Try goggling the same thing I did - "polluted drinking water us" - and remember that you're the richest nation in the history of the world.
Why do you even have any problems at all with clean water? That should be a non-issue for a nation as rich as the US.
And of course it actually is - from a technical standpoint.
It's the unwillingness to pay for these things and the unwillingness to regulate companies according to the known scientific data that puts you in this position - not a lack of money or know-how to fix it.
Flint's situation wasn't a mistake like those responsible for it now like to pretend - it was a deliberately risky choice to save money that turned very expensive and dangerous. Again - in the richest nation in the history of the world.
That the US even still has lead piping came as a complete surprise to me as we've known the danger of lead in waterpiping for a very long time and no such piping has been allowed to exist in Sweden for many decades.
But apparently this is still common in the US and in some other countries in the world.
All of it should be replaced as soon as possible of course - and doing so will also provide plenty of domestic jobs, for among others those miners we talked about in another part of this thread.
Again the only problem here is the willingness to pay for work that has to be done to improve the nation.
The US can certainly afford it - it's only a matter of levying the taxes needed to finance the work that needs to be done.
70 years ago the US had no qualms about doing this, and that financed your victory in WWII, the G.I. Bill and the Marshall plan - and later on your space program, among other things.
You could easily do the same today.
Plastic piping can possibly turn out to contain something we yet can't trace - that's true - but there are many different kind of plastic piping and only a select few are certified for fresh water distribution in Sweden anyway.
Other then that our water mains are mostly made of cast iron that needs to be dug down rather deeply to survive our winter climate. They occasionally burst (as cast iron is more brittle then more expensive steel), but other then that they're harmless.
Iron (that does seep in trace amounts from cast iron piping) is an element the body actually needs and uses unlike lead and if the iron content ever becomes higher then normal it's immediately detectable by the taste of the water.
Though iron is toxic in high enough concentrations it's almost practically impossible to be harmed from if by ingestion as the taste gives it away and the human body also has a natural ability to regulate it's uptake of iron, letting access iron pass harmlessly through the body.
And Sweden's been using cast iron piping in it's water distribution since the 1860's and we haven't found any other potential health hazards with it yet - so I'd say it's pretty safe.
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@SeanR
Try goggling the same thing I did - "polluted drinking water us" - and remember that you're the richest nation in the history of the world.
Why do you even have any problems at all with clean water? That should be a non-issue for a nation as rich as the US.
And of course it actually is - from a technical standpoint.
It's the unwillingness to pay for these things and the unwillingness to regulate companies according to the known scientific data that puts you in this position - not a lack of money or know-how to fix it.
Flint's situation wasn't a mistake like those responsible for it now like to pretend - it was a deliberately risky choice to save money that turned very expensive and dangerous. Again - in the richest nation in the history of the world.
That the US even still has lead piping came as a complete surprise to me as we've known the danger of lead in waterpiping for a very long time and no such piping has been allowed to exist in Sweden for many decades.
But apparently this is still common in the US and in some other countries in the world.
All of it should be replaced as soon as possible of course - and doing so will also provide plenty of domestic jobs, for among others those miners we talked about in another part of this thread.
Again the only problem here is the willingness to pay for work that has to be done to improve the nation.
The US can certainly afford it - it's only a matter of levying the taxes needed to finance the work that needs to be done.
70 years ago the US had no qualms about doing this, and that financed your victory in WWII, the G.I. Bill and the Marshall plan - and later on your space program, among other things.
You could easily do the same today.
Plastic piping can possibly turn out to contain something we yet can't trace - that's true - but there are many different kind of plastic piping and only a select few are certified for fresh water distribution in Sweden anyway.
Other then that our water mains are mostly made of cast iron that needs to be dug down rather deeply to survive our winter climate. They occasionally burst (as cast iron is more brittle then more expensive steel), but other then that they're harmless.
Iron (that does seep in trace amounts from cast iron piping) is an element the body actually needs and uses unlike lead and if the iron content ever becomes higher then normal it's immediately detectable by the taste of the water.
Though iron is toxic in high enough concentrations it's almost practically impossible to be harmed from if by ingestion as the taste gives it away and the human body also has a natural ability to regulate it's uptake of iron, letting access iron pass harmlessly through the body.
And Sweden's been using cast iron piping in it's water distribution since the 1860's and we haven't found any other potential health hazards with it yet - so I'd say it's pretty safe.