Or why you need to filter your water.
Our drinking water in Minnesota is pretty good by national standards. In 2014 a leading concern was high levels of nitrate in fourteen “non-community” water systems. Households with children who were using these water sources were notified and provided bottle water. The concern over children drinking water contaminated with nitrate lies in it’s toxic effect on the blood particularly in infants.
Methemoglobinemia, or blue-baby syndrome, is a condition caused by the inability of the blood to deliver enough oxygen to the body. It is the most well-known effect of exposure to elevated levels of nitrate in drinking water. When nitrate is ingested it is converted to another chemical form, nitrite.
Exposure to heavy metals is a global health problem that is complicated by the accumulation of these toxins in the body over a lifetime. While our body does clear heavy metal toxins to some degree, many health issues are attributed to the accumulation of body toxins.
John Oliver discusses a serious issue–toxic levels of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan in a humorous way:
Testing for heavy metal toxicity is easy to do. The most effective way to assess your body burden of heavy metals is with a urine sample.
I use a lab Genova Diagnostics to do this test. Here is a sample report of the results. The test can be done through Mittag Holistic Chiropractic.