President’s Cancer Panel recommends Water Filters

In a new report, the President’s Cancer Panel recommends the use of water filters and reusable water bottles to reduce cancer causing agents. While the President’s Cancer Panel acknowledges that public water filtration plants remove some contaminants, it also maintains that “current technologies cannot remove them all.”

The 240-page report examined a variety of chemicals, contaminants and hazards that can enter our water, soil and air through a variety of sources, such as industrial, agricultural, technological, medical and natural.

“Filtering home tap or well water can decrease exposure to numerous known or suspected carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Unless the home water source is known to be contaminated, it is preferable to use filtered tap water instead of commercially bottled water.”

Many of the water filters we carry reduce the contaminants featured in the report, including Atrazine and other herbicides or pesticides, Radon, Mercury, Bisphenol-A, phosphate, arsenic, and “endocrine disrupting chemicals” such as DDT / DDE, pesticides, bisphenol A, and some metals.

We also carry water filters that will remove many of the by-products that result from disinfects like chlorine. These inclue chloroform, bromoform and other trihalomethanes (THMs).

Since they advocate against bottled water, you’re probably wondering what they recommend for transporting your filtered tap water:

“Storing and carrying water in stainless steel, glass, or BPA- and phthalate-free containers will reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting and other chemicals that may leach  into water from plastics. This action also will decrease the need for plastic bottles, the manufacture of which produces toxic by-products, and reduce the need to dispose of and recycle plastic bottles.”

Later, the report states that biologically-active levels of BPA were found in an estimated 93 percent of Americans.

We have several reusable water bottles, including a line of Klean Kanteen water bottles. These are stainless steel water bottles and, in accordance with the above recommendation, they are BPA free water bottles. If you are a parent, you might want to consider the Klean Kanteen Sippy Cup, since “children are far more vulnerable to environmental toxins and radiation than adults.”.