by Minister Masada
merica definitely has a drinking problem. Disease has
crept into our drinking water. Welcome to the land of the free and the home
of the brave, but don't drink the water.
Researchers, environmentalists and scientists
say that the most pressing problem facing us today is the threat of increasingly
virile, evolving and mutating micro-organisms in our water. "There
are literally thousands of bugs that exist in water and we don't know much
about them," says Mr. Jack Sullivan, Director of American Water Works
Assn., representing water utilities.
Is there another water borne disease outbreak
just waiting to happen? Are we living on borrowed time? Is there a bug bomb
ticking and tocking? Are water distribution systems on the verge of disintegrating?
Louis Pasteur once wrote that the bugs will have the last word. Is that
true?
More than half a million people in Milwaukee
were violently sickened by a microscopic bug called cryptosporidium. Some
died from it. This parasite lives in rivers, lakes and reservoirs, and can
elude crypto detectors because they are so small a thousand of them can
fit on a single grain of sand. Crypto is found in the feces of infected
animals and humans and can enter the water supply through agricultural runoff
or sewage leaks. It can resist many disinfectants, including chlorine, because
it is encased in a hard shell. Once ingested, the bug breaks out of the
shell in the intestines and multiplies. One little girl who drank the water
had 22 bowel movements in one day; she later died.
What many people think of as a cold or flu
is more often than not a disease-causing bug or bugs (bacteria, virus, protozoa)
that have entered their bodies through drinking contaminated water. These
bugs trigger gastrointestinal upset which is immediate diarrhea, vomiting
and cramping.
Almost half of our drinking water comes from
underground aquifers. The rest comes from lakes, reservoirs and rivers.
Our booming urban populations are contributing
to our pollution problem and to the depletion of natural water resources.
As more land is imprisoned by concrete jungles, there is less open space
for rain and snow to soak into the earth and become ground water.
This "development" is strangling
Mother Earth's ability to replenish her underground water supplies. In addition,
it can take hundreds, even thousands of years for ground water to purify
itself. Yet despite all these ravages of the corporate, economic and concrete
jungles, "developing" countries around the world seem to want
to "develop" in the image of death.
In addition, the most recent study by American
Rivers Inc. now puts three California Rivers (San Joaquin, New, Russian)
on the top 20 "Most Threatened Rivers of l997." Can you imagine
water being endangered? Yet, a study by the EPA revealed that nearly half
of our nations rivers and lakes are too polluted to swim or fish in let
alone drink. Since water is a basic necessity of life, is aquacide an apocalyptic
forerunner of eschatology?
Runoff pesticide levels are now more than double
what they were 3 decades ago. Studies have shown that, when combined, pesticide
mixtures can exhibit up to 1,000 times the toxicity of the individual chemicals.
The primary culprit is big business agriculture
and landscaping which prostitutes the planet for profits, which lets mountains
of produce putrefy in piles just to control prices. They refuse to let Mother
Earth lay fallow so that she may rest from her labors.
The piranha of the microbial world is here.
Already, it has killed millions of fish in the marshlands of N. Carolina.
The little devils have dived into the depths of water as far south as the
Gulf of Mexico, and can live in salt and fresh water
These bloodthirsty one-celled organisms are
feisty little creatures (pfiesteria) which proliferate and mutate when they
are exposed to high levels of hog and human feces. They paralyze and suffocate,
their victims, then feed off their blood. Biologists call them the cell
from hell. What I want to know is, can this cell find it its way into our
drinking water? Is it a global or intercontinental threat?
Add to this threat is the fact that drinking
water for 10 million people in California, Nevada and Arizona is now imperiled
by perchlorate a rocket fuel oxidizer from the star wars program.
The United States has aging and corroded water
pipes and treatment plants which can harbor microbes which can make people
sick. Some of these pipes date back to the 1850's before Abraham Lincoln
was President
In light of these facts, all people should
join a Living Water Coalition and demand that: 1. A uniform oversight for
our nations water systems be established; 2. Money be invested in upgrading
and monitoring the infrastructure; 3. Our government appoint a non-partisan
commission to study water issues and make recommendations at the national
level.
In the Apocalypse, after the opening of the
Seventh Seal, ecological Armageddon and aquacide has destroyed one third
of the life of our planet. And the Seven Trumpets of even more ecological
destruction are yet to sound. Can we prevent this? By the Seven Thunders,
have microbes, bacteria and other invisible armies of death gained an invincible
foothold on mankind? Since these invisible creatures are becoming resistant
to antibiotics, how will we control them? Will the pain these tiny creatures
inflict on human flesh be so devastating that men will prefer death to life?
LIFE OR DEATH.
The choice is clearly ours to make.
Minister Masada is a researcher and author.
She has been a regular weekly columnist for local and out-of-state publications
and has lectured at UCSD and SDSU. She has been an organizer of support
groups for abused mothers and helped establish Battered Woman's Syndrome
as a recognized point in Federal courts. Currently, she is Chairwoman of
the Sisterhood of Zion, a mothers' advocate group
