The Jordan Harbinger Show - 968: Bottled Water | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

Does the $200 billion bottled water industry provide a superior product to what comes out of your tap? Andrew Gold investigates on this Skeptical Sunday! On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: Is the bottled water industry a $200 billion sham? Fluoride in water: myths and facts. Bottled vs. tap, and purified vs. filtered: quality, safety, and environmental impact. The benefits of spring water over other types. The dangers of drinking too much water. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with Andrew Gold on Twitter and Instagram, and check out On the Edge with Andrew Gold here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/968 This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and this is Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of the, you know, eventually I'm going to have to stop saying that, but until I stop saying that, it's a special edition of the Jordan Harbinger show where a rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. Topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham, why expiration dates on food are nonsense, why tipping makes no sense and is possibly racist, recycling, ban foods, toothpaste, chemtrails, and a whole lot more. Normally on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories,

secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We have long-form interviews and conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. If you are new to the show, or you're looking for a way to tell your friends about the show, and I always appreciate it when you do that, our episode starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of top episodes, organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on this show. Topics like persuasion, influence, China, North Korea, scams, conspiracies, crime, and cults, and more.

Just visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash start or take a look in your Spotify app to get started. On today's episode of Skepical Sunday, we'll be raising a glass to water. It's all around us, water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Isn't that how that goes? It doesn't matter how that goes. Well, that's what critics of the liquid substance will say. they believe water is bad for you in a bunch of different ways. Yeah, water. And yet, we are made up almost entirely of the wet stuff. So what is the truth about our drinking water? Which kinds of water are the healthiest? Some people fear tap water. Others swear by the taste of bottled water. Wherever the truth lies, the fact is that the water bottle and or bottled water industry, it's a $200 billion

industry, which is kind of ridiculous. Bottles are handy ways to carry your water with you, but they're also a more expensive way for you to access water. And that's not even to mention the environmental impact of all that plastic. Not one to bottle up his feelings on the topic is podcaster Andrew Gold, who is here with me today? Andrew, is bottled water a waste of time and money, or just plastic? Water, way, what a way to start the podcast. Yeah, well done. Water, yes. Yeah, might want to rehearse that next time. Water is, of course, a product whose clarity is of the utmost important, so I'll just start by saying that when I say water, that's just my accent. I'm not

having a fit or something. Whenever I'm stateside, it is the one word I say that no one seems to understand when I say it, which is a shame because it's a pretty fundamental part of life. But hey, I get on with it. And while we're on the topic of Anglo-American relationships, I grew up under the impression, particularly from Hollywood movies, that we Brits have yellow teeth. I'm thinking of Austin Powers, of course, Canadian Mike Myers is extremely offensive take on the English. And I was always told that this was to do with fluoride in American tap water that we don't have in the UK. As a kid, I basically pictured toothpaste coming out of your taps. Right. So to be clear, it's not just yellow teeth. It's just terrible teeth all around.

Just everything about y'all's teeth is supposed to be kind of gross, terrible. They're supposed to be crooked, yellow, smelly, have holes in them, all the things. But just in case that wasn't offensive. Just in case the Austin Powers thing wasn't like the full compass offensiveness. Sure. There you go. So to offset the copious amounts of sugar that we consume as Americans, we do have fluoride in the water.

We probably should have toothpaste coming out of the taps. Well, unless you listen to our episode about toothpaste, in which case you shouldn't be ingesting any toothpaste, but that's another episode. Is there any truth about fluoride and whiter teeth then? Well, firstly, how are my teeth? Were you looking when we were just talking? I was, and I was like, is it the camera, the lighting?

Is it the autofocus? Is it squadcast? I can't tell. They don't look that yellow, but they're certainly, they're not as glistening in shiny white. as mine are under these LEDs that I bought for that reason. Let me see yours. Let me see.

They turn on the lighting here. Here you go. Watch this. Oh yeah. Well, if you turn your light, I think mine are whiter than yours. If you wash my entire face out, my teeth look white. Anyway. We've both got lovely teeth.

Anyway, I was going to say, in the early 20th century, scientists found that places with higher naturally occurring levels of fluoride in the tap water did indeed correlate with less tooth decay. So the US started experimenting with adding fluoride to the tap water. water in the 1940s. They didn't start implementing this in England until the 1960s, which is when Austin Powers sort of comes from. So that's part of the image of yellow-teathed Brits. Too much fluoridation of the water or in the water can result in white streaks on your teeth. So water companies do have to control it. It sounds like fluoride is a good thing in water. It prevents tooth decay. It has maybe it has no

serious negative effects, especially when it's controlled. I would imagine you wouldn't want too much. That's right. But in the states in 2015, they actually lowered the amount they were putting into the water systems for the first time in 50 years because there were too many kids getting those white splotches on their teeth. As with any ingredient inserted into our food and water without our permission, a number of conspiracy theories have grown around fluoride. Many people have sued the state believing that fluoride has caused their illnesses, but no federal or state court has found the use of fluoride unlawful. Huh. Okay. So that's not going to stop the conspiracy theorist, though. I mean, we've

tackled things that literally don't even exist and they're panicking about that, the 5G, the chemtrails. So something that is in the water that people say is safe, that's provably in there. I'm not sure I hold out a lot of hope for being like, oh, that's fine then. I mean, after all, it's a chemical scientists are putting it in our water on purpose and we're supposed to believe that that's just fine. Well, absolutely. And a lot of this comes from a national ecology program in 1990 in which research has found some uncertain evidence of cancer causing potential in fluoride in male rats. They didn't find any such correlation in female rats. However, we've done many studies comparing populations with high levels of fluoride in the drinking water to low levels

and found no strong link between fluoride and cancer. Although many studies since have shown no link between fluoride and cancer, that public distrust has remained, such as when the people of Portland And Oregon voted in a referendum against fluoridation of their water. Well, next time I'm there, I'll be checking the state of everyone's teeth. In fact, you could go there and just blend in as a Brit. Nobody will know. You'll think you're a local. Because this is audio podcast.

I'm imagining just fleets of people now with just this Austin Powers image in mind. I think I've got, well, people can come to sort of check it out, can't they look it up? But I'm not the Andrew Gold. There's another Andrew Golden. He maybe does have teeth. Well, he's dead. But anyway. His teeth are probably really bad, that if he's buried in the ground for any period of time.

They're probably awful now, that poor man. He sung with the Beatles. He was like a singer, American guy. He sung the Golden Girls theme tune. Anyway. Yeah, there you go. It's not just people from places without fluoride in their tap water. Here's the interesting thing.

Bottled water companies in the US don't have to declare how much fluoride is in their product. And tests have shown that bottled water has far less than the recommended American. So it is possible that those who drink bottled water rather than tap water actually might have higher rates of tooth decay, maybe even yellow a teeth. That's a heck of a thing to pay more money for or just to pay money for bottled water. Interestingly enough, black and Hispanic communities have been shown to drink more bottled water than other Americans. And this is why today's skeptic Sunday is important because the reason given that these minorities drink more bottled water is related to their beliefs about the the water quality. So it's important for us to work out if that's actually true. Two things. One, the Golden Girls theme was definitely sung by a woman. Maybe you meant he wrote that.

But anyway, that's neither here nor there. Two, I notice you say skeptic Sunday. We call it skeptical Sunday. Do you think skeptic Sunday sounds better? Maybe we should rename the segment. Because it is kind of both of them make sense. I'm curious what people think. If you have a strong opinion about this, DM me, tweeted me or email me, Jordan atjornhardner.com. Maybe it is a skeptic Sunday and not like that Sunday is actually skeptical. I don't know. I haven't gotten down that rabbit hole. You could like release it on a Saturday and be like, you know,

we're not, we're being a bit skeptical about whether this is a Sunday or not, you know. That's very meta. Yeah, that's very meta. Thank you being a friend. It's a man. Thank you for being a friend. That's the golden goals. That's a woman singing that.

100% sure. 100% sure. It's definitely a man. No. Okay. All right. Here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to do.

YouTube.com. Does that sound like a man? It's definitely a man. What are you talking about? So what's happened is they've obviously used his song as a woman's done it. Yeah. So he wrote the song, but it's a woman saying it. This is why people tune into Skeptical Sunday for arguments about obscure 90s television theme songs.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. He released the song and then they've used it and they've redone it. So he didn't just write it. He has released that song and that's the one I always hear on the radio. I got it. Both right. People love these decides. I'm convinced. They just love it.

Let's get back to the topic. All right. Could it also be, you said black and Hispanic people drink more bottled water. Couldn't it be not just because they so fancy, but because ethnic minorities, they live proportionally in areas where, frankly, the tap water might be unsafe. I'm thinking Flint, Michigan. I'm thinking people from areas of the country that just the pipes are old, man, and they're not being maintained.

And the reality is in the United States, it's kind of like if you're poor, you don't really exist. I know that sounds awful, but it's largely true, and nobody's in a rush to make sure that the drinking water is safe for a lot of these communities. Am I onto something here? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I imagine there is also something historical and cultural at play. I'm talking more about Latino, just from my experience, living in South America for seven years. I know that Colombians and Argentinians favor bottled water because the tap water either is or was unsafe in those areas. And often those people I found like Colombians were so hygienic, like ultra hygienic, more than in Britain or America. And I guess that might be to do with their beliefs about the kind of hygiene in the area and the safety issues in the area.

But like really, really careful there. But you're absolutely right that even today, while 6% of the US population has water quality considered unsafe, that figure rises to 9% among the black community. And among Hispanics, it reaches 16%, which is pretty insane. Those numbers are even higher among those who are renting rather than owning properties. Right. And even unsafe, the word, the term unsafe, is probably a pretty high bar. I think in the States, basically, unless you can actually light the water on fire and it glows in the dark, politicians will be like, ah, it's fine. Go ahead and drink it. I've even seen news reports where you can light the tap water on fire in Ohio or something. And it's like, well, that's just the gas

that comes off the water. The water itself is fine. It's like, you really have to have. brown bioluminescent flammable water before anybody seems to be like maybe you shouldn't make tea with that. And this gets pretty political, right? Because governments are often talking about raising taxes to dissuade people from getting bottled water because of the plastic, because of the environmental issues. And I understand that concern. But that's also then going to take a toll on the poorest communities who can't drink their own tap water. So I'm not really into that. One, higher taxes for something like that. But two, I'm thinking of Flint, Michigan, where you can't drink the tap water, now you're just going to be like, oh, you want clean water? Well, now it's going to

cost you more because we're doing a crap job providing a service, but something, something litter in plastic. It just doesn't make any sense. Absolutely. And bad tap water is also linked to higher consumption of sugary soda drinks and therefore obesity and all sorts of illnesses, which makes sense because diabetes has been exploding in black communities. So if the U.S. government wants to help as many people as possible while paying as little money as possible in the long term, their best bet might be fixing the unsafe water sources in the poorest areas rather than increasing taxes on bottled water. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. You did you say, hey, the water tax, we don't want more plastic. And they're like, you know what, it's just cheaper for me to drink Sprite. It looks

kind of like water. So we're just going to load up on Sprite and then you end up with something even worse. You end up with the same amount of plastic pollution, only people are drinking sugar water instead. All right, when you talk about unsafe tap water, what do you mean exactly? Are we talking about splotchy teeth and grow stuff like that, or are we talking about something deeper and darker? Unfortunately, it's the latter. We know from history that consumption of unsafe water has been the cause of countless epidemics. This realization stopped the spread of cholera in Victorian England. It's weird to think about it now, but people just left human feces in the gutters and waterways of London. This prompted them to get rid of the feces and other horrible things eventually,

to clean up their act and get rid of what they thought was bad air. Today, cholera is very, very rare in the US, but gastrointestinal illness, reproductive problems, and neurological disorders can still be spread by unsafe tap water. I'm just imagining back in the day, some aristocratic a-hole, wondering why people, you know, he's smoking his cigars with his smoking jacket out of, or his pipe or whatever, wondering why people are getting sick with his genitonic. Could it be the shite pooling in the street in front of the house? Nah, it must be bad air from those poor working class scallywags down the hill.

How disgusting. just jutting at these people as he puffs away. You can understand why people in areas with unsafe tap water go for bottled water, otherwise you're basically rolling the frickin' dice every time you try to take a drink, or you brush your teeth, or you take a shower, because of course you're swallowing a little bit of that, or it's on your skin. Oh, yeah, well, things like arsenic and uranium can get into the water, as well as pesticides, fertilizers, and sewer overflows.

That's what happened with the Erin Brocovic case that the Julia Roberts movie was based, on in the 1960s, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company dumped 370 million gallons of chromium tainted water into unlined ponds that fed into the drinking supply in Hinkley. It was thought that the cancer rate was higher as a result, although I should say a lot of the corners of the internet do actually dispute quite how bad that was, but that's another whole skeptic Sunday onto itself. Yeah, indeed. We did an episode with Shana Swan, Dr. Shana Swan, Episode 658, about the reproduction crisis or reproductive crisis and the future of humanity. And she was talking about how pesticides were making alligator penises smaller. And at the risk of sounding like conspiracy theorist

Alex Jones, even making the frickin' frogs gay, which is something he actually sort of turned out to be right about, but whatever. Yeah, I guess a broken clock is right twice a day. But yeah, while I can't account for gay frogs and something as extreme as the Hinkley case, I mean, that's quite rare to date. There is cause for concern. The Guardian sampled 120 water supplies that together serviced 19 million Americans last year. 118 of them had concerning levels of arsenic, polyfluural, oh, polyfluoroalkil or lead traces. Doesn't sound good. Yeah. No, I know. If anyone hearing me laughing, I'm laughing about the horrible pronunciation of the word rather than, I mean, what it does because it's quite serious. So this does explain why people put their trust in bottled water,

despite or also because of the lower fluoride properties. You know what else is loaded with Spunk? The products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. It is your support of our advertisers that keeps the lights on around here. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you hear on the show so you can check out the sponsors for yourself, visit jordanharbinger.com

slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. I have to say, even if they cherry picked the samples, that's a lot, 118 out of 120. Even if they're like, look, pick the dirtiest metropolitan areas in the United States and we'll see what kind of gross stuff is in there. I mean, 19 million people is a lot. So even if they were trying to find the grossest ones, they largely succeeded in finding really, really bad stuff in the water. Okay.

So we know why there are sometimes problems with tap water. But what is so special about bottled water? How do we know they don't have the same issues? How do we know that that same stuff is not in there? I'm not running lab tests on my Desani. Yeah, well, we don't know for sure. And what we do know is that bottled water purchases went up 57% during the pandemic, partly out of fear of tap water and partly for bottled water fans to stock up out of fear

that the tap water supplies might dry up in an apocalypse. I suppose what is so ridiculous about that is that companies like Coca-Cola are simply bottling up the very same tap water your drink for their bottled water, Desan. They do treat it, but it's so cost effective because the tap water is so cheap, and they sell it at least 130 times the price, sometimes much more. Wait, so bottled water is often just tap water from a different tap further away, put into a bottle by, say, Coca-Cola, shipped all over the place using trucks for no reason with plastic and branding, and then sold to me at an exorbitant price as Dasani or whatever. Yeah, so they just filter the local tap water. and add a few minor salts. Nothing you can't do at home with your own filter.

So this was a huge deal in Britain in particular, where Dasani has been withdrawn. You can't get it here now. And that's because Brits are a little bit more used to bottled water companies getting their water from the source, so springs, wells and surface waters. In the UK, 91% of bottled water comes from the so-called natural sources, but that number dwindles to just 75% in the States.

I think part of the culture around that in the UK is thanks to a really popular sitcom in the 80s called Only Fools and Horses. And there's a famous episode where the main characters who are these Cockney, London, Wheeler Dealer, market traders, decide to start bottling up tap water and selling it. So Dasani had people thinking of that episode. Coca-Cola's costs were 0.03 pence per bottle, which roughly the same as 0.03 cents, which they then sold for 95 pence. So more than a 300,000 percent markup. The fact that they tried that was a big deal in the UK, but the clincher, I hope you're ready for this, was that they implied in their marketing campaign that their water was full of sperm. Wait a minute.

Wait, they did what? Like, okay. Is that, is there a market for that? Maybe not in bottled water, but this is like a fetish site. I can't wrap my head about, why would you do that on purpose? Hey, does your water not have enough sperm in it? We can fix that problem. What?

That can't be real. They did sort of say that. What they did say is they used the Americanism, the word spunk, which only in the UK, it only means semen. Okay. So not only was there a whole hoo-ha about Coca-Cola bottling up tap water and selling it at a huge markup, but the marketing just made the brand into a joke because everywhere you looked, you saw Dasani advertised as being full of spunk, bottled spunk, and you can't live without spunk. Wow. Okay. So it was an accident, right? I suppose in an existential sense, it's true than they knew. Oh, that's a weird epic fail. Or they did it on purpose because they knew it would go viral.

They didn't because they tried to change it. I mean, it gets worse, by the way, if you can believe it. So they worked really hard to anglicize their marketing campaign, took out reference to semen and started using marketing buzzwords to try once again to fool the British public with their bottled up tap water. So their water was, you know, in their words, now treated with multi-barrier filtration and reverse osmosis, which again just means filtering and we'll get onto that a bit later. But in doing all this, they managed to offend the water source company, Thames Water, who announced that their water already goes through a nine-step filtration process and was already pure and goes through millions of checks. That's the tap water. So Desani basically arrived in the UK and became an absolute joke,

but kept trying Coca-Cola spending millions on this. and then it was found that their water was carcinogenic. So semen causes cancer? Is that the problem? Something like that. It was something about the way they filtered the water in the UK, led to it having twice the legal limit of bromate, which sounds friendly, bro, mate, right?

Oh, yeah, I see what you did there. Yeah. Yeah, but together causes cancer. So it is actually very bad. Coca-Cola recalled half a million bottles and advised people not to drink them even if they'd already bought them. And that was the end of Desani in the UK and most of Europe. There has been no evidence of anything like that,

like bromate in the bottles in the US. But it's true that many companies are just bottling up tap water and treating it with filtration. Others collect it at natural sources. But in general, here are the differences between bottled water and tap water. So firstly, bottled water has no fluoride and no chlorine. Tap water uses small amounts of chlorine, safe for consumption, that makes sure to disinfect.

of water, whereas bottled water often uses UV light to kill those germs, as well as an iron exchange and filtration. So that would account for the slight differences in taste. Okay, so which is safer? That's the million dollar question, I suppose. It's hard to tell. Most tap water in the US is absolutely fine. Standards are actually higher than standards for bottled water, believe it or not. I believe it. Bottled water has, yeah, bottled water has less regulation. and some scientists believe that plastic can seep into the water that can affect our endocrine or endocrine system, which in turn affects our likelihood of getting cancer and can also mess with our reproductive systems and fertility rates. That's why many bottled water brands have an expiry date

of two years. Okay, right. So Shanis Juan was talking about that in our episode too. It's really worrying. And I guess that the expiration date is bad news for all the survivalist preppers storing food and water in case of the apocalypse, although you'd think many of them would kind of be on top of that. You think so, but it means they have to keep stocking up every couple of years. Must be quite annoying. You know, I was on podcasts of Tim Poole's show, so he flew me out to his big sort of castle, and it has a bunker down there. And you go down into the depths of the castle that he lives in. He's got this huge bunker of food and water. And now I'm thinking, gosh, he has to keep having to change it every couple of years. I mean, to be honest, I think those bottles of water

will likely be fine. There's no way of knowing. A law was passed and then revoked, but bottled water companies still print expiration dates because why not? They might even get more cash out of survivalists every two years, right? So it makes sense to keep printing that. But if you were desperate and had no other option, I get the impression you'd be okay drinking a few expired bottles of water. The water itself doesn't go off. Okay. Illnesses associated with bottled water include gastrointestinal issues, reproductive problems, and neurological disorders. For the same reason, you're not supposed to keep tap water in a bottle for a long time. In fact, it can just be kept for six months. They say the taste goes off because of the carbon dioxide in the air mixing with it.

I see. Okay. I mean, look, you probably just drink it by another case. And then if it's like, you can't get clean water, then your prepper stash is safe and it's mostly under two years old. And Who knows? If it's old, you just filter it again with your prepper filtration system that you undoubtedly have in your castle bunker. It's interesting. It's a little scary that there's all those neurological disorders and stuff associated with it, but I guess, you know, apocalypse. Is there any difference between the brands? I mean, we know DeSani has semen in it. What else? What other surprises are lurking in bottled water? Yeah. Before Coca-Cola sue you, we should allegedly have semen in it. Yes. This is all satire, something, something. Something, something satire. And the word.

spunk and the confusion between it. But with the brands, I've never really, I had never really given much thought to which brand of water that I get, as I figured water is water. But aside from the safety in terms of microbes and things, the pH level or level of acidity is also important. If the water is too acidic, then the heavier metals found in the water start to become toxic. When water is too alkaline, it can make soaps and detergents less effective. A lot of people are now claiming that alkaline water is good for you because it reduces the levels of acidity in the body and can stop you getting cancer, but there's no evidence for this yet. Dentistry assistant professor, Augustro Robles, ran a test and found that only four bottled

water brands in the US had what he considered an appropriate acidity and fluoride level. Fiji, just water, Deer Park, Natural Springwater, and Evermore. Others not included in his study that would also fit these safety parameters are aquahydrate, Essensia, Icelandic, and real water. Okay, and then how do we choose between bottled and tap if bottled water is as much of a lottery as any tap water? Well, if bottled water has been correctly treated, it should be fine. And you can actually read on the label about that bottle's history of treatment. That's what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say.

But firstly, no one is going to read that every time they get a bottle of water. And secondly, I just checked a bottle of water before the show. And although it told me where it was sourced, it didn't say how it was treated. But maybe that's a UK thing. Of course, the other issue with bottled water, as you mentioned, is plastic contamination of the environment. In the US alone, they use almost 18 million barrels of oil to create the plastic bottles. Worldwide, bottled water creates 2.7 million tons of plastic. And given that there are relatively few advantages in more affluent parts of the world,

where the tap water's good, you know, between bottled and tap water, it does seem like one of the most wasteful things that we as humans do. Also, some people complain of water tasting hard, and what they mean by that is that it has picked up more minerals as it passed through taps. They're not talking about the semen content. They're talking about the mineral content. That would be sort of, well, I was about to sort of look at the consistency and everything of the substance of semen, but perhaps for another day. That's a great way to, if we ever upload this to YouTube, it's immediately getting demonetized. But yeah, whatever, YOLO.

That's true. This is usually a good thing. anyway, the hard water, depending on what's made it hard. But if it's minerals, we're talking about calcium and magnesium. Magnesium supports muscle and nerve function. Calcium keeps your bones healthy. Even so, one thing I think we all try to forget is that we're all drinking parts of each other's urine. Wastewater is treated in the sewers and then turns to groundwater from which we drink.

For that reason, there are hormones, particularly estrogen, that can't be removed from the water. The estrogen is coming from birth control pills, among other sources. However, there's apparently far more estrogen just in milk, and the amount found in tap water is not considered to be harmful. So there's a good argument to go for tap water over bottled water, providing you're not in an area known for its bad tap water quality. Okay, fair. But I didn't know that about milk, by the way,

but how can we know who among us has bad water? Can you test your water somehow? I'd imagine something like that on a water test kit on Amazon's probably HP. relatively cheap. Aside from looking at it to see if it's brown and sludgy slash flammable, because that's a dead giveaway. But again, if it's flammable and glows in the dark, we probably don't drink it. But otherwise, what are we even looking for? Yeah, well, you can test your own water. You can get somebody from the government to come check it for you. But that can cost anywhere from $15 to several hundred dollars. You have to get in touch with the certified laboratories

in your state and get a quote and get them to come by. There are also lots of water tests you can order online, as you say, and carry out yourself. They're not too expensive. You could also boil your water to kill the bacteria, but this won't kill all of the other contaminants that we've discussed today. So it will help to make it a little bit safer, but if there's other stuff in there, then, you know, that's not going to do it. On a more general level, you can just look up whether your city is on the list of bad water places. Many of you will remember the Flint, Michigan water crisis in 2014 when their water came out sludgy brown. The aging lead was coming apart in their pipes.

Oof. Yeah, this is something I was wondering about if the age of your pipes makes a difference to the quality. Why does that sound like a eu familiar?

You shouldn't do because we're talking not about sex but tap water quality. Yeah, I mean, I think we all know the relationship between the age of the pipes

and quality when it comes to sex, Andrew. And I think, this is a weird episode. Our minds are clearly in the gutter today. Thanks a lot,

Desani. God. Yeah, Desani. Well, what do you mean? I don't want to dwell on it, but what do you mean? Because I think some people are going, yep, that's right. As you get older, those pipes become more experience. And other people

are going, well, those pipes are starting to fall apart. Yeah, that lead could be both. Disintegrating over time. That's what we're going with. Now we're talking about two different things. All right, continue. Yes. Well, look, it can be a problem. The age of the pipes, particularly with lead over time. In Flint, it was actually deemed safe to consume, safe to drink. But trust was lost. So the community is trying to replace all of their pipes. In Newark, from 2017 to 2019, the water also had too much lead, which can lead to fetal deaths and elevated blood level in young children. And too much haloacetic acid was also found in the water in Newark, which can lead to cancer risks. Phoenix, Arizona has the highest levels of something called chromium six, and some

rural farming areas of California have water containing traces of arsenic and uranium, which is pretty scary. On the other hand, you can find lists of the best tap water, which you'll find in Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Minnesota. You know what's actually fit for human consumption? The products and services that support this show, mostly. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. It is your support of our sponsors that keeps us going. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can search for any sponsor using the search box on the website as well. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday.

We've spoken of tap water. We've spoken to bottled water. There are other options, of course. What about purified water? That's all the rage. I know we've got a purifier. I'm not even sure about the technical term, but we've got a reverse osmosis thing going on in our house. I know this is all the rage, right? Yeah, now we're talking. So first we have to differentiate between purified and filtered water. People seem to disagree about the difference. So there's some subjectivity around it. Filtered water is said to pass through a mesh sieve and involves a carbon filter. Carbon water soaks up impurities like a sponge. It takes away mercury, chlorine and pesticides. However, viruses don't stick to the carbon sponge. They go right through. So it helps a bit,

but it's not 100%. One thing to remember here is to change your filter at the right time, because the carbon sponge doesn't kill the bacteria and ugly things. It just keeps them there growing and festering. So when it's time, change that thing. Purified water goes through something called reverse osmosis, as we've mentioned, or even uses nanotechnology and UV light. None of this can ever be 100% accurate or 100% perfect, which is why they market it as purified water, not pure water, but they do a better job of stopping viruses and bacteria. The difficult thing is that most websites and news publications speak of purifiers and filters interchangeably and don't really make a big deal about the differences.

Well, having weighed up the watery options so far, if I had to drink some water, which I often do. I'm leaning towards purified water. I mean, I don't have one of those tap filters where you have, like it fills up the Britta or whatever, I don't have the energy to keep filling up those big tanks. That's why we had that thing installed or whatever. So we basically have a second faucet with purified water coming out of it. Right. But purified and filtered water are certainly said to taste better than tap water. And that's because they remove the chlorine. You'll have noticed that. You're, you know, everyone go around to Jordan's house for some chlorine-free water. That's right. Yeah. Chemicals are used to treat tap water and bottled water because that water

has a long way to travel and a long time to wait before you drink it. But at the point of drinking, once it's gotten to Jordan Harbinger's house, you no longer need that chlorine. So it's already done its job in killing harmful bacteria in the water. So the filtration there immediately gets rid of the chlorine and it tastes all a bit better. Yeah, it does, especially compared to the water I grew up within Michigan that I cannot drink when I go home. It's just, it's like drinking swimming pool water. I've heard about people going really far and getting reverse osmosis shower filtration systems, which they offered us, but I thought that was a little bit much. Surely that's overkill. Although I guess if your tap water is really bad, showering and it could be maybe dangerous

like drinking it because you're going to swallow some, you're going to get on your skin. I just, I felt like that was a ridiculous expense. Right. Well, people say that without some of the extra minerals that are filtered out by the system, the water feels softer when you shower, you know, you can feel it on your skin and your hair after. It's like a softer water. So it's about taste there. And the company's providing osmosis or reverse osmosis showers suggest your skin will feel softer. There'll be less limescale build up, you know, when it gets in your taps and stuff like that and no chlorine. So that's the advantage of it. But yeah, maybe it would have been a bit much for you to get it.

Yeah, I mean, part of me wants to make fun of people who have to shower and reverse pure reverse osmosis water and another part of me is like, how much would that really cost again? Is that something we can sort of install retroactively? You know what? We should have done some sort of deal with some osmosis shower or something, because I bet loads of people listening are now going, I probably don't need this, but I might buy some osmosis showers. Yeah, we could have shield some product here and gotten it for free slash gotten paid to do it. Oh, well, missed opportunity for us to have sold out our credibility immediately upon doing this.

It's a shame. Sad. Well, I should just say that purified water is not necessarily the winner, the battle of the waters. And that's because you can never really know what your filter was able to remove. They're designed to stop sand, bacteria and other small bits and pieces from getting in. But you never quite know. And the challenger that potentially knocks purified or filtered water off its perch is spring water. So that's water that is collected as it flows naturally from underground sources to the earth. It is particularly rich in the good kind of minerals,

so like potassium, calcium, magnesium and sodium. Some, cities actually get their tap water through spring water, like Vienna in Austria. Wow. You can also just order spring water to your house. And a lot of the water bottles just in the shops are spring water. So you can check that on the back. And that will often come, you know, you can get them in big jugs order to your house to offset the environmental impact of plastic bottles.

I got to say, I'm surprised that an entire city the size of Vienna can exist on spring water. I mean, I get 400 years ago, they're like, oh, we're just going to use this spring that happens to be right here or they built the city near the spring for that reason. But now that there's millions of people there, it seems amazing that they're still like, yep, we still just grab water from this spring. No problem with the whole city. It's not polluted, and everybody gets enough water. That's really incredible.

I'm shocked, actually. Maybe it's just part of it. Yeah, maybe, maybe. All right, so we've looked at bottled water, tap water, spring water, filtered water, and purified water. So let me see if I got this right as a summary. It seems like there's a lot going on here. The jury is out. Bottled water, worst for the environment.

The plastic can seep in, affect your fertility, affect your cancer. cancer outlook. Tap water has more stringent regulations than bottled water, but tap water in some places in the U.S. especially is really bad. I mean, in other countries too, but we're talking about the U.S. It's really bad. You're drinking birth control P. No matter what, you drink, mostly, unless you got reverse osmosis or maybe some bottled water. Any tap water, you're drinking birth control P. Filtered water doesn't remove all the contaminants, and it can be worse for you if you don't change the filter in time because then you're just putting bacteria from your filter into the water. Purified water seems expensive and complex. Maybe you just use it to drink, no

need to shower in it. Boiling water doesn't kill everything. Maybe spring water's the winter. Is that where we're at? I think so. If you're fortunate enough to be, you know, near spring water or to be able to get hold of a bottle of spring water, it appears to have more benefits like good minerals and things and seems to be purer. It's traveled less and therefore interacted less with the contaminants that are really bad for us. It's bottled at source in some spring in the Alps or wherever it might be. So even if it doesn't really make much difference, you'll get a little placebo kick, just imagining, you know, the French Alps or some beautiful mountains somewhere or wherever it was sourced.

Huh. Okay. So we've chosen our weapons. Spring water with purified water as a backup just in case. But are there other ways water can harm us? I mean, you can drown in it, whatever. Obviously not drinking enough is bad. Can you drink too much water?

I've always wondered this. Yeah, well, as you point out, we absolutely need to drink enough water. So first, let's look at what enough is before considering what is too much. The amount we all need to drink ranges depending on body weight and activity. the National Academy of Medicine recommended in 2004 that women between 19 and 30 years old consume 2.7 liters a day and men of the same age drink 3.7 liters. There's no way I drink that much because then I just go to the toilet all the time. So I don't know. Do you think you're hitting those numbers, Jordan? I think so and I do go to the toilet all the time. I lived with

a friend of mine who's like a couple friends of mine are very extreme athletes and they pay attention to this stuff. And both of them have said, you might be the only person I know. that drinks too much water, which is not really a compliment, actually. I think that's a good thing. I don't know, because I forget to drink. I go, like, the whole day, and I'm like, why do I have all these horrible headaches and feel miserable? Oh, that's great.

Yeah, that's bad. That's bad. My fiance is away at the moment for a couple of weeks, and she has to, like, send messages, like, remember to, like, not die. Can you remember to drink some water? Try to eat something. How long has it been? Oh, that's why I have a crazy headache.

I've been taking stimulants and not drinking water. Got it. Yeah, that does. It's the weirdest thing. I think I'm not that in touch with my body. I don't really know what it wants, but common symptoms of dehydration are fatigue, headaches, weakened immunity and dry skin. It typically takes from a few to 10 days to die from thirst.

You quoted Samuel Taylor Collaridge at the beginning of this here episode, water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. They were lost at sea, so taunted by the undrinkable seawater around them that served both as a barrier from any drinkable water and also a haunting reminder. of what they were missing. That was an accidental quote. I just thought that was a nursery rhyme or something from the UK.

It is crazy because we go about life feeling sometimes invincible and robust, especially when we're younger. It seems like all that's keeping us alive is just access to decent water, decent quality water. If somebody turns that tap off, that's it for the majority of the United States.

It can be hard to remember to drink water so you have to remind yourself, you got a friggin' app or something over there, slash your fiance. So what is too much water? I always remember my first babysitter was a guy a few years older than me called Johnny Fraser. And he must have been like 15.

And my friend and I, who he was babysitting, you know, we were like 10 years old. And he used to tell us these cautionary tales, cautionary stories. He was great. And he always put so much emotion into all the descriptions and had a great way of telling stories. So he told us about a guy. And I always remember this. It's like haunts to my dreams, you know, who took ecstasy. And his mouth got so dry that he kept asking for water and more water and more water.

and then he died from too much water. First of all, that's horrible, but also your 15-year-old babysitter told you about a guy who dropped E and died of overhydration and you guys were 10 years old. It's a little lurly for that type of tail, is it not? Maybe it's a British thing, I don't know.

I guess he just really wanted to stop us taking drugs. Well, before looking into whether that is actually possible because I always saw that as just a morality tale, like, you know, I should say that my babysitter Johnny, just a few years later, he died. Oh, man. He drowned while drunk. trying to save a friend in the ocean in India.

Wow. By all accounts, he was a hero. I don't know what to say about that because I don't want to say it's ironic or coincidental because that sounds a bit facetious or flippant. Like his life served as some sort of cautionary tale for a kid he babysat a few times about the dangers of water and then he drowned in the water. But it's just something to say. And maybe it's something that I could just say his name on such a big stage as this.

Oh. But back to the topic, you know. Props to Johnny, though, for the hero, Johnny Frazier for warning you about that and also trying to save someone. That's extremely brave. Good for him. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was mad.

While, you know, thinking about this episode, I looked that up again and just crazy. His friend, a woman, had fallen off this boat, and he went out to save her. She survived because people were able to go and help her, but the current was so strong. It took him away. That's super sad. Ugh, the guilt she must have for this terrible. Jeez. Okay.

Back to the topic. Can you die from drinking too much water? Yes. In fact, it was a form of torture. Not to mark this episode. too intently with my own memories, but I always remember a trip to the London Dungeons when I was a kid and they had this model human with a bloated stomach being forced-fed water. Yeah, that stayed in the mind.

The victim has to drink, or the victim of the torture, all the water funneled into their mouth because they'd choke and drown otherwise, right? So they just have to keep swallowing and swallowing, and then their stomach nearly bursts. That sounds horrible. Okay, so it's a bit like waterboarding, but with waterboarding, they don't make you actually consume the water, but you still feel like drowning. That sounds miserable. Man, that's so barbaric.

So what's the mechanism, aside from that, what's the mechanism of how much water kills you? I mean, you wouldn't keep drinking that you would so much that you would burst. You would throw it up at some point. Yeah, well, you'd think so, unless you're being forced down like that. Right, that's an exception to the rule, of course, yeah. Yeah, well, it gets you in a bunch of different ways. It's called water intoxication and can still often happen to athletes, for example. I mean, it causes confusion and vomiting.

You get something called hyponotremia, where electrical. Electrolites such as sodium are too diluted in the blood. Cells begin to inflate and when this happens to the brain, it can be life-threatening. Wow. There are reports of soldiers as well, you know, dying from this during exercises and activities after drinking more than 5 litres of water in just a few hours. One problem here is that the symptoms of hyponotremia are similar to those of dehydration. So one soldier was wrongly diagnosed and given loads more water to hydrate them when the, you know,

the problem was they'd drunk too much water and they died. You also have people who have water drinking compulsion, a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder that is common among schizophrenic patients. So they are also at a risk of overhydration. Wow. Okay. So we're made up of more than 60% water. I don't actually know the percentage. It could be like 90% for all I know. A lot of people think it's higher. I guess our bones probably have relatively little water. So that brings down the total. Anyway, it's still a lot. And yet it asks a lot of us. We have to drink it pretty often to stay healthy. We've got to drink it to stay pain free and alive. We've got to make sure not to let it get into our lungs. We've got to avoid medieval

torturers over hydrating us. We got to make sure we don't drink too much after exercise. And then we got to make sure there's no lead in it, no plastic contaminants in it, no hormones in it, pregnant lady pee or whatever, that can lower our fertility. Got to make sure there's nothing in that that can cause cancer was a halioacetic acid or whatever. We got to choose the right kind of water. We got to drink just the right amount. It sounds complicated, man, for some reason. It's a miracle that so many of us managed to get by. And I just hope you're not advertising for any water bottle brands today. No, I know. It reminds me we did an episode on cobalt and one of the major sponsors was an EV company. And it was people were like, bro, really? You got an EV ad in this

cobalt mining thing. It was like child slavery involved in battery technology. And I was like, please go and buy this electric vehicle. The thing is EVs still a little bit better. Cobalt free batteries on the way. Anyway, I'm just defending myself. No need. You know what I get. know I do a lot of videos about Scientology, so on YouTube and stuff, the ads pop up, they're not me, but they just pop up these adverts that are like for Scientology. It's like, so people are watching that video like, I can't believe what they just did, this horrible thing Scientology's done. And then it's like, boom, and do you want to join Scientology? You should come and join us. We're, you know, and people get quite angry about that. We're definitely not a cult.

Don't believe this guy, Andrew, whose video you're watching right now for the last hour and a half, the reported victim, the alleged victim who's in the interview. Yeah. Come and get a free personality test where we're definitely not going to. call you every week for the rest of your life. Thanks, Andrew. I hope all y'all listeners enjoyed learning about the dangers and necessities of water, bottled, spraying, purified, or otherwise.

As always, I really appreciate you listening if you have suggestions for topics for the show. I think bottled water was one of the suggestions from a show fan. So email us, Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com. We'd love to get your suggestions here. There is no shortage of skeptical Sunday topics or skeptic Sunday topics. There really aren't. There's a lot, and we love your suggestions. They're certainly better than most of what I'm coming up with on my own.

And again, the website or my email works just great for that. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at jordanharbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Andrew Gold on his podcast, On the Edge. I feel like I need to say, on the edge with Andrew Gold. Anywhere you get your podcasts and your YouTube channel, man, is really blowing up. So if you like YouTube, then go check out Andrew Gold.

That's your primary platform now. Oh, thank you. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Miliocampo, Gabriel Mizrahi, and for this one, Andrew Gold. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and I didn't learn anything about bottled water in law school. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on this show.

And remember, we rise by lifting others. So share the show with those you love, and if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who needs to hear it. somebody who drinks, not enough water, too much water, too much bottled water, not enough bottled water. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. Here's a preview with the 26th National Security Advisor, General H.R. McMaster, on the greatest threats to the United States.

Here's a preview. War is this continuous interaction of opposites, right? You and maybe multiple enemies and adversaries inside of a complex environment. You have to understand strategic empathy to try to view these complex competitions from the perspective of the other. Do you think our divisions domestically right now are one of the greatest threats to our national security? Absolutely, they are. And our adversaries are doing everything they can to exploit them. I mean, Russia is masterful at this.

When we were attacked on 9-11, you know, Al-Qaeda didn't target Democrats or Republicans, right? They targeted Americans. I think it's time to really demand real reforms, you know, and if teachers' unions are an obstacle, we've got to tell them, hey, you can't strike reform anymore. And we need to demand it. The fact that we're driven apart from each other based on these divisions in our society, what social media is doing to us by driving us apart with these algorithms to show you just more and more extreme information based on your predilections, the fact that, you know, if you're of one political persuasion, you watch one TV network and somebody of a different political persuasion watches a different one. Republican senators. You're creating two different realities. We're doing this to ourselves, George.

We've got to stop. We've got to stop it. So let's think about it. Let's work together to make our republic better every day. And there are some who don't want to do that. They think that, hey, you can't even empathize. You're not even allowed to empathize. It's a real tragedy.

For more, including General H.R. McMaster's thoughts on immigration and climate change, check out episode 410 on the Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask,

and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not, the through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews

because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that, I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.