short time we get concentrated doses of disinfectants and byproducts, which may be worse than what we would have with chlorine as the regular disinfectant.

The moral: With a good carbon filtration system in your home, you won’t even know when the burn takes place.  The elevated chlorine levels, murky water, and dislodged sediment that your neighbors are complaining about, you won’t even notice. If your city uses chloramine, you should use equipment that is designed for chloramine treatment. Any filter that removes chloramine also removes the chlorine used during the annual burn.

More about “Why Chloramine Is Used Instead of Chlorine.”