It's only cancer. Elaboration of water 'issue'

For Kat :)

I tried to do a lot of research on the problem, and basically because Ketchikan is the rain capital of the country, all of our water comes from run off. Run off combined with deforestation equals dirty water, so they treat the water and the by product of chemically treating water is haloacetic acids (found in everyone's water all over the country) the gov sets a standard for what is acceptable in parts per million and we were notified because we were over double the acceptable standard. 

Now if I go back a couple months before we were first notified, I will tell you the type of experiences we were having.  I have never had a problem with dry skin (except sometimes my face a little when I was teen from using acne medicine lol) So it went a little like this, yay we're in Alaska. Summer, fun, sun, fishing. The first odd occurrence was the first time I used our new wash clothes, they were solid green and blue, and when I would use them to wash my face they would get what looked like bleach spots on them.  I attributed it to probably just being the washcloths fault, like they were cheap or something, basically I thought it was weird, but I didn't think too much about it. 

  -So then around the end of summer, I noticed my hair was starting to break off... And then my face was becoming so dry, and not dry like when I lived in Seattle this wasn't dry from weather, it was extreme. I knew something was wrong when all of my skin started feeling dryer than normal, not just on my face and I was starting to have little areas where I would feel where a grouping of my hair had broken off at the scalp.  Drew was experiencing it too, but not as bad as I was.  So itching of the scalp became normal, my face got progressively worse, it was to the point where I thought I was developing a medical condition. 

  -Ok so, next step, took a shower one day in the fall, got out and my face was BURNING, I told Drew, and he said the same thing had happened to him earlier that same day!  We were like wtf is going on, and we started making jokes about the water and how we should order a test kit and send in the results to some agency or what not.  

  -This one might be TMI, but we had been using the bath a lot because that's all we have upstairs, and I kept developing UTIs, now this is normal for some women but I had only had three in my whole life, I mean I love taking a bubble bath and it's never hurt me before, but here every time I took a bath or even long shower I would seem to start having discomfort... yeah... So I stopped taking baths all together (that's when I started noticing it happening from showers - I would have to rinse off in bottled water to keep it from happening)

  -Next step, our shower leaked because of an issue with the pump under the house that pumps all the used water up hill. We had thrown down a teal towel to absorb the water leaking through the wall (and called our rental agency to get it fixed) when i picked up the wadded up towel a day later it had huge bleach spots on it! Like bleach spots the size of basket balls. We were dumbfounded.

  -Then we get the first of two mailed notifications we have received telling us (I have attached them here) about the high concentration of these haloacetic acids, and I immediately ordered a shower filtration system. Low and behold even after the first use Drew was like, your skin is already softer! My hair felt better after one washing using the filter! Now I have had a hard time finding any proof to dermatological side effects of high quantities of these acids, but I damn well know that there are.  I am living proof. My skin is still not as soft as before but it is ten times better, and my hair is still dryer than normal but once again it has stopped breaking off at the root and is recovering. Also I stopped developing UTI symptoms after every shower long enough to shave my legs!  

So moving on to research. I of course tried to research the effects, and found only articles about studies done by universities.  From this I found links to miscarriages and dermatological side effects, but none of which any gov agency will substantiate.  The information I found was based on studies done in New Jersey, because apparently like us, they have a lot of run off and so they have to use a lot of chemicals to clean the water leaving behind the same by product that is left in ours... Or at least at the time this study was done...

  So that's my current water experience!  Sorry to bore you, but I bet there are at least a couple people who will find this interesting... Like Kat :) hehehe

found a pic I had taken of the towel...