Is Earth’s Most Important Resource Toxic?

Health experts say we should drink at least 64 ounces of water daily to replenish our bodies and maintain good health. This makes sense, because our body is made up of about 50-60% water by weight, although the exact amount can vary depending on several factors.

However, the importance of drinking enough water extends beyond simply avoiding dehydration. In fact, clean water can help detox our bodies and prevent disease, including cancer.

Simply put, water is our body’s filtration system, helping to flush out toxins.

Unfortunately, an estimated 70% to 80% of Americans are chronically dehydrated and miss out on the many powerful health benefits of water. Water performs many critical functions in the body, including:

• Serving as a carrier – in the form of blood, saliva, and other fluids – for oxygen, carbon dioxide, and many other nutrients

• Helping to maintain the structural integrity of our cells and tissues

• Aiding healthy digestion by helping to move food through the gastrointestinal tract and flushing out food waste and toxins

• Supporting an active, healthy metabolism

• Flushing waste and toxins out of our body as sweat and urine

• Maintaining proper membrane moisture levels

• Lubricating joints

• Helping to make hormones and neurotransmitters in our brain and body

• Controlling body temperature via sweating and respiration

Water and Cancer

Adequate fluid consumption has been associated with a lower risk of cancer formation in the bladder, colon, and breasts. An overview of multiple studies shows that the more fluid a person consumes, the less likely it is that he or she will develop these potentially fatal cancers.

For instance, concentrated urine and less frequent urination expose the inner wall of the bladder to higher levels of toxins for a longer time, increasing the risk of bladder cancer.

Similarly, water intake alone was seen to lower the risk of developing colon and colorectal cancer in both men and women in multiple studies. Based on the results of one animal study, the authors stated:

“This suggests that increased water intake may have an important role in reducing colon cancer risk by decreasing bowel transit time, reducing the mucosal contact with carcinogens, and decreasing the concentration of carcinogens.”

Another study established that drinking water is inversely and significantly associated with breast cancer risk.

In other words, maintaining optimal hydration is an essential tool for lowering our chances of getting cancer. And while these results are very promising, we have to remember that these studies likely took place in controlled laboratory conditions in which the quality of drinking water was carefully monitored.

What about us, the regular Joes and Janes? Is the water we drink and use just as safe and even beneficial for our health?

As it turns out, it isn’t.

Under the U.S. EPA Toxic Substances Control Act, over 80,000 synthetic chemicals are registered for commercial use. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has long campaigned against the lack of federal safety oversight, noting that the vast majority of these manufactured chemicals are approved for use without mandatory health and environmental testing. These chemicals can be found in the air we breathe, food we consume, and water we drink – as well as in hundreds of everyday items such as furniture, carpets, household cleaners, cosmetics, and toys. According to the NRDC, most of these chemicals haven’t been sufficiently tested for their effects on our health, thanks to a lack of adequate resources, outdated chemical safety laws, and loopholes that are being relentlessly exploited by the chemical industry.

Contamination of Our Water Supply

Few things connect us so directly to our natural environment as water – and the extent of its contamination is a direct reflection of the degree of contamination of our environment.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. enjoys one of the world’s most reliable and safest supplies of drinking water, thanks to the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) passed by Congress in 1974 to protect public health.

Over 150,000 public water systems provide drinking water to most Americans. The SDWA requires the EPA to establish and enforce standards to which all public drinking water systems must adhere.

However, our water supply may not be as squeaky clean as the EPA would have us believe.

Rainwater dissolves compounds both natural and synthetic present in the air, then lands on the soil and runs into the many aquifers, streams, rivers, and lakes that supply our drinking water. Unfortunately for us, ground pollution finds its way into our water supply, with many potential points of entry before reaching our tap.

Specifically, the types and quantities of chemical pollutants in our water supply can result from contamination of source water, treatment processes, or entry into water distribution systems as it is conveyed to us.

Many synthetic compounds can potentially contaminate source waters, but these are usually present at fairly low to negligible levels and only affect us if they are toxic at low concentrations. On the other hand, chemicals that enter our water supply during treatment may be limited in number, but they are more likely to appear at higher levels and therefore pose a greater health risk.

Last but not least, contaminants present in the pipes, joints, and fixtures of our water distribution systems are likely to be highly pervasive and have the potential to cause widespread contamination, posing substantial health risks.

5 Contaminants in Source Water

Contaminants that enter our water supply from source water generally occur at low levels. Typical source-water contaminants include arsenic, asbestos, radon, agricultural chemicals, and hazardous waste.

1 | Arsenic – Some of the strongest evidence for a cancer risk associated with source-water contamination involves the highly toxic arsenic in drinking water. It is estimated that more than 150 million people globally are exposed to arsenic through groundwater contamination. Arsenic is known to cause skin lesions and skin cancers. Although it doesn’t directly damage DNA, it disrupts many other aspects of DNA function, just like many known carcinogens do.

A 2024 study from Texas found that even low-level arsenic exposure (1–5 ppb) was associated with a 6% higher incidence of kidney cancer, and exposure above 5 ppb with a 22% higher incidence. A 2025 article in Oncology Times confirmed that long-term, low-level arsenic exposure through contaminated drinking water is linked to increased kidney cancer risk, with a dose-response relationship showing a 4% increase in incidence for each doubling of arsenic concentration.

2 | Asbestos – Although early studies indicated a risk of developing colorectal cancer associated with asbestos in drinking water, this was seen to be limited to situations in which naturally occurring levels of asbestos were high in source water. However, more recent evidence suggests that asbestos fibers in drinking water can raise the risk of stomach and colorectal cancers.

3 | Radon – This toxin causes DNA and cellular damage and is the second leading cause of lung cancer deaths after tobacco smoke. Low levels of radon can be found in drinking water, which slightly increases indoor air levels. However, the risk of developing stomach and other gastrointestinal cancers from radon in drinking water is considered to be small.

4 | Agricultural chemicals – These can cause local or regional contamination of source waters because of the presence of significant levels of toxic insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. A 2025 study in Environment International found that nitrate intake from tap water was associated with a higher rate of distal colon cancer, with a nitrate concentration ≥9.25 mg/L linked to a 52% higher colon cancer rate compared to levels below 1.27 mg/L.

5 | Hazardous waste – Evidence has been found of elevated cancer rates in the vicinity of hazardous waste sites. However, it is difficult to estimate the exact cancer risks associated with hazardous wastes – each specific instance must be assessed on its own.

Water Disinfectants and Cancer

Disinfection of drinking water using chlorine was originally instrumental in lowering disease and death rates associated with many waterborne disease carriers. However, in the 1970s it was shown that chlorination leads to the production of halogenated organic compounds in water, particularly chloroform.

A 2025 meta-analysis found that long-term consumption of chlorinated drinking water was associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer, with odds ratios of 1.30 for medium-term exposure and 1.59 for long-term exposure compared to those never or briefly exposed. This trend was particularly pronounced in men (OR = 1.59). A 2025 systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis found a summary relative risk of 1.33 for bladder cancer and 1.15 for colorectal cancer at THM concentrations above 41 μg/L—levels below current US and EU regulatory limits, indicating that current standards may not fully protect against cancer.

Byproducts of disinfection are formed when disinfectants such as chlorine, ozone, chlorine dioxide, and chloramines react with naturally occurring organic matter, contaminants, bromide, and iodide during the production of drinking water.

At the moment, 11 of these disinfection byproducts are currently regulated in the US, while the remaining 70+ are considered “emerging” byproducts due to their presumed lower levels of occurrence and less toxicity – and frankly, much less information about how they affect our health.

Alternative disinfection practices were originally intended to result in safer drinking water. However, it turns out that at least a few of the supposedly safer emerging byproducts are generated at higher levels and may be more damaging to our DNA and cells than those produced by chlorination.

For instance, the byproducts of bromine compounds were shown to be both more damaging to DNA and carcinogenic than chlorinated compounds, while iodinated byproducts were the most damaging to DNA, although these have not yet been tested for their carcinogenicity.

To a certain extent, we now understand better how some – but by no means all – disinfection byproducts may be affecting our body. How they interact with each other and affect us in the combinations we are likely to encounter in our environment is not as clear.

Chloroform and Cancer

Among the many hazardous chemicals to which we’re exposed on a regular basis is chloroform – which typically enters our environment as a waste product from chemical companies and paper mills. It is also found in wastewater from sewage treatment plants and drinking water to which chlorine has been added.

Chloroform can enter the air directly, or by evaporating from water and soil that contain it – and while it dissolves easily in water, it does not stick to the soil very well. This means it can travel down through soil and enter the water supply, where it stays for a long time.

Most chloroform eventually breaks down, very slowly, into phosgene, which is even more toxic than chloroform, and hydrogen chloride, which is also toxic. There are probably small amounts of chloroform in our drinking water (as a byproduct of chlorination) and other beverages. Unfortunately, chloroform has been found in the air from all areas of the U.S. and in nearly all public drinking water supplies.

Chloroform easily enters our body through the skin, for example when taking a bath or shower in water containing chloroform, because hot water opens up our skin’s pores and removes skin oils, which would have otherwise helped to form a natural defensive barrier. Studies show that once it enters our body, chloroform quickly enters our bloodstream from the lungs or intestines. It is then carried by blood to all parts of the body, especially our fat stores, liver, and kidneys.

Some of the chloroform in our body is broken down into other chemicals known as breakdown products or metabolites, which themselves can cause adverse effects if they accumulate in high enough amounts.

In our body, chloroform adversely affects our central nervous system, including the brain, liver, and kidneys. Breathing about 900 parts of chloroform in a million parts of air for a short time causes fatigue, dizziness, and headache.

Although no reproductive effects have so far been documented in people, in laboratory experiments, miscarriages occurred in rats and mice that breathed air containing high levels of chloroform during pregnancy.

Further, mice that breathed air containing elevated levels of chloroform developed abnormal sperm, while the offspring of rats and mice that breathed chloroform during pregnancy had birth defects.

Cancer of the liver and kidneys developed in rats and mice that ate food or drank water that had large amounts of chloroform in it for a long time. Cohort studies have also examined the link between chloroform exposure from water chlorination and cancer.

Studies on people who drank chlorinated water showed a possible link between the presence of chloroform in chlorinated water and cancer of the colon and urinary bladder.

It is presently unclear whether liver and kidney cancer will necessarily develop in people after long-term exposure to chloroform in drinking water. However, based on animal studies alone, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has determined that chloroform may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen.

Similarly, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that chloroform is possibly carcinogenic to humans, while the EPA has also determined that chloroform is a probable human carcinogen.

Can Plastic Containers Cause Cancer?

You may have heard by now how even “healthy” mineral water can be a significant hazard to your health if it is stored in plastic containers and water bottles.

The source of this health hazard is Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is a key building block of all plastics, from polycarbonate to polyester. BPA is routinely used to line food cans to prevent corrosion and food contamination. It is also used to make plastic cups, baby bottles, and regular bottles transparent and shatterproof.

Unfortunately, BPA also leaches from plastics and resins when they are exposed to hard use, or the high temperatures typically seen in microwaves or dishwashers.

The FDA first approved BPA as a food container component in 1963 because no ill effects from its use had been shown. BPA slipped in under the regulatory radar, because when Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, requiring that the EPA conduct or review safety studies on new chemicals, BPA was already on the market. Therefore, it was not subject to the new rules nor required to undergo additional testing, because specific concerns had not been raised.

One of the first clear indications of how pervasive BPA had become in our lives and environment came from an analysis carried out in 2004, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found traces of BPA in nearly all of the urine samples it had collected to assess the prevalence of toxic chemicals in the human body.

Although in this particular analysis, BPA levels were estimated to be 1,000 times lower than the limit considered safe by the EPA and the European Union’s European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), what was worrying was glucuronide – a waste product of BPA – was present in most of the urine samples analyzed, suggesting that we’re being exposed to it on a regular basis.

Also, children had higher levels of glucuronide than adolescents and adolescents had higher levels than adults – although adults cope with BPA better than children and infants. Unfortunately, it seems babies might be exposed the most, because both baby bottles and infant formula cans are likely to leach BPA.

A 2024 report suggests that the urine data may not be telling us the complete story. The authors of this report state that we are likely exposed to levels of BPA 10 times higher than what the EPA has deemed safe, based on the amounts of BPA and its breakdown products seen in tissue and blood samples.

So, what’s the problem with BPA exposure?

First of all, BPA mimics estrogens. In other words, it binds to the same receptor proteins in our body’s cells as the natural female hormones. As a consequence, BPA is likely to both interfere with hormonal pathways and mimic them, but imperfectly and incompletely, potentially leading to serious health problems.

Indeed, a 2025 case-control study found that BPA exposure is associated with ovarian cancer, with patients showing increased BPA levels, reactive oxygen species, and KRT4 gene expression. A 2025 network toxicology study demonstrated that BPA promotes cancer cell migration in cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancers through dose-dependent upregulation of MMP9 and CXCL8 genes.

Once it enters our body, BPA tends to build up, especially in the placenta and fetus. Scientific and medical evidence shows that BPA severely disrupts fetal development in the embryo, along with harming both the male and female reproductive systems.

Unfortunately, laboratory studies in animals show that BPA can have permanently damaging effects after even very short exposures. There is also preliminary in vitro evidence suggesting BPA may act as a liver cancer-promoting agent.

BPA has also been shown to directly damage DNA. Even though the liver breaks BPA down efficiently, Bisphenol-o-quinone, one of the breakdown products, has also been shown to bind to DNA, potentially changing how DNA functions in our cells and perhaps even contributing to cancer formation.

BPA also interferes with multiple signaling pathways in our cells, again with potentially serious health consequences.

Of course, the plastics industry argues that BPA should continue to be used because of its many convenient features that they claim are hard to match. However, some experts feel that the much more stable polyethylene and polypropylene plastics would be perfectly acceptable substitutes, at least for some applications.

In Japan, manufacturers began using natural resin instead of BPA to line cans after their scientists showed that BPA was leaching out of baby bottles. In what seems to be a direct consequence of this measure, a 1999 study found that levels of BPA and its breakdown products in the urine of Japanese test populations had declined significantly.

For now, U.S. scientists recommend that anyone worried about BPA’s adverse health effects should simply avoid using products made from it: Polycarbonate plastic can be easily identified, being clear or colored and typically marked with a number 7 on the bottom.

If canned goods or polycarbonate plastic bottles cannot be avoided, they should never be microwaved, used to store heated liquids or foods, or washed in hot water, either by hand or in much hotter dishwashers. Finally, common sense dictates that they should be regularly recycled and replaced with new bottles, depending on how often they are being used.

The AI Data Center Water Crisis: A New Threat to Our Water Supply

While the contaminants we’ve discussed so far have been poisoning our water for decades, a new and rapidly growing threat has emerged that few people are connecting to their health: the insatiable water consumption of artificial intelligence data centers.

AI data centers consume staggering amounts of water during evaporative cooling operations. A single large data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day or more – the equivalent of a small city. This is water that is being diverted from human communities and agriculture to cool the machines that power our digital world. In drought-prone regions like the American Southwest, these data centers are competing directly with farmers, households, and ecosystems for a resource that is already over-allocated.

But here’s what they really don’t want you to know: it’s not just the quantity of water that should terrify you. It’s the quality.

The Poisoning of Our Aquifers

When water runs through a data center’s cooling systems, it doesn’t emerge pristine on the other side. The evaporative cooling process concentrates whatever was already in the water – nitrates, heavy metals, agricultural runoff – to dangerous levels. But that’s just the starting lineup. The cooling systems themselves are dosed with anticorrosive agents to keep the pipes from dissolving, anti-scaling agents to prevent mineral buildup, and biocides to stop the stagnant water from turning into a science experiment. All of it – every last chemical – gets concentrated right alongside the nitrates.

The result? Nitrates – classified as carcinogens at high concentrations – can spike to more than five times the legal limit after passing through these facilities. In Morrow County, Oregon, where Amazon operates multiple data centers, nitrate levels in some wells have hit 73 parts per million.

Let that sink in: that’s ten times higher than Oregon’s safety limit and seven times the federal threshold. In March 2026, Amazon agreed to a $20.5 million settlement over claims its data centers contributed to nitrate pollution in the region, while denying allegations that it contributed to the contamination. The lawsuit noted that the port’s wastewater, overapplied for years, allowed excess nitrate to seep into groundwater. According to the Oregon Health Authority, at least 634 domestic wells in the area contain unsafe levels of nitrate, some with nearly 10 times the federal limit.

And where does this toxic wastewater go? In many cases, it gets piped right back onto nearby farmland, where it seeps through sandy, porous soil and re-enters the aquifer – the same aquifer communities rely on for drinking water. The result? A perfect recipe for groundwater poisoning.

The water treatment facilities – already outdated, already overwhelmed – don’t have the capability to filter out these concentrated contaminants, corrosives, and carcinogens. So the same water that left your tap toxic returns to your tap toxic, only now it’s been seasoned with industrial-strength chemicals from a server farm.

The Cancer Connection You Need to Know

This isn’t just an environmental issue – it’s a cancer issue. The very contaminants we’ve been warning you about for years are being concentrated and amplified by AI data centers:

• Nitrates, which we discussed earlier as a contaminant linked to stomach and liver cancer, are being concentrated to levels far exceeding safety limits. A 2025 study in Environment International confirmed the association between long-term nitrate exposure in drinking water and the incidence of colorectal cancer, showing a nitrate concentration ≥9.25 mg/L was linked to a 52% higher colon cancer rate.

• Heavy metals and industrial chemicals that are known carcinogens are being concentrated in the wastewater.

• The biocides and anticorrosive agents used in cooling systems are themselves chemicals that have not been adequately tested for their effects on human health.

The communities surrounding these data centers are becoming unwitting test subjects in a massive, uncontrolled experiment. In Morrow County, Oregon, residents have reported rising rates of rare cancers, miscarriages, and reproductive complications – all while being told by officials that everything is fine.

What You’re Not Being Told

They call this “innovation.” But what it actually represents is a massive transfer of resources – your water, your grid capacity, your tax dollars (in the form of incentives) – into the service of machines designed to replace human labor, monitor human behavior, and ultimately, enforce human compliance.

Here’s the circular nightmare they’re not telling you about:

1. Energy scarcity due to global conflicts is driving electricity prices to spike.

2. Water scarcity from AI-driven consumption means the available water is increasingly undrinkable.

3. Agricultural collapse from fertilizer shortages means food prices are already climbing.

4. To keep the AI data centers running – because they’re “critical infrastructure,” remember – utilities are prioritizing them over residential neighborhoods.

5. Your health is being sacrificed in communities where nitrate poisoning from data center wastewater is linked to rare cancers and miscarriages.

The Industry’s Response

The response from the institutions orchestrating this? Lockdowns. Rationing. Control.

You’ll be told to take shorter showers. You’ll be told to drive less. You’ll be told that conserving – sacrificing – is your patriotic duty.

What you won’t be told is that the water you save is being rerouted to a data center to cool the machine that is being trained to replace your job and monitor your behavior.

What you won’t be told is that after cooling the machines, the water contains concentrated nitrates and heavy metals and is being sprayed onto farmland, where it seeps back into the aquifer – poisoning the very water supply your children drink.

4 Methods of Water Purification

According to a 2007 WHO report, more than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Reducing deaths from waterborne diseases is a major public health goal for many developing countries even today. Water purification is the process of removing undesirable chemicals, biological contaminants, suspended solids, and gases from water to produce water fit for a specific purpose – for example, drinking.

Methods of water purification include physical processes such as filtration, sedimentation, distillation, and reverse osmosis; biological processes such as slow sand filters or biologically active carbon; chemical processes such as flocculation and chlorination, and the use of electromagnetic radiation and ultraviolet light.

Unfortunately, simple homegrown procedures such as boiling or using household activated carbon filters are no longer sufficient for removing all the possible contaminants likely to be present in our water supply. In fact, even so-called “natural spring water” is now routinely tested to determine if any pre-treatment is required to make it safe for drinking.

Let’s take a look at a few effective methods of water purification:

1 | Rapid sand filtration – In this approach, water moves vertically through many layers of sand, usually with a layer of activated carbon or anthracite coal above the sand that removes organic compounds that contribute to taste and odor.

Most of the contaminant particles pass through the surface layers but are trapped in pore spaces or adhere to sand particles. Effective filtration extends into the depth of the filter, since if the top layer of sand were to block all the particles, the filter would quickly clog. Some water treatment plants employ pressure filters, in which the filter medium is enclosed in a steel vessel and water is forced through it under pressure.

Rapid sand filtration filters are strong, filter out much smaller particles than other filters can, including virtually all particles larger than their specified pore sizes, enable liquids to flow through them fairly rapidly, and can be cleaned and reused.

2 | Slow sand filtration – On the other hand, slow sand filters are large-scale filters that rely on biological processes for their action. They are carefully constructed using graded layers of sand, with the coarsest sand, along with some gravel at the bottom, and finest sand at the top.

Slow sand filtration depends on the development of a thin biological layer, known as the zoogleal layer, on the surface layer of sand. A zoogleal layer is a complex population of living microorganisms that form a slime growth which breaks down organic matter. The filtered water that emerges at the bottom of a slow sand filter has very low nutrient and disinfectant levels.

Slow sand filters are maintained by having the top layer of sand scraped off when flow is eventually obstructed by excess biological growth.

3 | Reverse osmosis – This is a technology used to get rid of most contaminants from water by pushing the water under pressure through a semipermeable membrane.

A semipermeable membrane allows some atoms or molecules to pass through it but not others, for example dissolved salts, organic compounds, and bacteria, based on size differentiation.

Normally, water with fewer compounds and contaminants in it will tend to migrate towards water with more compounds when separated by a semipermeable membrane – this is known as osmosis. Examples of osmosis are plant roots absorbing water from the soil and our kidneys absorbing water from our bloodstream.

While osmosis happens naturally, without any need for energy, to reverse the process of osmosis high pressure has to be applied to the water with more compounds in it. This reverses the flow of water, thereby desalinating, demineralizing, or deionizing it and allowing highly purified water through while holding back most of the dissolved compounds and contaminants.

In other words, the high pressure causes impurities to become more concentrated on one side of the semipermeable membrane. Reverse osmosis has proven to be a highly capable method for removing nitrates from drinking water. A 2024 systematic review in Results in Engineering examined the optimal operating conditions of the reverse osmosis process in nitrate removal, confirming its effectiveness.

4 | Ion exchange – This is a reversible chemical reaction in which positively or negatively charged molecules known as ions dissolved in a solution are removed and replaced with other, similarly charged ions. Ion exchange is used to purify, separate, and decontaminate solutions of water containing ions. For instance, ion exchange is typically used for softening water by removing calcium and magnesium ions.

Ion exchangers can either be cation exchangers, which exchange positively charged ions (cations), or anion exchangers, which exchange negatively charged ions (anions). There are also exchangers that are able to exchange both cations and anions simultaneously.

In a cation exchange process, positively charged ions in water are exchanged with positively charged ions, typically sodium. Water softening is the most widely used cation exchange process. Similarly, in anion exchange negatively charged ions are exchanged with negatively charged ions, typically chloride. Contaminants in water such as nitrate, fluoride, sulfate, and arsenic, as well as others, can all be removed by anion exchange.

Protecting Yourself and Your Family

Given the growing threats to our water supply – from traditional contaminants to the new dangers posed by AI data centers – here are steps you can take to protect your health:

1. Invest in a high-quality water filtration system – Reverse osmosis systems, combined with activated carbon filters, can remove many of the contaminants discussed in this article. Look for systems certified to remove nitrates, heavy metals, and industrial chemicals.

2. Test your water regularly – Consider having your water tested by an independent laboratory for nitrates, heavy metals, and other contaminants. This is especially important if you live near a data center or agricultural area.

3. Avoid plastic water bottles – As we discussed, BPA and other chemicals can leach from plastic containers. Use glass or stainless steel containers instead.

4. Support local efforts to regulate data center water usage – Many communities are fighting back against the unchecked growth of AI data centers. Get involved in local meetings and advocacy efforts.

5. Stay informed – The threats to our water supply are evolving rapidly. Continue to educate yourself about new contaminants and purification methods.

Editor’s Note: This article was initially published in 2022 and has been updated in 2026.