David Horne

Owain <[email protected]> wrote:

    > "David Horne" wrote
    > | I visited a UK primary school a few years ago, which sticks
    > | in my mind because every child seemed to have a bottle of
    > | evian or something (none of the cheaper brands, of which
    > | there are plenty!) on their desks.
    > | Apparently, the school had a policy of allowing the kids to
    > | have bottled water during class.
    >
    > In my primary school we had drinking fountains (in the loos, which perhaps
    > wasn't the most hygienic place).

Ours were outside in the playground. Ah, those were the days.

David

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

Wolfgang Barth

a.n.other schrieb:
    >>Some people use additional "water filters", which tend to be full of
    >>bacteria. They can contaminate the water if not used with high care.
    >
    > Interesting. A serious question: I recently started using a water filter
    > (a Brita, of German origina I believe), mainly to remove e.g. Chlorine
    > which is good at killing germs, but not so good for human consumption.
    >
    > What is the problem with filters?
    > (lack of Chlorine! :-) ?).
    >
    > What does "high care" imply? Just changing the filter element at the
    > correct interval, or something else. The instructions didn't say anything
    > about bacteria :-) It did say you should not keep filtered water in them
    > for a long time, i.e. filter and use right away.
    >
Brita filters on the "dirty" side tend to be contaminated with lots of
bacteria after a few uses. The filter is made up of a piece which is
absorbing say minerals, chlorine and so on. This is the part which tends
to be contaminated with bacteria. This is much worse if the filter is
full of water for longer periods. The population of bacteria can
"explode" in this case. Thats the reason for their warning.

The second "step" of the filterering mechanism is a thin membrane. This
is holding back the bacteria. If this is scratched, bacteria from the
"dirty" side can pass to the "clean" side. This can be dangerous.

Wolfgang

Wolfgang Barth

David schrieb:
    >>Buy bottles of "mineral water" like Gerolsteiner, Selters ... in shops
    >>or restaurants. In most cases the quality of this water is very good and
    >>the taste also is very good but varying because of different minerals.
    >
    > On a purely anecdotal basis, people in mainland Europe seem to drink a
    > lot more bottled water than in the UK. Getränkmarkts are warehouse
    > kind of affairs where you buy the stuff by the crate. In the UK,
    > people buy mineral water in standard food supermarkets an AFAIK in
    > much lower quantites. I dont think this is a reflection the tap water
    > quality though.
    >
True. We are consuming lots and lots of MINERAL water. Even at home. In
most cases it just tastes better than tap water.

But tap water is of very high quality. I'm living in a "Kurort" here,
where it is RECOMMENDED for the guests to drink tap water because its
healthy! No chlorine in it. In the 25 years I'm living here we had about
three times a "drinking water alert" which resulted in having chlorine
in the tap water for a few days.

Wolfgang

Mike Ellwood

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, Wolfgang Barth wrote:

    >True. We are consuming lots and lots of MINERAL water. Even at home. In
    >most cases it just tastes better than tap water.
    >But tap water is of very high quality. I'm living in a "Kurort" here,
    >where it is RECOMMENDED for the guests to drink tap water because its
    >healthy! No chlorine in it. In the 25 years I'm living here we had about
    >three times a "drinking water alert" which resulted in having chlorine
    >in the tap water for a few days.


Interesting. Do you know why it is that the water can normally be ok
without Chlorine? I assumed it was more or less inevitable for a
bug build-up to occur in stored water, or is your source particularly
bug-free to begin with?



--
mike at ellwoods org uk

A.N.Other

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, Wolfgang Barth wrote:

    >Brita filters on the "dirty" side tend to be contaminated with lots of
    >bacteria after a few uses. The filter is made up of a piece which is
    >absorbing say minerals, chlorine and so on. This is the part which tends
    >to be contaminated with bacteria. This is much worse if the filter is
    >full of water for longer periods. The population of bacteria can
    >"explode" in this case. Thats the reason for their warning.
    >The second "step" of the filterering mechanism is a thin membrane. This
    >is holding back the bacteria. If this is scratched, bacteria from the
    >"dirty" side can pass to the "clean" side. This can be dangerous.


Thanks for that Wolfgang.
Now I'm even more paranoid about my water! :-)


--
[email protected]

Mike Ellwood

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, David Horne wrote:

    >Owain <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> "David Horne" wrote
    >> | I visited a UK primary school a few years ago, which sticks
    >> | in my mind because every child seemed to have a bottle of
    >> | evian or something (none of the cheaper brands, of which
    >> | there are plenty!) on their desks.
    >> | Apparently, the school had a policy of allowing the kids to
    >> | have bottled water during class.
    >> In my primary school we had drinking fountains (in the loos, which perhaps
    >> wasn't the most hygienic place).
    >Ours were outside in the playground. Ah, those were the days.

Yes indeed. (We had both - there's posh!).

No doubt even the outside ones would be condemned as "unhygienic" these
days. Instead the kids buy fizzy drinks loaded with sugar|aspartame, and
phosphoric acid, or possibly overpriced bottled water.

In the last few years I've done various evening classes at two different
FE colleges, and it was a peeve of mine that it was all but impossible to
get a free drink of water. In one case, they had one of these expensive
water coolers, but it was permanently switched off as the rowdy day
students had been playing silly b*****s with the paper cups. In the other,
there seemed at first to be no source of free water, but I finally tracked
down an old-style water fountain in one of the gents!

Of course, it was more than possible in both places to buy expensive
sticky fizzy drinks and overpriced bottled water. Such is "progress".


--
mike at ellwoods org uk

A.N.Other

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque) wrote:

    >>>But many locations in Europe, as in the USA have reprocessed
    >>>river water from the likes of the Rhein ............
    >> Have they installed portable toilets for the Rhein Maidens, or do they
    >> still do their business right in the river?
    >Good question! Do mythical beings have the same biological functions as
    >merely mortal ones?


Hey, the opera ain't over till the fat lady s....s! :-)


--
[email protected]

Doug McDonald

a.n.other wrote:

    >>>Have they installed portable toilets for the Rhein Maidens, or do they
    >>>still do their business right in the river?


I can assure you that two weeks ago, while rafting a tributary
of the Colorado River, I pissed in it, per instructions.

Remember that W. C. Fields refused to drink water,
"because fish shit in it".

Doug McDonald

Mike Ellwood

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, Doug McDonald wrote:

    >Remember that W. C. Fields refused to drink water,
    >"because fish shit in it".


I thought it was because they made love in it :-)

--
mike at ellwoods org .uk

Tim Challenger

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 00:22:38 +0100, Mike Ellwood wrote:

    > On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, Wolfgang Barth wrote:
    >
    >>True. We are consuming lots and lots of MINERAL water. Even at home. In
    >>most cases it just tastes better than tap water.
    >>But tap water is of very high quality. I'm living in a "Kurort" here,
    >>where it is RECOMMENDED for the guests to drink tap water because its
    >>healthy! No chlorine in it. In the 25 years I'm living here we had about
    >>three times a "drinking water alert" which resulted in having chlorine
    >>in the tap water for a few days.
    >
    > Interesting. Do you know why it is that the water can normally be ok
    > without Chlorine? I assumed it was more or less inevitable for a
    > bug build-up to occur in stored water, or is your source particularly
    > bug-free to begin with?

If it's a "kurort" then the water'll most likely originate from the deep
springs nearby. This just needs to be possibly filtered slightly and maybe
cooled then piped to the taps. I doubt the water is stored for long in a
place like that.

--
Tim C.

Olivers

Tim Challenger extrapolated from data available...

    > On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 00:22:38 +0100, Mike Ellwood wrote:
    >
    >> On Thu, 5 Aug 2004, Wolfgang Barth wrote:
    >>
    >>>True. We are consuming lots and lots of MINERAL water. Even at home.
    >>>In most cases it just tastes better than tap water.
    >>>But tap water is of very high quality. I'm living in a "Kurort" here,
    >>>where it is RECOMMENDED for the guests to drink tap water because its
    >>>healthy! No chlorine in it. In the 25 years I'm living here we had
    >>>about three times a "drinking water alert" which resulted in having
    >>>chlorine in the tap water for a few days.
    >>
    >> Interesting. Do you know why it is that the water can normally be ok
    >> without Chlorine? I assumed it was more or less inevitable for a
    >> bug build-up to occur in stored water, or is your source particularly
    >> bug-free to begin with?
    >
    > If it's a "kurort" then the water'll most likely originate from the
    > deep springs nearby. This just needs to be possibly filtered slightly
    > and maybe cooled then piped to the taps. I doubt the water is stored
    > for long in a place like that.
    >
In much of the US state health rules mandate that even water from deep
artesian wells (very common in many smaller communities) be chlorinated.
In my little city (where now some of the water comes froma bigger
neighbor's impounded surface supply, often aromatically reminding us
that we're only a hundred miles downtstream from several giant corporate
dairy farms), the wells reach down to about 1,100 feet to an aquifer of
water bearing sand that extends more than a thousand miles to the
Northwest. Above 100F at the wellhead, it has to be stored to cool, but
even punped directly into the lines must be chlorinated, not for "bugs" but
for law...

A big problem for infants....Just as adult stomachs accustom themselves to
the diet they are used to, babies can react, sometimes badly, to a change
in water. In the case of this thread, with a baby being raised somewhere
in the Caribbean where the local water is not consistently "pure" and the
baby has regularly been given distilled or similar water, some of the
highly mineralized "tap" waters might cause some problems. I don't think
most pediatricians would approve of giving any baby some of the highly
mineralized bottled waters from European spas, some of which can "set you
free" almost as certainly as your first experience drinking "gyppy" water
from some West Texas well. Unlike adults, able to manage a couple of days
of diarrhea as simply awkward incovenience, for infants, diarrhea ranks as
among if not the leading cause of death world wide and after little more
than a day, an IV may be the only workable method to preserve life. I
suspect that parents with an infant raised on "distilled" water and diluted
formula would be a little more careful than most.

Of course, there's the other side of the coin, a couple in a another travel
ng asking about taking their 3 month old to Cancun - where the water is
truly suspicious and the ice maybe "beyond suspicion" - in hot, hurricany
Septmber with an added sidetrip to see Maya Ruins. I guess they could
simply throw the wee bairn in the cenote, a fate preferable to the
potential of Moctezuma's Revenge....

TMO

Bobby Fischler

Joe Schmoe <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>. ..
    > Can anyone comment on whether the drinking water in southern Germany
    > is very pure, and are there companies there that deliver purified or
    > distilled water to residential homes?

Southern Germany is still pretty good and has fewer Muslims living
there than in the north. The Bavarians are very clean and the
sanitary standards are very high. The Bavarians still attand church
and do not engage in the eating of halil meat like the more muslim
north.

The northern parts of Germany have more leftists and SPD (socialist)
voters. This is the area you want to avoid. They are supposedly
closing the churches in the north and turning them into mosques.

Delila

"Bobby Fischler" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Joe Schmoe <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>. ..
> > Can anyone comment on whether the drinking water in southern Germany
> > is very pure, and are there companies there that deliver purified or
> > distilled water to residential homes?
>
> Southern Germany is still pretty good and has fewer Muslims living
> there than in the north. The Bavarians are very clean and the
> sanitary standards are very high. The Bavarians still attand church
> and do not engage in the eating of halil meat like the more muslim
> north.
>
> The northern parts of Germany have more leftists and SPD (socialist)
> voters. This is the area you want to avoid. They are supposedly
> closing the churches in the north and turning them into mosques.


And what does that have to do with the quality of the drinking water? To
answer the previous poster's question (I didn't see the original post): the
quality of the tap water in Germany varies greatly. Where I grew up in
Northern Bavaria (Lower Frankonia or Unterfranken) the water was very hard.
It was virtually undrinkable and the laundry was like sandpaper, even with
fabric softener. In Kassel, where my aunt lives, though, the water was/is
very soft. I guess, as a general rule, the closer you get to the Alps, the
better the water will be (not that Kassel is close to the Alps, but there
are exceptions to every rule). If I were you, I'd buy bottled water.


D.





-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
-----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =-----

Erilar

In article <[email protected] >,
[email protected] (Bobby Fischler) wrote:

    > Joe Schmoe <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > news:<[email protected]>. ..
    > > Can anyone comment on whether the drinking water in southern Germany
    > > is very pure, and are there companies there that deliver purified or
    > > distilled water to residential homes?
    >
    > Southern Germany is still pretty good and has fewer Muslims living
    > there than in the north. The Bavarians are very clean and the
    > sanitary standards are very high. The Bavarians still attand church
    > and do not engage in the eating of halil meat like the more muslim
    > north.
    >
    > The northern parts of Germany have more leftists and SPD (socialist)
    > voters. This is the area you want to avoid. They are supposedly
    > closing the churches in the north and turning them into mosques.

That's not nice ! Someone might think you were serious 8-)

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)

You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov

Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo

Big Brownz

"Bobby Fischler" <[email protected]> wrote in message

Once a twat always a twat, bet you've never even left your house have you.