Unfiltered fervour spills over in the rush to get off water grid
New York Times|
Jan 01, 2018, 09.21 AM IST
By Nellie Bowles
SAN FRANCISCO: At Rainbow Grocery, one brand of water is so popular that it's often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as "raw water" — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilised spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.
Liquid Eden, a water store that opened three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a "mineral electrolyte alkaline" drinking water.
Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the "water consciousness movement" grows.
The quest for pure water is hardly new; people have been drinking from natural springs and collecting rainwater from time immemorial. The crusade against adding fluoride to public water began in the 1950s among Americans who saw danger in the protective measures that had been adopted over decades to protect the populace from disease and contamination.
But the off-grid water movement has become more than the fringe phenomenon it once was, with sophisticated marketing, cultural cachet, millions of dollars in funding and influential supporters from Silicon Valley.
One morning in the hills of Berkeley Cody Friesen, the founder and chief executive of Zero Mass Water, was inspecting water collection panels he had installed for his investor Skip Battle, a tech leader who now sits on the boards of LinkedIn, Netflix and OpenTable.
The system — called Source, which retails for $4,500, including installation — draws moisture from the air and filters it. The goal, Friesen said, is to make water "that's ultra high quality and secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure."
The founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh, started selling spring water from Opal Springs, three years ago. Pure water can be obtained by using a reverse osmosis filter, the gold standard of home water treatment, but for Singh, the goal is not pristine water, per se. "You're going to get 99% of the bad stuff out," he said. "But now you have dead water."
Singh believes that public water has been poisoned. "Tap water? You're drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them," he said.
"Chloramine and fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it's a mindcontrol drug that has no benefit to our dental health." (There is no scientific evidence that fluoride is a mind-control drug, but plenty to show that it aids dental health.) Talk like Singh's disturbs Dr Donald Hensrud, the director of the Healthy Living Program.
What the raw-water partisans see as dangers, he says, are important safety measures.
"Without water treatment, there's acute and then chronic risks," Dr Hensrud said, including E coli bacteria, viruses, parasites and carcinogenic compounds that can be present in untreated water.
Dr Hensrud said he has noticed more interest in alternative water sources; a patient recently asked questions about a raw water he had been drinking. "There are people, just like with immunisations, that don't accept the status quo," Dr Hensrud said.
The rules for selling bottled water are imposed by states and the FDA, which does not specify how water be treated but sets acceptable amounts of chemicals and bacteria at a low level.
The movement against tap water, like the movement against vaccines, has brought together unlikely allies from the far left and the far right. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, founder of the right-wing website Infowars, have long argued that fluoride was added to water to make people more docile. Similar claims can be heard in the largely liberal enclaves where Live Water is seeing interest spike.
Raw water is such a nascent business that there's debate over what exactly to call the liquid. Daniel Vitalis hosts a podcast, "ReWild Yourself," that promotes hunting for food and gathering water; he started the site called FindASpring.com to help people locate springs. He prefers the term "unprocessed water," which echoes the idea of processed versus unprocessed food.
"I don't like 'raw water' because it sort of makes people think of raw sewage," Mr. Vitalis said. "When you say 'live water,' that's going to trigger a lot of people who are into physics and biology. Is it alive?"
SAN FRANCISCO: At Rainbow Grocery, one brand of water is so popular that it's often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as "raw water" — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilised spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.
Liquid Eden, a water store that opened three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a "mineral electrolyte alkaline" drinking water.
Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the "water consciousness movement" grows.
The quest for pure water is hardly new; people have been drinking from natural springs and collecting rainwater from time immemorial. The crusade against adding fluoride to public water began in the 1950s among Americans who saw danger in the protective measures that had been adopted over decades to protect the populace from disease and contamination.
But the off-grid water movement has become more than the fringe phenomenon it once was, with sophisticated marketing, cultural cachet, millions of dollars in funding and influential supporters from Silicon Valley.
One morning in the hills of Berkeley Cody Friesen, the founder and chief executive of Zero Mass Water, was inspecting water collection panels he had installed for his investor Skip Battle, a tech leader who now sits on the boards of LinkedIn, Netflix and OpenTable.
The system — called Source, which retails for $4,500, including installation — draws moisture from the air and filters it. The goal, Friesen said, is to make water "that's ultra high quality and secure, totally disconnected from all infrastructure."
The founder of Live Water, Mukhande Singh, started selling spring water from Opal Springs, three years ago. Pure water can be obtained by using a reverse osmosis filter, the gold standard of home water treatment, but for Singh, the goal is not pristine water, per se. "You're going to get 99% of the bad stuff out," he said. "But now you have dead water."
Singh believes that public water has been poisoned. "Tap water? You're drinking toilet water with birth control drugs in them," he said.
"Chloramine and fluoride. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it's a mindcontrol drug that has no benefit to our dental health." (There is no scientific evidence that fluoride is a mind-control drug, but plenty to show that it aids dental health.) Talk like Singh's disturbs Dr Donald Hensrud, the director of the Healthy Living Program.
What the raw-water partisans see as dangers, he says, are important safety measures.
"Without water treatment, there's acute and then chronic risks," Dr Hensrud said, including E coli bacteria, viruses, parasites and carcinogenic compounds that can be present in untreated water.
Dr Hensrud said he has noticed more interest in alternative water sources; a patient recently asked questions about a raw water he had been drinking. "There are people, just like with immunisations, that don't accept the status quo," Dr Hensrud said.
The rules for selling bottled water are imposed by states and the FDA, which does not specify how water be treated but sets acceptable amounts of chemicals and bacteria at a low level.
The movement against tap water, like the movement against vaccines, has brought together unlikely allies from the far left and the far right. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, founder of the right-wing website Infowars, have long argued that fluoride was added to water to make people more docile. Similar claims can be heard in the largely liberal enclaves where Live Water is seeing interest spike.
Raw water is such a nascent business that there's debate over what exactly to call the liquid. Daniel Vitalis hosts a podcast, "ReWild Yourself," that promotes hunting for food and gathering water; he started the site called FindASpring.com to help people locate springs. He prefers the term "unprocessed water," which echoes the idea of processed versus unprocessed food.
"I don't like 'raw water' because it sort of makes people think of raw sewage," Mr. Vitalis said. "When you say 'live water,' that's going to trigger a lot of people who are into physics and biology. Is it alive?"
