The New Acid Rain

What if the rainwater, well-water, or lake and stream water you drink isn't as pure as you thought?

What if those 'pure' sources of water actually contained... Plastic.

Yes... Plastic.

Microplastics, in fact.

This article- Plastic Rain Is the New Acid Rain- written in June of 2020, explains in-depth some very scary changes occurring to the earth's rainwater.

"Researchers find that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic fall on 11 protected areas in the US annually, equivalent to over 120 million plastic water bottles."

We like to believe that if we simply drink pure water straight from streams or lakes, well-water, or rainwater collected from our roofs than we should be drinking some of the cleanest water available. We assume it should be free of chemicals, additives, and contaminants. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case in a majority of the USA, and would most certainly include much of Canada.

What these researchers found was that rainwater in protected parks and regions in the USA contained large quantities of various kinds of microplastics including synthetic polymers (tiny pieces of nylon, PVC, teflon, etc), microfibers (from polyester clothing), and synthetic microbeads (in beauty products, spray paints. These were only the visible microplastics; it does not include the nanoplastics that were too small to be visible to eye without special equipment, and which may have the same impacts as microplastics.

Equally disturbing is that while many of these particles were carried in the atmosphere and dropped in rain, many of the microplastics were carried in the wind. Transportation of these particles in the wind means that the distance they can travel is nearly unlimited- winds can carry sand across the Atlantic ocean and these micro- or nanoplastics are less dense than sand and soil, resulting in the potential for travelling thousand's of miles.

This means that there is most likely very few, if any, places on earth that do not have microplastics falling in the rain and blowing in the wind because there is massive amount of plastic pollution around the globe. We are projected to produce nearly double the amount of plastic waste we do now, up to 460 million tonnes, by 2030. It's not going away anytime soon.

Now, we don't yet know the short or long term negative effects of drinking or breathing in microplastic particles, but it's fairly safe to assume the effect won't be positive, and could very possible be extremely negative. We won't know until it's thoroughly studied. We also don't really know the effect these tiny molecules will have on soil. plant life, and other small creatures like worms and insects, and therefore the ecosystem.

Suffice it to say, I believe it's prudent to ensure the water my kids, my wife, and myself will be drinking drinking is properly cleansed of plastics. I don't see many positives of ingesting plastics, and many potential negatives.

This is one of the many reasons I believe Berkey Systems are an important part of everyday life.