Chile Forum

Being 3rd world and the quality of the water do not necessarily go together. What counts is what’s underground and what the population ends up drinking.

I’m sure there was a time, perhaps over a hundred years ago when the US was developing at a rapid pace and not caring much about what was dumped in the soil, that the quality of its drinking water was much worse than in most other parts of the world. Today, however, the situation may be the same in what might be described as developing countries.

As for South America, I lived there for close to twenty-five years and drank more than a couple of sips of water. Currently, I’m in touch with a chemical engineer who is doing first-hand studies on the quality of drinking water down there, and whose pet peeve is the effort by local authorities to fudge on the so-called safety levels of harmful substances in the water supply.

I have to point out, though, that I came upon that paper while researching water filtration methods, and the prospects are encouraging.

There is one thing that Chile has that almost no other country in Latin America has, a great big fresh water filter that runs the length of the country. You might know it as the Andes. Almost no where in Chile are you more than say a few hours away. It is not like the Mississippi for example that snakes through the rust belt on its way to the ocean for several thousand miles or the Colorado that tours the nuclear testing sites on its way to Lake Mead, and then does another tour through the super pesticide farm lands of southern CA. Chile has a lot of independent fresh water sources built in. A contaminated river in Chile is not going to put it out of buisness. Well drilling seems to work all over the country.

My experience was that after drinking some water, my mouth felt dry, and I felt thirstier.

This was my experience too. I attributed it to the high level of minerals and installed a reverse osmosis* system. My water tastes sweet and we all drink a lot more water now.

* Yeah yeah expensive yada yada, but we feel it was worth every cent as we are huge water drinkers and just weren't drinking enough due to the salty taste of Santiago tap water.

That time in the US when they didnt care about the water stills exists. Check that chart on the pdf above and you will see some very bad areas that are obvious from contaminants. Things haven gotten better here but due to the size of industrialization, there will always be someone cutting corners and dumping. Its sad that they do it since they are hurting themselves but money talks.
Still many of the old factory areas in the rust and coal belt of the US have never been completely cleaned and leak into the bedrock.
Water everywhere is an issue and someday may be a bigger problem than any other global issue. Like most things, have control over your supply and intake is the only real way to be safe, get it tested.
Just recently in my hometown it was found that a local country club that was expanding to build a commercial center and some houses was found upon EPA inspection to have some heavy metal contamination from prior dumping that was hidden at the back of the site, of which is near a landfill and the local reservoir.

One of my favourite topics.
June 2009 edition of EL CIUDADANO pages 8 and 9 " AGUA POTABLE" should be enough to make most readers spill their morning coffee.Its in the milk too!!!!!!
Thankfully my "destilador de agua is already" in the post.

Would be interested to know the brand, model and specs of your distiller. Also important are if parts like the fuse are user accessible and replaceable, the material of the boil and collection chamber etc. Or we can wait till our next discussion.

Tombi wrote:

My experience was that after drinking some water, my mouth felt dry, and I felt thirstier.

This was my experience too. I attributed it to the high level of minerals and installed a reverse osmosis* system. My water tastes sweet and we all drink a lot more water now.

* Yeah yeah expensive yada yada, but we feel it was worth every cent as we are huge water drinkers and just weren't drinking enough due to the salty taste of Santiago tap water.

I'm not in santiago and we use well water but a level of mineral taste here also.

We have thought about a water purification system but have no idea what to buy. What type of system/brand do you have?

Much of Chile’s domestic water is run off from precipitation so will tend to be soft, even shallow ground water is run off so much of the well water is soft.
In the south some of the aquifers I dealt with were also if not soft, very neutral even though they were from deep sources. The geology does remediate much of the dissolve mineral content in Chile’s water, I don’t know anyone who uses a water softener.

I understand hard water and hate showers in parts of the Canadian prairies where soap just doesn’t suds up, it tastes OK but soap doesn’t work so well.

The Canadian aquifers as yet do not require reverse osmosis systems to remove dissolved solids as in the US South West.

EEUU...yes i have one ordered from santiago dental supply company.Just spent some time in europe researching the subject. Quite right you mention the chamber/pipes and the build quallity is very important with these machines and following safe cleaning proceedures.Ideally i would like to bring back one from last trip but no space.
I can supply you with the company and details and a website with the pros and cons of each machine.They make 1 litre an hour at 750 watts and are the size of an average blender.
Larger machines at $500 us upwards produce much more.
If you have the money,its better to order direct from states for a recommended model and pay the duty(what ever that is). I will test this one.

I just went to ExpoNor today and stopped by the Aguas Antofagasta booth. They were kind enough to share bottled samples - definitely awesome water quality. Very interesting stuff they have planned regarding desalinization. 75% of the Northern half of the city is already supplied with desalinized water. They plan to finish another plant in the south soon and expect that the entire city will be supplied with pure, desalinized water by 2013. Their central office is also building a huge greenhouse addition that will serve as the lobby where they plan to grow lemon trees! A guy that works out at my gym works there and invited me to check out the greenhouse/lobby when it opens sometime next month - I'll try to get pictures to post. Now that they plan to have clean water, hopefully there are also plans in place to ensure the piping that provides this water will maintain the water purity...