Is our water safe?

I passed by the Klang river daily, which flows across the city centre. The colour of the river is quite brownish. I am not sure in the olden days, where does the city dweller get their water supply. Maybe by collecting via rain or from river? I guess in those days the river is quite clean and usable for daily usage.

In Thailand, there are some rural areas that are still using rivers as their main source. They will pump the water from the river and let it resides in a container. They will not use it immediately; they will wait for a time to let the particles to slowly float down to the bottom of the container. These waters are used to wash plates, bath and etc. For drinking, it is taken from a well. I am not sure this scenario exists in Malaysia as I do not really goes to any rural areas.

When I was young, my family has been using the water straight from the tap for our daily usage. We boiled it and drank it. We used it to cook and also to bath. In those days there are no additional charges for water treatments. Now we have such charges billed to us on a half yearly or yearly basis. Now we have water filters, with numerous filtration or cleansing system like carbon, ceramic, reverse osmosis, distilled, ultraviolet and etc. Basically this is to ensure that whatever we consume is clean of harmful materials like chlorine, bacteria, viruses and etc.

Some of these filter cost above Rm2,000 and some below. The basic one is at least around Rm100 to Rm200. Some of us who stays in a landed area might install 2 systems. One is outside immediately from the water source with the objective of making all the water “clean” including water used for washing, bathing, brushing and etc. It is also used to protect the filter inside which is meant for the water source that is used for cooking.

My house has only one filtration system installed at the water source that is meant for cooking. Every week, I will spend around 15 minutes cleaning it. Mine is a 6 ways filtration system and only one filter is cleanable. It is suppose to be one of those that could drink directly after it was filtered without boiling. However I have tried but I have encounter numerous problem like “wind” in the stomach and etc.

We are not heavy users as most of the time we are working and we have only 2 “permanent” occupants and one on weekend. Every week without fail the filter looks like it has filter some drain water. I was told that it is chlorine. We are a third world country moving towards the status of a developed country. I hope one day our water system is clean enough for us to drink from the tap.