Do you really know what's in your tap water? In this episode we get into the truth about contaminants in our water, how to find out what's lurking in your tap and some DIY water filtration options that can help you keep harmful chemicals away from your family. Whether you're a prepper stocking up for the apocalypse or just a health-conscious human, this episode is your roadmap to crystal-clear confidence in every glass. Tune in and reclaim your right to pure, delicious hydration!
Some things we talked about in this episode:
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Do you really know what's in your tap water? In this episode we get into the truth about contaminants in our water, how to find out what's lurking in your tap and some DIY water filtration options that can help you keep harmful chemicals away from your family. Whether you're a prepper stocking up for the apocalypse or just a health-conscious human, this episode is your roadmap to crystal-clear confidence in every glass. Tune in and reclaim your right to pure, delicious hydration!
Some things we talked about in this episode:
Click here to join our mailing list, support our Patreon, or check out our merch store.
You are now listening to Chakras and Shotguns. Welcome to Chakras and Shotguns, the podcast that guides you on your journey of spiritual development and personal preparedness. I'm Jen, a former lawyer, now yoga instructor, tarot card reader, human design reader, all the things, the list goes on and on. And I'm Mik, a marketer, energy healer, prepper, Akashic records reader. Water is essential to life. But have you ever really sat down and thought about what is coming out of your tap? Yeah, well, you're not alone. The truth is millions of Americans are drinking contaminated tap water filled with lots of nasty chemicals that just aren't great. So we're going to talk today about some things you can do to address that in your home and have cleaner, better water for you and your family to consume. Yeah, but before we get into that Valentine's Day is around the corner. And if you're watching on YouTube, I got a Valentine's Day So love is in the air, or maybe love is coming, or maybe is that boo somebody we still really want around. If you're looking for some answers, some clarity, we're doing a promotion on love readings, tarot card readings with moi, and you can book those with the code V day. 25, V as in Valentine's. Yeah, 25 percent off. Valentine's. It's a good deal for a, a, a nice little tarot card reading with you. I mean, I'm, I'm spoiled. I get, I get them for free whenever I ask nicely. Yes. Say the magic word. Link is in the show notes. Go ahead and book it. All right. Well, let's begin the show as we always do with a breathwork meditation to put us into a mindful place. Yes. So go ahead and find a comfortable seat. You can always lie down. Let's put one hand on our belly, one hand on our heart to ground. Close your eyes. Let's begin to connect to our breath. Take a deep inhale in through your nose. Pushing against that hand on your belly. And exhale your breath back out through your mouth. Pause, feel what it's like to be on empty. Inhale deeply through your nose and exhale your breath back out through your mouth. Pause. Last one together, inhale in through your nose and this time seal your lips closed and exhale your breath back out through your nose. Allow yourself to breathe normally, just noticing your inhales and your exhales. No judgments, no conclusions, just observation. I want you to imagine yourself in some capacity surrounded by water, whatever that looks like for you. Whatever feels comfortable, whatever feels the most safe. You could be floating in the ocean. You could be in the bathtub. You could have your feet in a tub of water. Whatever pops in first, go with it. Can you watch the water move even if it's moving with you? Is the water warm? Is it cool? Allow yourself to just slip into this moment of existing and understanding your surroundings in this gift that water serves in our life. Do you feel in flow? Do you feel As if you're fighting the water. All of this is information. Are you floating? Are you sinking? Take a deep inhale in through your nose. And exhale your breath back out through your mouth. Noticing your emotions, your feelings. Start to wiggle your fingers, your toes. Bring yourself back into the room and gently blink your eyes open. Welcome back. Feel free to pause and journal if something came up for you, some feelings and maybe sit with that and think of what that means as you move and flow and ease with the currents of life. Maybe there's some messaging there that your subconscious or your higher self was trying to give you. Awesome job, Jen, as always. Alright, so let's talk about our main topic. Today we're talking water. We know the stats. Body's pretty much 60%, between 60 and 70 percent water. Dependent on your body makeup. We can only go about three days of like living without having water. Right. It's an essential element that we need to consume, you know, from a prepping standpoint as well. And we know from just like a spiritual standpoint that water is incredibly important. We know water is the element that's often associated with our emotions, our intuition. And we know even from a lot of religious practices like baptism, for example, water is really seen as like this purifying and cleansing agent that can bring you to higher states of Consciousness and spirituality, right? So, the point is, water is incredibly important and we need clean water to, to exist both from a physical and a spiritual standpoint. Yeah, so this is kind of mostly a prepping episode you know, there's spiritual components to it, but also like just health wise of just something so vital to our lives you said three days, I probably can't go Three hours. We used to beef when we were first dating in the first mirror when I was like, I need water. And he was like, why do you drink so much water? And I'm like, I'm thirsty. Woman, can you tear up some water? Well, you see the skin. We're glowing. Anywho, get back on task. Most people are probably at this point drinking some type of either filtered or bottled water. Like Is anybody really drinking tap out here? I know some tap folks. I know some tap folks out here, but they're, they're fewer and far between. I think I've taken a little, we've taken it a little bit of a step further. And it's, wow. My bougie of getting the bottled water at the restaurant. They were like, Oh, it's still okay. Yeah. Or what do they say? Do they say tap? They say tap or bottle, yeah, typically. Yeah, it's tap. Yeah. But I wouldn't drink tap at home. I'm not trying to be a water snob, but you you'll understand why we're water snobs at this point. Right? So you might have a filter, like a Brita filter or something like that. Shout out to the homies in college who was running cheap vodka through the Brita filters and freezing it. If you know, you know, but basically in 2024, like a Brita filter just might not be enough. So studies are showing the tap water often harbors a cocktail of chemicals. Let me get a recipe. Chlorine by products, nitrates, and even pharmaceuticals. And then we got PFAS, right? PFAS are what are called colloquially the forever chemicals, right? These are chemicals that are used on non stick cookware, they're used on certain waterproof clothing, and where else? Oh, firefighting foam, right? I don't know why they need that in there, but essentially these products, these chemicals that have been produced for, for these products, they live on forever. There's no way to kind of get rid of them once they're, once the compound is kind of made, you can't really break it down. And so it just continues to exist within the ecosystem, the water supply, wherever it kind of makes its way. Yeah. And so there was actually a study by the U. S. Geological Survey. Shout out to those guys. And they said that about uh, 45 percent of tap water in the country has PFAS in it. They might be listening though, I'm gonna give them a shout out. I know, it was just funny to me cause you were like, shout out to those guys. I just got off the phone with them the other day. The U. S. Geological Survey, them my boys. That's the homies, man, that's the homies. Anyways, 45 percent of tap water. Mixed in. PFAS in it. That's a problem. And if you look at the, the uses, the actual uses of PFAS, like it has no business in our water at all. It's even on fast food, grease resistant bags. Like, you know, so your McDonald's fries ain't all greasy or your quarter pounder with cheese ain't, you know, just seeping through the, through the box. That's PFAS. Like that's what keeps it, you know. Clean, grease free. That's what I'm looking for. Grease free. Not really clean. Cause it's got chemical on it. Yeah. I just meant not making a mess. I got you. I got you. But anyways, you don't want PFAS in your water. Okay. And this is why. Let's get into this list. It's been linked to all kinds of really terrible things. Number one, developmental delays in children. It can lower a woman's chances of getting pregnant. So we're talking about impacting fertility, increased blood pressure in a pregnant woman, which is very, very dangerous. It can lead to a preeclampsia, which is like a very, very difficult and dangerous illness for a pregnant woman to have. And we see a lot of that in black women in particular, right? I thought there was a higher incidence in black women of preeclampsia than, I mean, I'm not an OB. I thought you told me that a long time ago. Maybe I did. And I feel like it's higher incidence. Okay. So then like bing, bang, boom, I could see, see that, uh, lower infant birth weights. So you're having a difficult pregnancy and then your child might have a lower birth weight interference with your body's natural hormones, right? I think a lot of women, especially black women. Struggle with, they can struggle with fibroids or endometriosis or all types of things. And it's about our body not naturally kind of being able, we don't know what kind of impact that's having on us. Right. That our body might not be naturally being able to do the things that it needs to do. Increased cholesterol levels. Great. It can affect the immune system and nobody got time for that and an increased risk of cancer and on that last one They just did it a study at the end of 2023 That they studied women pregnant women and the women with the highest count of PFAS in their blood Actually had higher incidence with their children having childhood leukemia so like I'm always questioning Oh, this person has cancer. It seems like everybody has cancer. Or a lot of women are having infertility issues. Or why do I, why do we know so many women who have had infertility issues and like, why is this becoming more and more and more of a problem when it doesn't seem like that was really going on as much with our parents and like their friends and family. And you're wondering if you just know more, if you're just privy to more information. Or is it sums in the waters, environmental. Now, there are some regulations out here, for sure. You know, we talked before about how the U. S. tends to be a little bit Toward the back of the line when it comes to Western developed countries, as they say, in terms of being able to regulate some of these chemicals, we have the FDA, which is responsible for bottled water. And, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about bottled water a little bit later. And you've got the EPA who is responsible for the tap water at a federal level. And currently the, the recommended level of, of PFAS is 70 parts per trillion. And so if you were to kind of think about that, that is 70 drops of water in the equivalent of 20 Olympic sized pools, right? So we took 20 Olympic sized pools, all the water that's in there. And then 70 drops is like the current regulation that we have set, right? That that's an acceptable amount of PFAS. But scientists say that the appropriate number where we should actually set the level is one part per trillion. So only one drop and we're letting 70 in, in that water. I think when I figured out what parts per trillion was. It was just like, Oh, 20 Olympic sized pools. That's a lot of water. Like, remember when the Olympics was in Brazil and they were talking about how much water it was take, like 20 pools. But then think about having an eyedropper and like, you had to count out 70 drops. That would take you like a minute. And it's not that much. It would fit into a shot glass. It'll mess you up. It'll fuck you up is what it would do. Yeah, yeah. But then you really only are supposed to have one drop. Just one drop. That's the one drop rule I can get behind. Okay, that's what you do. There was a proposal in March of 2023 to put federal limits on the amount of There's different categories of PFAS and so Six categories that they felt were the most dangerous. There was a proposal to put a limit on those. Some of those regulated levels are still higher than that one part per trillion, but they're kind of like at four with the eventual goal to get down to one. There are 13 States. We've got the federal level, right? But then obviously States, they have their own regulations that they can enact. And so there are 13 States that do have a guidance and 12 more have. Uh, actual regulations and limits on their municipal water, right? So we'll link to a map. So you can see like, is my state, one of the ones who's like regulating PFAS or not, but pretty much the, the, the back of the hand, you know, math, back of the envelope math is if you live in a red state. You probably don't have any regulations on the PFAS in your tap water. So, sorry about that, uh, my Texas family, you know, all my homies out in Texas. So, you know, there's potential to being exposed to a lot of those health harming substances every time you turn on that tap. Yeah. I mean, are we really surprised? I just feel like The Republican approach to limiting government regulations. Like, I think that's kind of been like their brand of like limited government interference, but you got to keep some stuff out. Like you have to control certain things. Like I think people should be able to drink and bathe and cook with water. So I could get on my soapbox for sure about where we are in terms of our American capitalist experiment. You know, I got my MBA and we had a class called modern political economy and we went through all these economic theories and basically American capitalists. Capitalism was not supposed to be this unchecked monster that it is today. There was supposed to be some sort of government regulation, but we've gotten to this point now where that doesn't really exist. Yeah. And I think that, um, no matter how you feel politically, I think we can agree that like, if I'm paying you money in taxes, in taxes that like infrastructurally, It should be taken care of. Like that's what I'm doing that for. Cause otherwise I would go live on a land with, with a spring and we see people living off grid and You know, and that's going to continue to increase, I think people live in off grid because I mean the food supply, we just watched the show about the food supply and how jacked up it is water supplies got issues. So, yeah, yeah. You're seeing people make choices like I'll just do solar panels in a well and raise my own chickens, raise my own crops. Like, and just opt out because we're buying into a system that is not, it's not even taking care of the tap water. We'll have some guests on in the future who are doing that. But for now, let's talk a little bit more about the water. So let's talk about how you can maybe check what's going on with your water. So you can go online and get your local water quality report. And for example, our report was on the Los Angeles County Water Works District homepage. You can just kind of Google your county or your parish for my Louisiana homies, your, like your local area and just kind of search for local water quality report. And you should see what's in the water and what's lurking, what you should be trying to plan for. I'll say this, like LA County is generally okay, but like, there were still some things that I wasn't happy with seeing in the water report. So if you see some stuff, like what we saw in ours, you probably want to go out and, you know, personal responsibility and get your own water filters. I say that because, you know, a lot of Republicans all about personal responsibility. So, you know, yeah. So anyway, there are a lot of options out there, but we'll run down the basic category. So. Jen already mentioned earlier about Brita's, right? So those are like pitcher filters, you know, fill up the, the pitcher from the tap, allow the water to kind of drip down from one area into the lower area. It passes through a carbon filter filters out things, right? Downside though, many pitchers don't actually remove certain contaminants like lead and PFAS, right? So you have to make sure that whatever you're getting is going to get the job done. There are a couple of brands out there, but. You got to make sure you're, you're looking specifically for, if you see PFAS exact in your water report, you make sure you're getting one of the few products that can actually do that. I think we, uh, we'll mention a couple of later. All right, then you got countertop filters. So these are a step up from the pictures, right? They're a lot bigger. They sit on your countertop. You can pour a lot more water into them. They'll filter and you'll, you know, have a lot more water to work with. They have faster flow rates, a lot more filtration. Typically the main downside though, is you are taking up a bunch of space on your countertops. And if you're like us, you know, renting in a smaller space. The kitchen countertops are kind of, you know, premium space. So you don't want to have too many appliances out there. So, you know, if you got the room for it, go for it. Then you have under sink filters. And so these basically are, you know, tucked away underneath your sink in the cabinet and they hook in directly to your water lines that kind of go for the kitchen sink or the bathroom sink. And yeah, you're hooked in directly and all the water that's coming out of that tap is getting filters. You don't have to worry about. You know, a container to hold the water as it's being filtered, whether that's the countertop of the picture, you know, you do need access to those waterlines though, and I know in some spaces. You know, maybe you're renting in an apartment building. You may not have that access. So just check if you do go ahead and try one of those under sink filters. Then you have the whole house system. So these are, you know, connecting directly into your, uh, intake water intake for the entire house and filtering right there at the source. Now this can be a great option, but you are going to end up. filter water because it's the water that's also being used to flush the toilet or take a shower with that, you know, you're not actually ingesting. So some people say it's a little bit of a waste of your filter and your filters are going to run out faster because there's a lot more water being run through them. That's the downside there. There is a variety of these for each category and the performance of them, you know, can, can vary a ton depending on the brand. There was a dope YouTube video that I actually went through and like looked at a bunch of different brands. And so we'll link to that in the show notes and you can check that out. I didn't want to go back and mention though about the, the picture filter. And so the one brand that seemed to do really well in that YouTube video is one that comes from the brand Zero Water. So check those out. I heard they are a little bit more expensive in terms of like the filters and whatnot But they do a really good job with PFAS. So check those guys out and then Consumer Reports actually Tested the zero water against a Brita and I'll link that article too. So check that out there Apparently there's like a specific Brita model that can can take out some PFAS And so they can kind of compare that one against the zero water pretty comparable performance. So check that one out and then I do want to mention reverse osmosis. So reverse osmosis is a another form of filtration that you can get. But the downside with that is it, it is really, really, really fine filtering. And so it actually will strip out even some nutrients that are in the water. And so some people say that you'll then need to remineralize your water after doing reverse osmosis, which can be kind of a. It's a complicated and expensive process if you're filtering and then remineralizing and having to do all that. So you can look into that, but it's a lot more expensive. It's not something that I have experience with. If you're watching on YouTube, I just been sitting here looking cute while Mick went through all of that. I mean, you know, gotta get info. Thanks. I admit, kind of said this earlier, but again, you're pairing that local water quality report with the filter that you're choosing. So like if you have this type of contaminant, making sure that the filter that you're choosing can filter that out because otherwise you're just kind of wasting money. Now one thing you did say about wasting water for that whole house system. If you have a bidet though, because like we've started to add some products and we'll talk about those But we don't have a whole house system here and You know, that bidet water that you're shooting into the nethers. You're telling me I got PFAS in my bootyhole? Yeah. Alright, so we gotta get some filters for that too? I gotta get a whole nother filter for the toilet? I don't know if they have a filter for that. I mean, it's the same hookup. It's the same hookup that's underneath the sink. I could just get another one. You know, it might help the hard water, you know. I have to use a lot of elbow grease for this hard water in LA. It'd be messing our toilet bowl up. It does. It does. Cool. So I'll just kind of run through quickly some of the filters that we actually have installed. So first up we have a filter baby. These are essentially on our bathroom sink. That product is really kind of marketed as like being really good for your skin. And so we. As you can see by Jen here, uh, but it's a great filter. It filters out a lot of stuff like chlorine and heavy metals, uh, and any microplastics. So it's not going to get PFAS out, but it's going to basically soften the water and remove a lot of the heavy metals for your skin. So that's the benefit there. Then under the sink, we have the HydraViv and these are under sink filters and we have two, one for the cold, one for the hot, and these are rated to take care of PFAS. So we could drink straight out of the. Kitchen tap if we wanted to and yeah, they one of the cool things about Hydroviv is that when you are ordering them You actually input your zip code and so they'll make sure that the filters that they're sending you are Filtering out exactly what you need to take out of your specific water in your area. So those are great. They run about a hundred in 18 or so right now. I think they're on sale. So check those out and then the filter babe I didn't mention the price those are about 89 each then we have some shower filters So there's a ton of different brands out here who have, uh, shower filters. We just kind of grabbed one off Amazon called Aquahome group filtered. It's cool. It gets the job done. It takes the chlorine out, you know, it, we have a lot of hard water. And so it kind of helps with some of that too. There's also a product called water sticks that I heard is also really good for softening hard water. So that's another brand you can check out, but the ones we have are like 25 bucks. So. Great for that. And then for our little ones. So we give them baths in the bathtub every night. So we wanted to find something that would actually filter out the water that was coming through the faucet. And so there's like a little tub hanger that we have. It comes from a company called crystal quest. It's called the bath ball filter, and it just hangs. It has carbon in it and it's filtering out a lot of the heavy metals and chlorine and whatnot. And it runs about 65 bucks. So we'll link all of those in the show notes and you can check those out. Yeah. So the differences that we've seen since we incorporated those, because water filters really, we just had a Brita when we were in Dallas, but we noticed that the water was hard. We started seeing a lot more products come onto the market and really started looking into what's in our water. So that's why we incorporated some of those things here. Things that we have noticed, uh, our daughters would get like kind of eczema like skin dermatitis y kind of. Things on them, uh, little rashes and things completely went away. Their skin just like really even out and like calmed way down. I felt like it was something in there that their body was just like, girl, what is this? So that was really nice for me. My hair got a lot softer, felt a lot more moisturized. My skin cause I'm washing my hair in the shower. I washed the girl's hair in the kitchen. Sink. So then that's when we incorporated the hydro viv. Cause I was already kind of a, if I'm making tea, I use bottle water anyway. If I'm cooking, I use, I have a Brita filter, but we really wanted to find something that worked for the kitchen sink itself. So that was like really great. But the thing that's missing is that bidet. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'll put that on my list. Gotta get the PFAS out the booty. I want my booty to be PFAS free. Alright, alright. So let's talk a little bit about bottle water though since, you know, that's something we tend to drink and there was a lot of stuff out there, right? Like, just because you may be filtering the water coming into your house, like these companies who are producing beverages for you, whether that's bottle water or soda or whatever, they're, obviously water is a major ingredient in a lot of these products. You don't know where they're getting that water from and like what's in it, you know, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. I love talking about bottom. I think there's two issues here. I think based on this episode that we're in, we're talking about PFAS and. Honestly, the vast majority of like bottled still water is either really close to that one part per trillion, which is like the ideal or even less. So that's not really an issue. There are some sparkling water brands that are, do have a little bit of cost for concern, I think La Croix. McCroy, however you want to pronounce it, they're a little bit over one, but not too alarming, but Topo Chico, like a couple of years ago was at 9. 6 when you're trying to be as close to one now, Coca Cola, I think they even might've gotten sued or people were like, Hey, the PFAS in this, I'm growing an extra ear. And so, I don't know, that's not what they say, but they were talking about the PFAS and Topo Chico, Coca Cola said they did a bunch of stuff with their filters, whatever, whatever. It's much lower, but it's still not down to one. Yeah. And I'm actually not quite sure what the number is. I think they're kind of playing that close to the vest because of outstanding litigation. Yeah. So, yeah. But if you're also talking about, if you want to take the PFAS part out of the conversation and in general. What you want to look for. I only drink spring water if I can help it. Now, if I fly into Dallas, because Coca Cola has a lock on the Dallas airport, you can only find Coca Cola products and they don't have any spring water. So you're talking like, Ozarka, Poland spring on the East coast, Arrowhead on the West coast, Crystal geyser, like spring water, you're talking about. Smart Water, Dasani, Aquafina. Ugh. Yuck. Public Water Source, that's what PWS means on the back of those bottles. Yeah, it'll say something like purified water, which just means that it's municipal tap water that they've run through a bunch of filters. It is filtered. They run it through filters for taste. For taste, exactly. You're not getting the PFAFs out. Well, a lot of them don't have PFAS. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, a lot of them are like down to like one. Okay, okay. But like Arrowhead has no PFAS detected, which is great. Yeah, so you will see that again to the mineralization issue European brands of bottled water tend to be They'll say like it's thicker because it has more minerals. They tend to be like They don't really feel hydrating to me. Like, they don't give me that mouth feel, but Europeans will come here and they'll be like, your water tastes like nothing. Yeah. So, that's another thing to, to think about. I know there's mineralization products out there. They scare me. It's, it's not because they're scary per se. I just kind of feel like the dosages and the ingredients are giving like until the ancestors say stop like I just don't feel like there's enough research and we just don't know how much we're supposed to really be putting in into our water. People are like, Oh, add a little salt to your water. And I was like, now I'm a mermaid. I don't know what's going on. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if we could just You know, naturally drink the water, the fresh water, and it has everything we need. That would be great. That would be fantastic. But speaking of the ancestors, I do want to say something before we leave out, you know, from a spiritual standpoint. Like, we're talking about PFAFs in the water and everything, and let me tell you something. Make sure that you at least run in that water through a Brita or something before you put it on your ancestor altar, because the ancestors, they want to connect with you, and they don't want all the PFAFs in their altar water. So, that's just my last thing, yeah. Suggestion here, you know what I'm saying? The ancestors don't know what a PFAS is. They know. No, I mean in the sense of like, in the sense of like, the true ancestors, especially like the further you go back, they were used to the source. They were used to the natural. They were like, baby, what is this? What is this? I do want to say though, my last point on this, as we get out of here, if you are pregnant, trying to get pregnant or immunocompromised, I would strongly suggest just paying attention to where PFAS can pop up around you in your water and et cetera, and try and take some precautions around that. That would be my, my hope. So. That's it for the episode. Remember, if you want to do a love reading with me, V Day 25 is the code. Check out the link in the show notes. That's it. That's it. All right. Finally, guys, if you guys are loving the show, please hit subscribe. Check us out on YouTube and leave five stars wherever you listen. Namaste.