Welcome to my blog. My name is Elena Valentino and I am the Editor of Water 411. By way of introduction, I am a journalist, not a scientist. I am also, however, a concerned Canadian. Over the course of the last several years, I have become increasingly concerned about the quality of the water that my family and I are drinking.

These thoughts have been crystallizing slowly over the course of my adult life. I grew up in Windsor, Ontario. One of my earliest memories is of a news story on the Detroit stations about a blob of Mercury that was found in the Detroit River. The story was warning against fishing in these waters. As a child, when my family went to the beach, I remember fish corpses washing up on the shore where we were trying to play. This was my first introduction to the silent dangers in our water. And frankly, to this day, I am leery about eating fish.

Currently, I live in Toronto. I love the sun and I love to be on the water. But it has been many years since I have been willing to venture into Lake Ontario – regardless of whether or not the flags claim the water to be safe.

Eventually, I came to realize that this apparently toxic water was flowing through my pipes and eventually into my body. For me, the final straw was the Walkerton tragedy.

Water 411 represents the culmination of my concerns and provides a forum for continued research into the water that we are consuming. I would like to invite others to provide stories and comment on their own concerns.

Perhaps together, we can find answers.

For the first issue, all of us at the newsletter decided to focus on the most universal additive in municipal water – chlorine. Please visit the October 2006 issue in the archives to see the story. As well, I have included links to some of the research that went into this article.

Let me know if you find this information helpful.

Study Hints at Cancer Peril in Chlorination

Clean Water: What does it mean to you?

Chlorinated tap water linked to birth defects

Chlorine has so many dangers

Relation between Stillbirth and Specific Chlorination By-Products in Public
Water Supplies

Trihalomethanes in drinking water and spontaneous abortion

Drinking Water Priority Rulemaking

A Look at Disinfection By-products in Drinking Water

Microbial Pollution of Water: Human Health Risks

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.