
Food-safety expert warns Silicon Valley $60 ‘raw water’ trend could turn deadly - dehamburglar
https://www.businessinsider.nl/silicon-valleys-raw-water-trend-could-turn-deadly-2018-1/
======
throwanem
I had giardiasis once, because I drank water straight from a stream. Clearest
water I've ever seen outside Yellowstone's hot pools, and it tasted great! A
few hours later, my entire digestive tract was doing its level best to turn
inside out. It's a hell of a thing - at first you feel like you're dying, and
then after a while you realize you aren't but start wishing you would.

I really can't recommend it! At least boil the stuff first. Or would that
evaporate the magic, too?

~~~
Alex3917
Drinking untreated water from a stream is idiotic, but that's completely
different than drinking well water though, which hundreds of millions of
Americans do every year without any negative effects. While most wells do have
filters, those are just there to get rid of excess sediments. And you can also
get rid of any bacteria with UV light without filtering the water, so I'm not
seeing where exactly the danger comes in here.

~~~
djrogers
The entire point of ‘raw water’ is that it’s unfiltered and untreated (no UV)
and from a spring. I think you may have missed a few details from the article.

~~~
blfr
Isn't spring just a naturally occurring well?

Honest question, I have lived in a city my whole life and I would have boiled
or at least purified water from either. OTOH, I drink unpasteurized milk so
can't judge.

~~~
wand3r
I have a well. I am not an authority on them but growing up having one I know
it is treated. Our water is "hard" so it goes through a softener which
requires a massive amount of salt. There are numerous filters in the basement
as well. It isn't pumped from the ground directly to the tap and the system
maintainers come and test it periodically when they do maintenance

~~~
flogic
That's some wells. When I was growing up, my parents' well was pretty much
untreated. The water was a acidic so that first morning drink of water tasted
of copper. I suspect most of the safety came from arranging the conditions so
the water would be safe by default. There is a minimum depth for the well and
it needs to be a certain distance from the septic system.

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thesandlord
> Silicon Valley is developing an obsession with untreated, unfiltered water,
> according to The New York Times.

I know this is anecdotal but everyone I know in "Silicon Valley" drinks tap
water (straight from the tap or filtered) or sparkling water. Flavored
sparkling water is definitely a fad in the Bay, I've never seen or seen
someone consume unfiltered water. Seems very sensationalized.

~~~
kurthr
Agreed... this is definitely a fad of the "Elite" just based on the price.

Tap water from Hetch Hetchy is pretty great (they don't even have to
chlorinate it). LaCroix is also a tasty fad.

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theptip
Business Insider is trying to make this story stick, but this is not a
"Silicon Valley" trend. Shameless clickbait.

This stuff is sold in Rainbow Grocery, which has been selling hippie products
to Bay Area hippies for decades. While the Venn diagram of techies oftentimes
intersects with hippies, they are not the same groups.

On the object level, this stuff is not safe (as others in this thread have
mentioned), and I'm sure there will be a lawsuit when someone gets sick from
this product. It's not as dangerous as the anti-vaccination madness, but this
is still a harmful meme.

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Hasz
I can't imagine the liability involved for the vendors selling this stuff.

That being said, a UV sterilizer (available from most camping stores) will
destroy most bacteria and viruses and should leave you with all the minerals
and (literal) shit that make this water so delicious. I'm not sure how
bottling will affect the dissolved oxygen content though.

~~~
0livaw
UV light, especially from lamps purchased by normal consumers, will not
"destroy most bacteria" let alone viruses.

~~~
Balgair
[https://www.amazon.com/AquaTop-Line-UV-
Sterilizer-10W/dp/B00...](https://www.amazon.com/AquaTop-Line-UV-
Sterilizer-10W/dp/B005HJYXNO)

About $45. Seems to do a good job for cleaning water, though this particular
model may/not have a leaking issue.

Oh, and the way UV light accomplishes the sterilization is via DNA
destruction: "UVB light causes thymine base pairs next to each other in
genetic sequences to bond together into pyrimidine dimers, a disruption in the
strand, which reproductive enzymes cannot copy."

So that's why it can kill viruses, because UVB light 'attacks' the DNA itself,
stopping infection and mitosis.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_DNA_damage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_DNA_damage)

------
DrScump
Does the choice of a few dozen nutjobs qualify as a "trend"?

~~~
rhizome
Is it even more than that one Juicebro guy?

------
RobbyMcCullough
I took a trip up to Oregon for the eclipse over the summer. One of my
campmates filled their water containers from the Shasta spring on the way up.
Untreated. Unfiltered. Straight from the mouth of the spring.

Despite my better judgment, I tried some and it was by far and away the best
tasting water I've ever experienced in my life. I stopped at the same spring
on the way home, filled up a 5-gallon water jug, and cherished every last
drop.

I was aware of the risks and I think it's an alarming trend as well, but gosh
darn that water tasted amazing.

~~~
rohit2412
Does boiling destroy taste?

~~~
RobbyMcCullough
My strategy was to wait a day or two and see if my buddy got sick before I
tried it. But, yeah, after seeing the other comment here, boiling probably
would have been a good idea!

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JustSomeNobody
Money quote:

>“You can’t stop consenting adults from being stupid,” Marler said. “But we
should at least try.”

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jankotek
Raw water, aka spring water or mineral water is safe. In Europe it is bottled
straight from deep well, without any processing.

Something fishy here...

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Mineral water in Europe is still filtered and processed. The limitation is
just that no additives are allowed and filtering has to use physical means.

------
johan_larson
I'm wondering why people who are unsatisfied with municipal tap water don't
just buy "spring water" or "distilled water", both of which should have less
weird stuff in them. And they are standard products available at most
supermarkets. Distilled water in particular should be pretty much pure H2O.

~~~
zxd1098
Err, isn’t distilled water bad to the point of being toxic? I think you mean
purified.

~~~
ghaff
Not toxic although it does lack minerals which could potentially be an issue
over time.

~~~
kurthr
This is a common misconception. It's been debunked many times. It stays around
because it sounds interesting.

[https://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml](https://www.finishing.com/156/65.shtml)

What is rain water? It is water distilled by the sun. Are there electrolytes
in your spring water that you can't get by eating food... no.

Can you get enough electrolytes just from normal water (e.g. Total Dissolved
Solids of 200ppm, not Gatorade) without food that will prevent you from dying
of an electrolyte imbalance... no. Eventually, only drinking water will kill
you for a variety of reasons (starvation), but you have so much salt already
in your body that it will take weeks to kill you.

------
smashingfiasco
Living on the SW corner of Lake Erie, I have access to the rawest water of
all, with it ripening every July-August. For any intetested in the effects raw
water can have on your health, I'd be happy to price-match against SmartWater
at your local grocer... ;)

------
raverbashing
Anyone who played Oregon Trail should know how this could end

(Or anyone who went to school, basically)

------
nolo
Overblown concerns if pulled from a known good and tested source. Modern well
technology and practices make the risks nill if followed; untreated surface
water is an entirely different story and risky.

I've been drinking, cooking, and showering with aquifer water that only goes
through sand for quite some time. Amazing taste, none of the chemical flavor,
incredibly "soft" like fresh rain water - that slick feeling as though you
have soap on your hands

~~~
userbinator
_untreated surface water is an entirely different story and risky._

From my understanding, that's what they're selling here.

~~~
nolo
Yikes, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed they drilled to the
source below ground. Literally anything can happen on surface water - one of
your workers comes to work sick and shoots a snot rocket into the creek fed by
the spring, rabid skunk dies and tumbles in, etc.

Ground (preferably very deep) has far less that can spontaneous go wrong if
you follow good practice - no barns or significant domestic animal activity,
no composting, etc

------
y0ssar1an
The number of commenters defending/sympathizing with raw water proves Silicon
Valley is vulnerable to this kind of hysteria. I'm routinely horrified by how
many people here fetishize the _natural_ , without understanding that _Nature
is a hostile force that wants to kill us!_ We should all be grateful for the
Wall of Science that protects us from Nature. (Source: MS Biology)

------
nkkollaw
So, I guess microdosing LSD is making people in Silicon Valley a little
confused...

~~~
maroonblazer
My younger days included a good bit of LSD ingestion and even _I_ could
recognize pseudoscience when I saw it.

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dschuetz
There's a trend rising for raw exotic water from Africa, I've heard. They
haven't plenty of it so it's rare and quite exclusive! Retail sales only to
rich white folks - USD 100k per barrel per person only! Get one while you can
- reservations are already being accepted!

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shafyy
This is definitely not a trend here in SV. Never heard of that.

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everyone
Is there a word for hilarious but also depressing?

~~~
everyone
deprilarious?

------
indubitable
When I hear 'food safety expert' in the US, it kind of makes me curious. I
decided to search for an image of our expert, playing the favorable odds I
suppose, and was not surprised: [http://tobecofoodsafety.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/bill-...](http://tobecofoodsafety.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/bill-marler-025_filtered.jpg) There's a giant elephant
in the room when it comes to healthfulness in the US. Our life expectancy has
actually be going down, even when it was already relatively mediocre - lower
than even some places like Chile and Costa Rica. Mortality rates from 8 of the
top 10 killers, heart disease in particular, have been increasing alongside
our waistlines.

Many of the things we try to use to explain this, such as less physical
lifestyles (or, equivalently, the rise of the internet) don't really mesh
well. These changes are happening everywhere around the world, in many
instances to a greater magnitude than the US, but what is happening to the US
is fairly unique among developed nations. It seems to imply that something
we're doing, or consuming, that we think is healthful - most likely is
yielding unforeseen consequences that we haven't quite pin pointed yet. This
is further emphasized by the fact that this trend is something that is often
confined by borders. For instance the Czech Republic is rapidly headed towards
its own issue here, yet it borders Poland, Germany, Austria, and Slovakia -
none of whom are facing similar issues in spite of running the gamut among
things like socioeconomic status.

Is it the water? Well, probably not. But I think having people who are happy
to be guinea pigs here is a good thing for everybody. They get what they want,
some entrepreneurs make a few bucks, and in the end we all learn a bit more.
An anecdote I particularly like is of the discovery of penicillin. It took
years for it to be accepted, even after the discoverer shared and published
his findings. And I think a big part of that is that people instinctively felt
that using a product from blue-green mold that emerges on rot to try to treat
sensitive vulnerable infections was pretty much obviously idiotic - except it
wasn't.

With things like vaccines people 'going their own way' can hurt others. In
this case, that's not true. Well excepting medical costs if they end up
hospitalized, but given the costs of these bottles - I suspect these
individuals will disproportionately already have health insurance plans that
will not leave society picking up their tab. So in the end, nobody really
loses. If you don't think it's a good idea to drink it, don't. I won't - but
I'm quite curious to see what happens to those that do!

~~~
kurthr
They can get and spread Giardia. It's fairly common and that would be bad.
Even the other strange diseases they could communicate to a family member or
immuno-compromised co-worker isn't a small deal either.

~~~
indubitable
My cynicism towards 'health experts' is not unjustified. The wiki page on
giardiasis [1] gives a good overview of some data. Some random snippets:

\- According to a review of the literature from 2000, there is little evidence
linking the drinking of water in the North American wilderness and Giardia

\- Treatment is not always necessary as the infection usually resolves on its
own

\- It can result in weakness, loss of appetite, stomach cramps, vomiting,
bloating, excessive gas, and burping.

Wiki gives about 300,000,000 people with giardiasis. The article mentions
4,600 needed hospitalization. So a hospitalization rate of 0.000005 with the
typical consequences being gassy and having the shits for a few weeks. Being
afraid of this sort of stuff is simply irrational. Another datum I left off is
that 3-7% of Americans already currently have it.

There may be a reason for concern about 'natural' water, but this certainly
does not seem to be it.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardiasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardiasis)

~~~
kurthr
You have clearly never had Giardia or it seems known anyone who has. I have,
and let me say that it gives you a deep and terrifyingly intimate knowledge of
your bowels, the places available to relieve yourself, and the contents of
your excrement. You can spend many hours each day in wonder and awe. Note that
although you can live untreated you will become a vector for the disease... it
may be that an immune response will allow it to pass in a few days (if you've
had it several times before), but you can still pass it on to others. Often
symptoms last for several weeks or months unless treated with flagyl (typical
treatments last 1-2 weeks). It is quite bad for your liver.

Many of the livestock around the world have it (or other parasites). I don't
want to be near anyone else who has any of them, and I think immuno-
compromised, elderly, children or pregnant women would be rationally quite
afraid.

~~~
indubitable
It's unwise to speculate of things you know nothing of.

I've lived for years in areas where incidence rates of giardia push upwards of
30% - alongside numerous other 'sicknesses'. And there are literally enforced
no sanitary standards on food establishments. A big part of the reason for my
views is because of my own life experience. Have I had giardia? Almost
certainly, though I couldn't tell you for certain. When I first started my
travels stomach upset was typical though hardly intolerable. But as I adjusted
to less than sterile conditions I'm vastly healthier than ever before - far
moreso than my time before in the US where a million rules and regulations
tryied to protect me from everything, yet inevitably failed.

There was an interesting study a few years back [1] that sought to study a
connection between dust/bacteria and asthma. The results proved to be
completely the opposite of what they went in hypothesizing and perhaps even
more remarkable. Want to have kids with healthy immune systems free of
respiratory disease? Who doesn't? Then make sure they're exposed to all sorts
of dirt, bacteria, dust, and all these sorts of fun things - because exposure
there is linked to a substantial decline in the risk of later
allergies/asthma/etc.

Our immune system is, by far, the most sophisticated tool we have against
illness. And priming it is not exactly a new idea - it is the fundamental
basis of operation for vaccines. A vaccine is generally just injecting a
weakened or otherwise 'handicapped' version of a virus into your body training
the immune system to make it more likely to be able to resist the real thing
should it encounter it in the world.

[1] - [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/keeping-too-clean-a-house-
may-r...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/keeping-too-clean-a-house-may-raise-
kids-risk-asthma-allergies/)

------
aphistic
Natural Selection?

